Building Echoes. The Role of Storytelling in Museums and Galleries.

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MA Museums and Galleries in Education.
Building Echoes. The role of Storytelling in Museums and Galleries.

Building Echoes.
The Role of Storytelling in Museums and Galleries.
Maria del Carmen Villaseñor Ferrer.

Supported by the Programme Alban,
the European Union Programme of High Level Scholarships for Latin America,
scholarship no. E06M10652MX.
2007.
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Abstract.
Abstract.
L
anguage is part of human existence; communication and transmision of experiences are a key
part of culture; oral tradition is heritage. In this document I intend to underline the relevance
of storytelling in contemporary debate and especially in museums and galleries. This exploration addresses
issues of storytelling in modern paradigms and theories developed in museums.
Museums and galleries understand learning as constant construction where individuals use their personal
backgrounds and experiences to articulate new experiences. I want to explore why and how storytelling fits
in this paradigm and helps museums and galleries to achieve the goal of delivering relevant and multisensorial
learning experiences to their visitors.
I also analyse the telling of Boudica’s story at the Museum of London, in light of the theoretical issues, to
exemplify one way to use storytelling in museums.

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Abstract. 02
Content.
Content. 03
Introduction. 05
Chapter 1 What is Storytelling? 08
Chapter 2 Storytelling and Contemporary Issues. 14
Storytelling and Postmodernism. 15
Fiction or Facts. 18
Storytelling and Identity. 23
Storytelling and Learning. 26
Chapter 3 Storytelling in Museums and Galleries. 32
Interpretation. 34
Active Learning. 37
Collaborative Learning. 39
Storytelling in the Constructivist Museum and in the Postmodern Paradigm. 40
Access. 42
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Active Audiences. 42
Content.
Democratization. 43
Context. 44
Interactivity. 45
Fiction or Fact in Museums’ or Galleries’ Storytelling. 46
Storytelling in Three Different Contexts. 48
Storytelling within Historical and Ethnographic Collections. 48
Storytelling within Art Collections. 49
Storytelling in Science Centres. 50
Chapter 4 Boudica’s Story at the Museum of London. 51
Chapter 5 Conclusions and Considerations. 57
Bibliography. 62
Appendix. 67
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Introduction.
Introduction.
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Upon waking, the dinosaur was still there.
Introduction.
Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.
Augusto Monterroso.
I
wanted to start this exploration with the story defined as the shortest for many years, to
exemplify the power of this kind of narrative. A story can tell us what is happening in few
words, but at the same time it triggers our imagination to think of what happened before and what could
happen later. This small story above is open to many interpretations, and just like this one, all stories trigger
imagination, interpretations and meaning-making.
Stories in museums and galleries can help to open multiple interpretations and to reflect on contemporary
issues. Furthermore, they aid us in understanding the present as the result of our past, as complex as it is,
and set the best conditions for our future to be as we imagine it.
In the first chapter of this dissertation, I aim to understand and define the concept of storytelling as part of
oral tradition, as a communication process and as an expression of experiences. Within the second chapter,
I discuss storytelling and its relation to some contemporary issues and theories - such as postmodernism,
identity and learning - to explore how appropriate it is to reflect on these issues through stories and
narratives.
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The third chapter is an exploration of why storytelling is an effective interpretative tool within different
Introduction.
kinds of museums and galleries. It also covers how storytelling contributes to fulfilling some of the
characteristics of an inclusive museum.
Finally, I use Boudica’s story as told in the Museum of London and analyse it in light of the previous
research. I use it to exemplify how a storytelling session can be an educative experience for a wide range of
audiences, if complemented by other interpretative resources in museums and galleries.
Before I start, I want to reflect on the following: storytelling can be not only an interpretation tool in
museums and galleries. Some stories are part of the oral tradition of cultures, which at the same time is part
of the intangible heritage of peoples. In this sense, stories can also be thought of as part of the collections
of museums and galleries.

