Leigh Payne is one of four Interns that Christine Carlton, Liz Locksley and Lindy Mitchell-Nilsson have been working with to re-imagine the Sydney International Storytelling Conference as a digital event in 2021.
The Storytelling Guild has been engaging students from the University of Technology Sydney through their Internship program.
“As a Bachelor of Global Studies student majoring in Business at UTS, initially, I had little to no idea about the wondrous world of storytelling and what it entailed. My first-day meeting with the Storytelling team and the UTS interns was a delightful experience where we spent hours together in an induction session where we interns were welcomed with open arms on Zoom. This time that was spent together brainstorming and researching on our first day got us all incredibly excited about what the possibilities could be for reimagining the Storytelling conference for 2021.
As we discussed many possible event avenues both being in a digital and face-to-face format, we got to familiarise ourselves more with each other by engaging in ice-breaking activities. This allowed us to share small, interesting stories of our past experiences alongside using our spontaneous thinking skills to describe our feelings along the way with analogies and metaphors.
As Lindy had explained to me, “To tell a story, you have to face and overcome your fears, it means that you take your space, speak confidently, it's about allowing yourself to be seen and be heard.”
Throughout the internship experience, my own communication and interpersonal skills improved tremendously, allowing myself to break out of my reserved shell that I was so accustomed to. As the whole digital experience was new to us, week by week we experimented and pieced components together on what and how a digital event would look and feel like for attendees. In particular, some of the activities we engaged in were to present our own storytelling performance based on a folk-tale or a personal experience as well as to execute an elevator-pitch in aims to convince our mentor’s on the type of guests we wanted to consider inviting along to the digital conference.
Alongside this, the team engaged in extensive market research throughout the weeks into the types of personalities, careers, interests, skillset levels, and ages that would seek value within the art of storytelling, particularly on a digital platform. This allowed me to put my business studies major skills into work and gain new knowledge into new elements regarding the intricacies of event management. Additionally, we also took part in prototyping potential digital conference activities as part of our ‘experience design’ week as a means to study the effectiveness of what storytelling versed individuals would find engaging amongst a group setting to be featured in breakout rooms. These activities included harnessing our artistic skills with online drawing, playing brain jogging online quizzes, and having good old-fashioned storytelling team working activities.
Though we were not able to physically see each other throughout our time together due to the pandemic, I very much enjoyed my experience working with the Storytellers NSW team as well as the UTS interns. A metaphor to describe my experience with the guild was one like a road trip that filled us with good company and many thrilling pit-stop experiences along the way that I will never forget.”