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Articles

A story about storytelling: enhancement of community participation through catalytic storytelling

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This article presents a new approach to stimulate conversations among community members to mobilize resources and improve community well-being. The approach emerged during an asset mapping study in a school district in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona when the researchers realized that they could not on their own capture the broad range of diversity within a community. The approach, which the authors later came to call catalytic storytelling, is interpreted in light of asset-based community development, appreciative inquiry, and community storytelling traditions. It requires the researcher to adopt an ambiguous position as insider–outsider, which was described by Dwyer and Buckle in 2009. Furthermore, catalytic storytelling purports that reports written by community development researchers and community organizers should pose key questions to community members in addition to summarizing main stories derived from community conversations.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Valley of the Sun United Way, students, parents, teachers, and administrators of the Balsz Elementary School District, and Arizona State University’s Partnership for Community Development. Special thanks belong to Kendra Smith for her work on the scan and to Judith Butzine, Bjørn Peterson, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript. Praise, honor, and thanks belong to all those who have taken part in community conversations that shaped this research and its methods.

Additional information

Funding

Funding. The work on the Balsz Community Scan was co-funded by Valley of the Sun United Way and Arizona State University’s Partnership for Community Development. The work on this article was funded by the Partnership for Community Development.

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