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What is story telling?
Chapter 1
What is storytelling?
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O
ral tradition accompanied the development of cultures before the written word. It was the

means by which humans explained the surrounding world (Pellowski, 1977:10), the objects,
natural phenomena, the encounter with others, and the ‘real world’. It was also used as entertainment,
through stories of heroes, gods, the origin of things, and all kinds of experiences. It was the way in which
humankind ensured cultural reproduction – the rules of social behaviour, taboos, laws, and so on.
The best known quality of oral tradition is its function to preserve the history of people - their origins,
their struggles, how they settled, why they were farmers or fishermen or hunters, and so on. In other words,
it helps in constructing or providing continuity to a sense of identity. These stories could recount real or
fictional events, and most likely became a mixture of both as they were told and retold through the years
and centuries.
Stories that can be told and retold in different contexts - anecdotes, urban myths (Society for Storytelling),
personal experiences, historical accounts, family histories, justification of actions (Moita-Lopes, 2006: 34)
- constitute our current oral tradition, even if we think that we are far away from those days when people
gathered together around the fire to hear the elders tell the stories.
Storytelling is one type of narrative which is, according to Michael Wilson (1997), ‘a series of linked ideas
placed within a structure for the purpose of communicating an idea or series of ideas to another individual
or group of individuals’ (7). Storytelling is therefore a narrative that communicates experiences in an oral
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form. This definition may sound simple, but let us consider the complexity of the two main concepts that

shape it: communication and experience.
Communication is a ‘cultural process of negotiation of meaning, which produces reality through symbolic
systems such as texts, objects, artworks, maps, models and museums.’ (Hooper-Greenhill, 1999: 16) In
other words, the participants in a communication process have their own backgrounds, expectations,
experiences, beliefs, interpretive strategies and interpretive frameworks (Ibid.) that will come into play in the
process of meaning-making.
Reception analysis theory details and analyses the active role of audiences (especially in television viewers)
and the negotiation between the proposed message and the different ‘readings’ that audiences can make.
The author is not the only one to construct the text; it also depends on how the readers articulate the idea
in their own mind according to their previous experiences and personal background. Guillermo Orozco
defines six stages or degrees of involvement in the process of reception: attention, comprehension,
selection, evaluation, storing and incorporation with previous information, and appropriation and
meaning-making (in Corominas 2006: 3)1.
On the other hand, experiences are ‘distinguishable, isolable sequences of external events and internal
responses to them’ (Turner and Bruner, 1986: 35). For some theorists, such as Dilthey, ‘the reality only
1
My translation.
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exists for us in the facts of consciousness given by inner experiences’ (in Ibid: 4). In other words, according

some theories experiences are the only way we can approach the ‘real world’ and, at the same time, experiences
modify reality:
An experience is more personal as it refers to an active self, to a human being who not only engages
in but shapes an action. (…) Which includes not only actions and feelings but also reflections about
those actions and feelings. (Ibid.: 5).
These experiences we have everyday - some more significant than others - are the ones that we bring into
the processes of communication in which we become involved in our daily lives.
Storytelling as the communication of an experience is simultaneously the expression of an experience and
an experience in itself. Like every process of communication, storytelling is a cultural product which also
produces and reproduces culture; it can therefore also transform it. The recounting of every experience is
framed within a specific time and a specific social context, and tells us about a series of events that happened
in a specific time and social context. With storytelling, we can approach others’ experiences and how they
deal with them.
The way we narrate the events around us and, therefore, historicise social life is a powerful modus ope-
randi in the mediation process of making sense of ourselves and of others. (Moita-Lopes, 2006: 33).
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Storytelling is about oral communication:

The nature of the triad – story/storyteller/audience – means that oral storytelling cannot produce
a material product. Books and recordings can be no more than secondary offshoots of this sort of
storytelling: playing invaluable archiving roles. (Johnsson, 2006:5).
Storytelling implies the necessity of a face-to-face experience which, according to Giddens, is the form of
communication that specially triggers social dynamics (in Corominas, 2006: 5). Storytelling as an expression
of an experience (bearing in the mind that we experience the world in direct or indirect ways), is not the
same as the actual experience or as reality. There is always a gap between the actual experience and the
expression of it. Edward Bruner in his introduction to Anthropology of Experience (1986) distinguishes these
three concepts: reality as ‘what is really out there’, experience as ‘how reality presents itself to consciousness’,
and expression as ‘how experience is framed and articulated’ (5).
Similar to these three concepts, Craig Eilert Abrahamson (1998) distinguishes an event, one’s place in the
world and what occurs; experience, how the events are sensed; meaning, assigned by each person to the
experiences; and adds a fourth element to approach reality: text, the meaning brought to a form of
communication. (2)
We can never know completely another’s experiences (…) others may be willing to share their experiences,
but everyone censors or represses, or may not be fully aware of or able to articulate, certain aspects of
what has been experienced. (Turner and Bruner, 1986: 5).

