# Story Capture

*Authors: [Allan Owens described by Anne Pässilä](https://www.linkedin.com/in/annepassila/)*
Attribution: Owens, A.(2019) Story Capture. In Raguel Benmerqui, Allan Owens & Anne Pässilä (eds.) Beyond Text – arts-based methods in research, assessment and evaluation, p. 71-78. https://beyondtext.weebly.com/

Summary
---
**Art-form**^1^: Performing art and specific form of a storytelling and Playback theatre (Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas, 1975)
Story capture is a technique that can be applied to capturing the highlights from focus group or participatory design sessions and turning them into a narrative that is performed back to the group, to support reflection and prompt further discussion. It has its roots in design thinking and playback theatre. Origin of this method is in Playback theater.
http://www.playbacktheatre.org/

*Story Capture*

**Requirements**
* Time: 1 hour - several days
* Difficulty^2^: 5 stars, requires good listening and storytelling skills as well as dramaturgical understanding of applying playback theater into an inquiry context
* What you'll need: storyteller whom is focused on listening and documenting conversation for example in ideation or group work context
* Participants: Adults

Description
---

**Steps**
1. Framing – focus is on reflection
2. Contract
3. During session storyteller is radically listening what is being said and how and by whom
4. Storytelller makes notes to capture speech and sensing feelings
5. During a session (for example ideation session) storyteller highlights words and phrases through two lenses: a) as in the first stage of analysis and interpretation b) dranaturgically organising it to a for of story form
6. Storyteller turns the highlights (including each participants point of views) into narrative
7. Storyteller plays back what have heard to participants including music and performative elements to it.

**Which stage to use it in**
* Any stage where reflection space is needed

**Why it is useful**
This creates an appriciative space for participants perspectives, it invites each participants voices. It catches ideas in a rich and detailed way. The emphaisi in this method is oral storytelling but this can also be take the form of visualised storyboard, digital storytelling or animation.

**How to document**
Instant camera or digital camera & printer to document each Future Still Images

**Analysis**
Content analysis and Delphi method

*Footnotes*

^1^ Categories are based on Sara Coemans and Karin Hannes. 2017. Researchers under the spell of the arts: Two decades of using arts-based methods in community-based inquiry with vulnerable populations. Educational Research Review 22 (2017), 34–49.
^2^ 1-5 stars, I star being easy to facilitate and do not require deep artistic skills and 5 stars requiring deep level artistic skills.

###### tags: `art-based methods guide` `book` `method`