The Common Ground Dialogues (CGD) project addresses deeply dividing issues in our societies through storytelling as an artistic practice.
This research is part of the Co-Creation for Inclusive Knowledges Lab
During ten participatory events called Storytelling Circles (STCs) taking place in 2023 through 2024, the CGD methodology is researched and refined. We start out with the assumption that these circles have a depolarizing effect by bringing together participants from different socio-economic and political backgrounds in order to address highly polarizing issues through playful and artistic ways that can provoke empathy.
CGD is a collaboration between researchers on diversity and polarization on the one hand, and artists, storytellers, theatre makers on the other. The research aims at creating deeper understandings of this artistic method, and at evaluating its role and impact in fostering dialogue. During the workshops, participants share stories linked to their personal experiences and identities, while also creating a fictional story together, in which real-world problems are explored through the metaphorical world of fiction.
Arts-based practices like the CGD Methodology, in which participants collectively search for new common languages beyond current social and political horizons, offer promising ways through which contentious topics might be dealt with more constructively.
During the Storytelling Circles, Timo Korstenbroek and Lise Woensdregt are present as researchers to observe and they actively contribute to the development process in order to improve the CGD methodology and its potential to reframe (public) dialogue.
The project is funded by the European Commission’s Creative Europe programme and runs from 2023 until the end of 2025.
Link to project: https://cgd.spaceexplorers.nl/