The Compass is a digital narrative tool to augment imagination, for collective storytelling, to empower communities to design and build their own future.
I believe the current crisis of truth and the environmental emergency are a crisis of imagination and narrative. It’s vital to have systems to augment imagination and holistically comprehend the consequences of our actions and collectively build an emergent desirable future. Narrative practices and collaborative storytelling are a skill, as crucial as languages and embracing that potential, I want to offer communities tools to make the power of narration and world building their own.
Transdisciplinary collaboration has been key in my narrative practice and the continuous evolution of my methods. In some of my previous projects such as “Migratory Narratives” and “Surveillance and Spectacle”, I have collaborated with diverse communities to build narratives of resistance and empowerment. Extending this process The Compass is conceived as a tool for communities that want to build a decentralised, ecological, ethical future, and promote the emergence of pan-european collaboration.
My objective is to conceptualise and design The Compass as a stand alone and a web based tool, departing from my two decades research and experience developing narrative and world building methods. I want to define the key processes and main functionalities, as well as the frame and path of a working session, pointing to a design document and analogue prototype to be ready to build a beta version that can be used autonomously by each community.
I believe storytelling is the most powerful tool in the comprehension and transformation of our societies. Stories weave knowledge, shape our perception and opinions, and are the ground of cooperation. Stories are the essence of our society, but corporative interests have monopolized them. Equally narratives have the power to control and manipulate at large scale. I feel the urge to create a different space for creative gathering and collective imagination, to challenge the predominant narratives of control and acquire new tools to transform our reality and build an ethical future.
Stories are the essence of our society. To gather around the fireplace to tell and listen to stories has been fundamental to create community through connection and new knowledge through shared imagination.
We are missing the ancient storytelling practices and spaces that set the roots to gatherings and cooperation while corporative interests have monopolized the power of stories. I envision the tool will allow transnational groups of individuals, that met for the first time for the story-session or have a preexisting communities to tell stories together supported by people with experience and diverse fields of expertise
Stories to focus on empowerment, community building and transnational solidarity are rare, overseen by stories of failure, conflict and separation. We face an urge for different narratives to create a contemporary sense of belonging, a story of the hybrid, transnational Europe of today. Building stories together weaves social bonds, creates spaces to share experiences, exchange points of view, embody fictional characters, allowing us to explore different realities and to imagine alternative versions of history, present and the future. It’s essential to imagine change.