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The form in which we can approach the experience is the expression, in other words the symbolic

manifestation of an experience (Ibid.:6). This embeds storytelling in a series of signs, meanings, and
cultural references that the audiences negotiate to create their own experiences.
Storytelling is action and social interaction (Wilson, 1997: 25); this means it is transformative as means of
communication, ‘(…) because it is through the creation and recreation of narratives that we give meaning
to our own experiences, hopes, fears, desires and expectations’ (Ibid: 25). Storytelling allows us to
experience other cultures and ‘re-experience our own culture’s heritage’ (Turner and Bruner, 1986: 7).
In summary, storytelling is - as many authors agree - an artistic expression, which recounts experiences and
at the same time is an experience for the storyteller and the listener. Both storytellers and listeners broaden
their understanding of the world and, as they retell the story over and over again, it will never be the same.
This succession can be understood as a spiral that appears to return to the starting point, but if we analyse
it carefully we may notice that it is always richer.

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Storytelling and contemporary issues.
Chapter 2
Storytelling and Contemporary Issues.
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Storytelling and Postmodernism.

D
espite Walter Benjamin’s (1973) explanation that the death of storytelling is due to the growing
importance of novels and the dehumanised recounting of news, postmodernism opens the
possibility to re-engage with storytelling. It is true that storytelling has been relegated to a children’s activity
but it is also true that such an important tradition and an important mode of communication cannot just
disappear; as with every human expression, it has changed in so many ways that sometimes it is difficult to
distinguish it in contemporary society.
Michel Wilson (1997) carried out research to find the stories that constitute the oral tradition of teenagers in
Britain and Ireland and points out how storytelling is still a means of communicating among these groups.
As with children and teenagers, people of all ages like to share their experiences with others and storytelling
is one of the most common ways people can achieve that.
The cultural turn and postmodernism, and the consequent theories like postcolonialism, postindustrialism
and feminism, allowed the entry of a broader range of voices and stories into social sciences. One of the
main characteristics of these paradigms is the questioning of metanarratives that sanctioned the production
of knowledge. That is how ‘poststructural criticism is concerned with the problems posed by metanarratives
- stories that purport to describe, explain or provide a foundation for other stories’ (Gough, 1993: 614).
The feminist theory seeks for a history that also speaks about women. Postcolonial studies started to talk
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about listening to more voices, recounting the testimony of the colonies. Authority of Western Culture

was doubted, and postcolonialism tries to confront ‘unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation’
(Quayson, 2000: 140).
Within the communication theories, passive reception was no longer valid, and active subjects replace the
former concept. These theories recognised the agency of audiences, along with the recognition that audiences’
responses were not simply reactions to stimulus in the communicational process (Orozco, n.d: n.p).
Postmodernism is a matter of representation of how we represent history, and therefore opens the way
to re-engage with oral tradition and storytelling, since it underlines the importance of cultural expressions
‘using narrative and allegorical forms’ (Harris, 1996: 175). It draws attention to the processes of interpretation
and the subjectivity involved in such processes. There is no space for one truth; multiple opinions and
perceptions are welcome to understand and represent reality.
In the context of postmodernism, storytelling has many ways to contribute to the production of knowl-
edge. It helps to retell the stories of history from different perspectives and include in them the social ac-
tors that were left behind, but further than that, it can reach a considerable amount of individuals and at the
same time is an opportunity to reflect on those actors or those stories that were left behind. Jackson (1993)
exemplifies this use of storytelling to demythologise history at the Plimouth Plantation in a reconstruction
of a pilgrim settlement in Massachusetts (30).

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Storytelling grows in importance in the context of a postmodern society that needs as many ways as

possible to communicate and express its ideas, feelings and thoughts. It is an important tool to echo diverse
voices of different people in the world and as it is culturally constructed, it not only talks about a culture’
s specific traditions, beliefs, or experiences, it also tells listeners how different groups articulate their own
experiences.
We are also living a re-appropriation of traditions, myths, and traditional stories from indigenous or aboriginal
communities, and we are both learning that knowledge can be transmitted as narratives, and rediscovering
the knowledge in those narratives. As scientific knowledge also has been criticised by postmodernism,
other ways of grasping reality and communicating it have been revalued.
Regarding science and science education, postmodern visions have stressed the fact that by speaking their
own language, the sciences have driven away non-specialist readers. Many educators speak of the
re-enchantment of the sciences, where scientists use narrative discourses to broaden their contact with
society. Objectivity is, in the context of postmodern thoughts, no longer the goal; multiple possibilities and
answers are what we are seeking.
The convergence of postmodern scientific and critical discourses creates a promising site for generating
the kind of ‘new normative matrix for the conception and production of the world’ referred to by Fry
and Willis (1989), a conception of being-in-the-world which accepts that there is no ‘outside’ from
which to speak or act. (Gough, 1993: 621).

