Imaginative storytelling experiences
Interview with Dr. Faye Miller by Emily Zampetti for the Mellon Research Fellowship
Please share a little about yourself (career, education, interests, etc.)
Throughout my school years I developed passions for creative writing, filmmaking and music performance, and have been practicing in these areas professionally for over twenty years. My first degree was in literature and film studies and also psychology of health and education, which introduced me to the joy of social research methods. This prepared me to work across universities as a research officer, grants manager, academic and editor, for ten years. While working I completed a Masters and PhD in information ecology, transitioning to being a lead researcher. Over the past six years I have led several international research projects including how people experience information in social media at Harvard University, transdisciplinary digital social innovations, and early career researcher development - these projects culminated in a recently published book Producing Shared Understanding for Digital and Social Innovation. I recently re-trained as a career counsellor specializing in narrative storytelling career counselling therapies, and founded a global research and career development consultancy Human Constellation, forming exciting partnerships with collaborators and clients from all over the world!
Can you think of a specific time where creative storytelling helped to shape your life? How did it do this?
Some of my earliest memories involved creative storytelling, especially writing my observations of what I had learned on visits locally or internationally, at school or in my social and family life. I was naturally curious about everything, and for me creating, visualizing and sharing stories were ways of trying to understand myself and my relationships with the world. Sometimes I would turn my curious observations into short stories using fictionalized characters or settings, as devices to capture the unique meaningful life moments which were most valued. I continue to practice this in my everyday life through journaling, and in my professional life as a social researcher and narrative career counsellor, helping people to find inspiration and strengthen their identities through crafting their own life stories.
Can you tell me about your own experiences with imaginative storytelling?
A few years ago I decided to make a film about imaginative storytelling experiences - through the prism of Sir Tony Robinson's 'Tales from Fat Tulip's Garden'. I feel that imagination development through performative or analog storytelling is becoming a lost art and hoped that by making this film it would reignite discussions and interest around the issue. Imagination - the ability to transcend your immediate culture and experience through empathy - is being neglected in both parenting and education, more so than creativity which is accepted as having immediate practical value. In my book about how to produce shared understanding - a key 21st century skill for the betterment and healing of our world in crisis - imagination underpins the moral, ethical, abstract and spiritual human development that can often be sidelined in favor of more pragmatic and commercial interests. Sir Tony laments in some of his interviews about how Fat Tulip was short lived, that in the 1980s TV producers struggled to commercialize the concept of this show. Many of its characters were invisible but lived in the childrens' imaginations, however they wanted them to be. But the show's educational benefit was ultimately valuable decades after it was made.
Are there any games, books, television programs, etc. that you remember as having been influential in your imaginative/ creative development?
Other than Fat Tulip, I think Rory's Story Cubes are fun games for sparking imaginative stories through rolling the random dice with picture prompts and then imagining and improvising a story aloud to your friends. I find it really encourages you to perform stories from pure instinct and it says much about the storytellers themselves.