The fellow formed story groups with migrants in South Africa in partnership with Adonis Musati Project. Each story group produced 24 multi-media stories. The project used the research process to create new opportunities for dialogue through a ‘Story salon’ held in Cape Town, South Africa, in conjunction with World Refugee Day in June 2019, and a dialogue event held between storytelling groups in April 2019. These events were attended by over 600 people, including media and government officials. On the basis of these research activities, the fellow has submitted three peer-reviewed publications in high-quality publications.
The fellow used collaboration with scholars from other disciplines to develop the interdisciplinary nature of the research. This included the establishment of and participation in a reading and discussion group with psychologists, sociologists and political theorists on narratives and the development of funding proposals with scholars from these disciplines.
The fellow received mentoring and support to complete three large-scale funding proposals, totalling over GBP 4 million. The development of these funding proposals has enhanced the fellow’s capacity to lead a major research programme.
The project increased the credibility of the storytelling methodology with academic audiences by presenting the methodology at key conferences and other academic events and through publications.
The project increased the uptake of the methodology with practitioner/policy audiences through delivering webinars on using the methodology for the Institute of Voluntary Action Research, UK and Instituto Juconi, Mexico. These reached a practitioner audience with over 4000 views. In 2019, the fellow presented results of research and the methodological approach at formative workshop for the design of the Victoria Forum 2020, chaired by Lord Alderice at the Canadian High Commission. This presentation significantly informed the design of the Forum.
The project launched online versions of stories generated through research by adding a new section to Adonis Musati’s website to focus on storytelling (
https://www.adonismusatiproject.org/storytelling(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)).
The fellow expanded her blogging profile on storytelling by launching a new blog on Medium.com (open access version), and posted 9 blogs (www.medium.com/joanna_wheeler). _She also posted on a high profile blog, DiscoverSociety (
https://discoversociety.org/2020/04/01/being-young-in-an-uncaring-city-the-personal-and-the-political-in-the-lives-of-south-africas-urban-young-people/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)). The blogs achieved over 3000 unique views and reads.
The fellow developed supplementary visual products and communication tools from creative products of research process. These were distributed via regular posts via the fellow’s Twitter account about research results and Adonis Musati’s social media accounts. This targeted a general public audience, achieving over 100,000 unique impressions across social media channels.
The fellow engaged policy makers with findings of research through a policy briefing (
https://researchoutreach.org/articles/storytelling-across-social-divides/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)). It achieved 47,000 unique views, with the print copy distributed to over 200,000 subscribers including policy makers and other practitioners globally.
