Inside Story: An Arts-Based Exploration of the Creative Process of the Storyteller as Leader

Abstract

Storytelling is one of humanity's oldest art forms and an enduring educational method.Stories can spark social change.Although storytelling is tacitly recognized in diverse social science domains as a communication medium used to powerfully transmit leadership vision and ideas, little empirical research has been reported about how a teller constructs and tells a story.Through qualitative, arts-based methods, this heuristic study examines and describes the lived experience of a storyteller composing and performing a tale on issues of peace, justice, and social change.It reflects on the teller as leader and identifies a palette of arts-based skills for change leaders.As a professional storyteller, I phenomenologically explored the essence, or nature, of a storyteller's creative process by creating a storytelling work.The storytelling work I composed as a research vehicle is based on a travel diary written during a time of war in Israel in July, 2006.Utilizing art making as an inquiry method, I mindfully became an embodied research environment during this study.I gathered emic, or insider, information about the imaginal world of a storyteller.Through a literary, autoethnographic writing process, I observed, described, interpreted, and named the steps in my creative process as I designed, rehearsed, and performed an original storytelling work.The work interweaves personal memoir, history, folklore, and

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