Participants

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Get the Science Out

Are you passionate about sharing research?

Do you want to advance your skills for communicating clearly and effectively in a noisy, distracted world?

Interested in intentionally investing in your abilities as a storyteller?

At the Storyhouse, you will invest in your abilities as an public speaker, writer, and storyteller — while you help us share research that impacts people's lives and health!

The Storyhouse experience is equal parts professional development, communications training, and an opportunity to make a difference.

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How to Participate

Course Credit

  •  You can participate in the Storyhouse through various CEL courses, practicum placements, and experiential learning pathways
  •  Storyhouse is embedded in different courses and opportunities each term
  • Email story@uwo.ca if you have questions

Non-Credit

  • Volunteer (Western Co-Curricular Record)

Professional Development

  • Staff Training (Research Assistants, Research Associates, Research Officers, Support Staff, etc)
  • Research Lab/Project Members (Undergraduate Students, Graduate Students, Postdoctoral, Work Study Students, etc)
    • Ask your faculty supervisor to email story@uwo.ca to onboard your team

The Process

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The Beginning

You will select a recent academic article from a curated set of publications. This will be the "source material" for your story. We provide the training, coaching, and an artisanal workshopping environment for transposing academic research into an audience-specific narrative. From there, it is a journey of practicing, collaborating, iterating, and performing.

The Deliverables

Each member of the Storyhouse team works on three main end-of-term deliverables.

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1. Tell the Story on the Stage

Present your narrative about a Western University research study at a filmed, end-of-term storytelling finale event.

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2. A Finely Crafted Narrative

After pitching, workshopping, and practicing, watch to see how your ~450 word manuscript narrative goes out into the world.

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3. Podcast Episode Interview

You will be interviewed for an episode of the Storyhouse podcast to share and reflect on what you learned about dancing with science to narrative.

Why Me?

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Tactical Skills Building

Regardless of your career path, honing your skills in science communication can greatly enhance your critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, and build a mental toolkit for addressing complex concepts. At its core, the Storyhouse experience equips you to effectively convey information and engage diverse audiences.

Other reasons you might want to participate include...

  • you love making science relevant and engaging
  • you are obsessed with "ah ha!" moments — and inspiring other people to have them, too
  • the word "interdisciplinary" makes your heart flutter
  • you want out — way, way out — of your comfort zone
  • you are thinking about graduate studies and want to experiment diving into research

 

Take it all with you wherever you go

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The Storyhouse focuses on training and inspiring your passion for these four (highly transferrable) skills:

Science communication, or SciComm, involves informing, educating, and heightening public awareness of science-related topics, while also fostering a sense of wonder and appreciation for scientific discoveries and discussions.

Knowledge mobilization means increasing the use and usefulness of research by making sure that the right people can access it, understand it, act upon it, participate in it, and inform where it goes.

Narrative theory, boardly speaking, looks at the ways people use stories to make sense of their world and how people make sense of the stories in their world.

Performance studies and the time-honoured practice of standing up in front of a bunch of people and telling them a tale. The tradition is ancient, but it never gets old, and it is an applicable skill no matter where you go in life.

Prerequisites

  • Be willing to put yourself out there! Storyhouse involves public speaking and live, on-stage storytelling
  • Participating in the Storyhouse requires a commitment of approximately 2-3 hours per week minimum for the term
  • You must be able to attend a weekly workshop (1 hour) at either 10:30AM or 11:30AM on Wednesdays
  • You must agree to share your creative outputs in the program through a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license so that it can be adapted and shared
  • You must be willing to sign Western University's Photography/videography consent form so that the recording of your narrative performance can be distributed widely