Using Story Xperiential Outside a School Setting
"Sometimes it’s worth acting on our passing thoughts. We never know what will happen until we take that step forward." - Glen Morash, Detective (Staff) Sergeant, Peel Regional Police
EVER MAKE A PASSING THOUGHT COME TO LIFE?
It happened to me. I watched my teenage daughter take an early version of the Story Xperiential online program at home, one year. As a police officer with Canada’s third largest municipal police service, I thought ‘This would be a great outreach program for teens in the community I work in’. With a regional population of about 1.5 million and over 50% identifying as immigrants, the diversity of the region is amazingly global. What better way to bring people together than through a shared love for stories and drawing/animation.
Breaking down the content of the Story Xperiential course, I saw that it provided youth with an outlet to express emotions and life experiences constructively and creatively. Teens would learn industry leading concepts. They would learn how to receive and provide constructive feedback. They would learn time management, problem solving, communication and networking skills, while developing executive functioning traits in the pursuit of something they enjoyed.
Long story short, no one disagreed. (Yikes - What did I get myself into?)
STEPPING INTO THE THOUGHT
My first step into making thought a reality was to see if this concept could work for a police service, so I reached out to Story Xperiential. They had schools using their program, but could a police service use this as an in-person community outreach and what would be different? Thankfully, The Story Xperiential Team was all in. Working with a police service was new to them, but they had many of the answers to get me started (Thank you once again, Story Xperiential Team!).
First day orientation and getting straight into it
I got a resounding yes from my police service. With internal approval quickly obtained, I moved to securing a critically important and amazing community partner who would be our funding sponsor - ProAction Cops & Kids (They were amazingly supportive!). From there what followed included: recruiting an incredible team of volunteer officers and cadets. We had four or more spectacular volunteers each week to ensure we'd be able to offer enough teen interaction and support. Then we needed a place to host that would be welcoming and meet our needs for the program. A community room was reserved at our training center for two and a half hours once a week for nine weeks. This duration was chosen based on a consideration of a thirty-minute discussion/feedback session for the prior week's work, one hour of new Story Xperiential industry knowledge sharing videos and discussions, and then an hour to work on concepts with the volunteer supporters. With this structure in place, we then reached out to community partners to find teens who would benefit the most from such a program, and started using social media to begin advertising for program registration (Plan for this – it takes more time than you think).
FIVE MONTHS LATER …
From idea to first class, it was about five months later. All twenty four spots had been spoken for and I was standing in front a class of teens, aged 13 to18, facilitating the first Story Xperiential class of a nine week program.
Going from Hello World and What If to plotting out Story Spine and the First Act
NINE WEEKS …
Over the next nine weeks, we followed the program guides and lesson plans provided by Story Xperiential. We conveyed the weekly content and allowed the students time to work on their Story Xperiential concepts and expert deliverables. The students appreciated the time in class to work on the new information as they learned it. The time in class allowed volunteer officers time to talk with each student and be a sounding board for their story and character development ideas.
Learning and sketching!
My main recommendation coming from the nine weeks – always have a Plan B.
For example, in week two, the internet went down before class even started. So we had to pivot instantly. Thankfully, I had printed the Story Xperiential lesson plans during pre-class prep and I don’t think the students noticed the format change as we were pencil and paper based outside of the video content.
CELEBRATING THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS
We wanted to model the Story Xperiential online course and thought having our own exhibition would be a fun way to end the sessions, acknowledge what the teens achieved and prepare them for submitting to the Story Xperiential Exhibition as well. Delivering an in-person version of the Story Xperiential program, we planned our own mini exhibition night, in week nine. Students with completed storyboards submitted their work for anonymous peer voting, with one ultimately being recognized as Best Storyreel for the class.
Deputy Chief Mark Dapat for Community Safety & Wellbeing presented I-Jah Artwell with her Best Storyreel certificate from Peel Police's ‘Create Your Story’ program with Story Xperiential.
As part of the exhibition, we showcased the work all of the teens had accomplished over the past eight weeks, by editing their early weeks uploads of drawings together with a few class photos taken during sessions into a short video reel. We decked out the class with celebration-themed decorations, to set the night apart from past weeks, prepared certificates for the students and had celebration snacks, lots of pizza and cakes! It was a memorable evening for many and we are so proud of the work they did.
Exhibition and Celebrations with the teens of the "Create Your Story" program
SO THAT DID HAPPEN … BUT WOULD I DO IT AGAIN?
Not only I would do it again, but the entire team of volunteers would. Additionally, based on our exit survey, all students recommended we run the program again! From the student reviews, we facilitated a “chill” environment with relaxing music (PIXAR soundtracks from YouTube) playing during creative/drawing time. We created a place where teens shared with like-minded peers, had a dedicated two and a half hours a week to work on their passion (no home or school related interruptions or pressures). Teens learned exclusive information, tips and tricks from experts who have worked for companies such as PIXAR, DISNEY, NETFLIX and more. They also enjoyed the weekly snacks provided (Snacks are a separate topic altogether – but highly recommended).
The teens had access to the Story Xperiential website content not just for the nine weeks, but for a year, so the opportunity for them to continue learning or revisit concepts remained after the program ended. We watched teens make friendships, gain confidence and grow in knowledge and skill sets. We created moments and made positive contacts with teens and parents of the community.
Glen Morash, volunteers and the community teens who participated in Story Xperiential
The below quotes from a couple of our students summarize the outreach program effects succinctly:
“This program taught me how to … storyboard properly, and so I can basically do this whenever I want now.”
“I like storytelling… and I really, really like how this program helped bring out that side of me. It helped organize everything clearer because I always think of ideas, but I don’t know how to organize them so I actually work on the idea, and this helped with that.”
"It's actually pretty fun. I got to draw and create stories at the same time. [Story Xperiential] showed us what you have to do, like step-by-step, and you go through it and figure it out slowly."