Local Communities Have Stories to Tell: Storytelling for Social Inclusion

Abstract

Among designers working with social innovation and communities, some debates are always present: How to build the relations with the communities we are working with? How do we gain trust and access? As designers, do we need to be part of a community to do a good job? What can we do if our time is limited? What are the exit strategies, when the timeframe of the project is ended? What is the role of documentation, communication and fieldwork from the perspective of a designer? Is visualisation a possible starting point for imagining different worlds and futures? Starting from three different cases from art, cinema and theatre, this chapter discusses some fundamental aspects in the practice of designers working for inclusion and social innovation. The three cases are: Healthy Village with Norman McLaren (China, 1949), Bind the Mountain by Maria Lai (Italy, 1981) and a contemporary experience in Portugal of Teatro Forum from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Healthy Village shows us how communication and moving images can be a tool for actively engaging and involving communities. Bind the Mountain testifies the transformative power of poetry. Finally, the representations of the Theatre of the Oppressed tell us how a community can make its own stories, understand and represent real-life situations and be actively involved to change their lives.