Chair in Storytelling Education for Sustainability at Loughborough University, led by Professor Michael Wilson

Storytelling is a fundamental human activity common to all cultures. It has evolved as a tool for the communication of ideas, building of identities, forging of trustful, empathic relationships with each other and our environment, and it enables sense- making, meaning-making and problem-solving, helping us navigate through complexity and uncertainty, allowing equitable access to public discourse and facilitating the inclusion of underheard voices.

Storytelling works most effectively alongside other disciplines and knowledge systems to build bridges across diverse sets of interests and cultures. It can act as a cultural bond in contexts where collective effort and sense of purpose are required.

This Chair will harness the unique power and potential of storytelling to address the SDGs and promote peace and justice through meaningful and effective intercultural dialogue.

The work of this Chair

The Chair’s programme is built around three core strands: transdisciplinary research; training and education; advocacy. It will conduct research to produce new knowledge about, and contexts for, applied storytelling, in collaboration with researchers from across the disciplinary spectrum, alongside non-academic stakeholders from major NGOs to community-level organisations.

It will deliver education and training programmes in collaboration with universities, schools and non-formal education partners to build skills and capacity in the use of storytelling for sustainability. In particular it will develop a ‘train-the-trainers’ model to facilitate large scale expansion of capacity building. Through public lectures, conferences, participation at intergovernmental conventions and engagement with the existing UNESCO Chairs and other UN structures, the Chair will advocate for the benefits of using applied storytelling to promote sustainability, public engagement and democratic inclusion and build a new network to support this.

The work of the Chair will be focussed in, but not limited to, three areas with the following thematic priorities:

1. India – mental health; indigenous knowledge; education equality
2. Africa (Kenya, South Africa, Ghana) – sustainable living, including safe and resilient places to live and work; climate change; public health
3. Arctic Nations – climate change resilience, adaptation and sustainability education.

Further information on the work of this Chair

About the Chair Lead

Michael Wilson is Professor of Drama in the School of Design and Creative Arts at Loughborough University and Director of the Storytelling Academy, a research team in Applied Storytelling.

His main scholarly interests lie broadly within the field of popular and vernacular performance and over the past two decades he has conducted more than twenty collaborative and transdisciplinary RCUK/UKRI cross-council and European Commission projects around the world that explore the application of storytelling to a variety of social and policy contexts, especially around environmental policy, health, education and social justice.

During his career Professor Wilson has filled various university senior management roles and has sat on a range of panels and advisory boards for UKRI and the British Council.

Further information on this Chair Lead