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In summary, storytelling can revive and grow in importance to the extent that in postmodernism:

a) Narrative forms are reaching multiple disciplines, including natural sciences and mathematics, which
are attempting to become more socially responsible.
b) Objectivity and metanarratives have a reduced importance allowing multiple interpretations to take
place and coexist.
c) Subjectivity, understood as the construction of the self based on language, has grown in importance.
Therefore intersubjectivity as the consensus of meaning can be reached in dialogical relations.
d) A story is never told the same way twice. Listeners can become tellers who will then tell their own
interpretations. Even the same teller cannot tell the same story twice. It becomes one more way to
interpret the reality.
e) It helps us rescue forgotten stories that were told a long time ago.
f) It can help us to humanise processes, sciences and history that during modernity seemed to have lost
their human characteristics.
Fiction or Facts.
Within the context of a postmodern theory that emphasises the critique of the search of truths, generalisations,
and universal laws, the reflection of fiction and facts in narrative - especially in storytelling in the context
of education - arises as a main discussion.

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During modernism, the emphasis was to privilege empirical knowledge and rationalist thinking. That is why

we have learned to separate the fiction from the facts as different and mutually exclusive terms. Structuralism
proposed the use of dichotomies to explain social reality. One of the dichotomies that exemplify the
relation between fiction and facts is: arts – sciences. It has been thought that it is the ethos of science to seek
for objective, repeatable truths. Arts, on the other hand, received the task of the pleasure of the aesthetic
experiences allowing them to use a language of imagination, and granting them poetic licences. Nothing
could be less true, however.
Both science and art during the nineteenth century consolidated their roles and their separation from
society. They developed a language that was almost only comprehensible to their interpretative communities.
The next two quotations illustrate this statement:
Modern science was constructed on empiricist and experimentalist assumptions. By the middle of the
19th century it had come to be typified by Newtonian physics and (…) was materialistic, deterministic,
atomistic and reductionist. Scientists and educators alike assumed that science was chiefly a matter of
patiently seeking the ‘facts’ of nature and reporting them ‘objectively’. (Gough, 1993: 613).
The belief that art must resist comprehension or interpretation can be traced in part to the insular ‘art
for art’s sake’ aestheticism that exerted such a powerful influence during the late nineteenth century.
(…) For painters such as Rothko, Reindart, and Newman, any attempt to produce easily intelligible
work represented an unforgivable surrender of artistic integrity to forces of cultural and political
conformity.(Kester, 2004: 25).

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As Mark Currie (2004) explains, the use of dichotomies or oppositions proposed by the structuralism tends

to oversimplify the reality and to mark a hierarchy over the concepts (17). In the case of the dyad of arts
– sciences, we know that art is reflective about the reality as a complex whole which seeks to ‘sensitise the
viewer’ about the ‘illusory nature’ of our representational systems (Kester, 2004: 20). It seeks to explain
experiences as well as the sciences, and sometimes artists use scientific findings to create aesthetic and
reflective experiences. Meanwhile, scientists sometimes have to start their hypothesis by thinking in an
imaginative way and defying previous truths (from the scientific community or from common perceptions
full of prejudices); they may start thinking in a way that could not sound possible, and using some poetic
license to start with.
Pure theory in economics is similar to the literary genre of fantasy. Like fantasy it violates the rules
of reality for the convenience of the tale, and amazing results become commonplace in a world of
hypothesis. (…) Pure theory confronts reality by disputing whether this or that assumption drives
the result, and whether the assumption is realistic. (…) Is it the talking animals or the flying carpets,
both of which are unrealistic, that makes The Arabian Nights on the whole unrealistic? (McCloskey,
1990: 17).
In the same way, narrative cannot be entirely separated into fiction and fact. Jerome Bruner (1986)
distinguishes two ways of thinking: arguments and stories. He explains that the arguments persuade with
their truth and ‘appeal to procedures for establishing formal and empirical proof ’. Meanwhile, stories
convince with their ‘lifelikeness’ and ‘verisimilitude’ (11). Certainly, there is a distinction between scientific
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discourses and stories, but an engaging text that aims to explain or convince someone needs to have a

