Digital Story Telling Toolkit
If you’re on this site, chances are you’re interested in talking about mental health with your friends or peers — we’re glad you’re here.
The first step to fostering a sense of community and belonging is often the willingness to be open.
This website features different exercises and prompts, meant to be worked through on a weekly basis.
Organised around a different theme each week, we are providing thought-provoking sources that are meant to help spark conversation around the theme of the week.
These might be useful in helping you have honest and important conversations and in creating a space where these conversations can be had.
Who would you like to invite to have conversations with?
Who do you feel safe around?
You might want to consider having these conversations in groups of 3-6 people.
Meeting face to face, in person, might be the best way of creating a close-knit group with whom you can connect on a genuine level.
On the other hand, a video call is sometimes the easiest and most viable solution.
It could also be that you most enjoy discussing the prompts and exercises over text — a group chat is sure to be helpful.
To make sure everyone in the group feels safe to share their stories, it's helpful to understand that everyone has different "fuses".
You never know what topic, setting or sentence might be upsetting to someone because of a personal experience, so it's important that you get to choose how, when and how much they share and participate.
When encouraging others to participate, doing so gently and empathetically is likely to increase how safe people feel, therefore allowing for more open, vulnerable and honest connection.
It's hard to open up without knowing that others will keep what you share confidential. It might be that you all agree on group rules, such as keeping everything you share between yourselves in the group and not passing it on to people outside your group.
As an introduction, you might like to watch this video by Brené Brown on the anatomy of trust, and discuss what you thought about the things she mentioned:
The Anatomy of Trust by Brené Brown
With these considerations in mind, it's time for you to set up your group, maybe in the form of a group chat. Then all that's left is setting a date for your first week and maybe even your first discussion. We'll see you then!
Warm up your storytelling muscles by sharing the story of a photo and an object that is dear or meaningful to you.
Show the others your selected object and photo, and share why they are meaningful to you:
The sharing can be done in any way that suits your group best.
If you’re meeting in person, bring the photo and object along, otherwise, share images of them online.
You could do a Show and Tell video call session, or share your stories through texts or voice messages as well!