balance between validity, reliability, and ‘gripping drama‘. McCloskey explains that economists and storytellers
are related in more than one way: both try to explain the reality by engaging their audiences with their
topics. ‘What distinguishes the good storyteller and the good scientific thinker from the bad is a sense of
pointedness’ (McCloskey, 1990: 19).
Specifically in the examination of narrative and storytelling, Gough (1993) analyses the ‘longing for one
true story’ (609) that determines the exclusion of fiction in science educational narratives to search for the
objective description of reality. The author distinguishes fact and fiction where the former is ‘that which
actually happened’ while the latter refers to ‘something fashioned by a human agent’ (Ibid.). With the rise
of postmodernism and postmodern sciences, this dichotomy stretched its boundaries. Science became one
of many possible interpretations of reality and inside the scientific community every theory became one of
many possible perceptions and explanations of reality.
‘Science’ and ‘fiction’ do not exist in separate domains but are culturally interconnected. This is not
simply a matter of science and literature finding common meeting places in science fiction and other
forms of expressive art. (…) As Hayles (1984) demonstrates, ‘literature is as much an influence on
scientific models as the models are on literature’, in so far as there is a two-way traffic in metaphors,
analogies and images between them. (Gough, 1993: 614).
This leads us to understand storytelling in an educative context as a constant negotiation of these boundaries.
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Stories are not necessarily pure fact or fiction, they are set in a continuum where, depending on the context,

they can resort to fictional or factual elements as needed and in order to reach the educative objectives of
that specific experience.
Told in a story, facts are easy to remember, while fictional elements help us to open our minds to multiple
possibilities. This mixture of both helps the storyteller to keep the audiences’ attention by trying to distinguish
what is real, what is possible and what is not.
Various authors (Harré, 1990; McCloskey, 1990; Gough, 1993; Hadzigeorgiou, 2006) discuss how storytelling
is related to the spreading of the sciences, and how scientists are storytellers themselves.
Fiction and facts cannot be mutually exclusive, either in narratives, in sciences or in social sciences. They
are all different ways to interpret experiences with different methodologies and one objective in common
- to explain and seize the reality.

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Storytelling and Identity.

A
s mentioned in the first chapter, storytelling helps to produce and reproduce culture. It is an
effective tool in creating an environment of identity. It tells us who we are, where we come
from, and how we were constituted as a group, among other things. Storytelling as a narration of our
history and myths, also helps us to understand our ethos, what we want to become. It ‘creates a sense of
togetherness’ (Abrahamson, 1998: 9).
Groups of people gather around fire, listening as the storyteller shares tales, which instruct, heal,
entertain and mystify. The listeners and the storyteller participate in an experience, which connects
them to their family, tribe and nation, through past and present, towards the future. (Gersie and King,
1990: 22).
Identity is a continuous process which is always in construction within a group and which also has to be
reaffirmed permanently. This occurs because, according to Bradley (in Moita-Lopes, 2006: p. 33) ‘people
who are identified with a particular social identity do not subjectively share a common essence in terms of
having ‘common characteristics, experiences and interests’.
Storytelling as a meaning-making action aids the members of a community in finding the things they have
in common. It constructs identity. When people listen to a story they can find out what things they share:
history, beliefs, traditions, and daily actions. That makes individuals and groups reflect on their own culture
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and their role within it. When people tell a story, they have to make it intelligible to their listeners, by means

of using a common language (words and gestures), common references, and all the norms, values and
knowledge that we can call common sense.
Structurally, narratives portray people as characters involved in an event, i.e., a plot, which is developed
over time. However, this structure is manifested in different narrative types (folktales, explanations,
justification of action, ads, fables, news reports, etc.) in oral or written texts. (…) If we study the
actual situations in which narratives are used, we will see that they prescribe a particular mode of ac-
tion defined by a specific cultural canon. (Ibid: 34).
Furthermore, in constructing identity, storytelling invites the ‘audience to discover a subtext’ (Bauman in
Wilson, 1997: 28). Contained in the story, there is explicitly or implicitly a message that tells the audience
what is allowed and what is not in a culture, the patterns of behaviour, ethics within that specific culture,
and so on.
It contains, openly or covertly something useful. The usefulness may in one case, consist in a moral; in
other, in some practical advice; in a third, in a proverb or maxim. In every case the storyteller is a man
who has counsel for his readers. (Benjamin, 1973: 85).
So far we have emphasized the function of storytelling in the knowledge of our own culture. Nonetheless,
an important way to understand our identity is also through the encounter with others. Identity is also
constructed by knowing who we are not. Marc Augé (1996) explains that the pair identity – alterity is a
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continuous dialectic. In the words of Sara Cone, ‘the average man or woman has little opportunity actually

to live more than one kind of life’ (1996: 37). Yet in storytelling, even people who have limited contact with
multiculturalism can listen to the stories of others.
Thus, during the recounting of others’ stories, audiences can imagine and open their minds to different
ways of living and thinking. Approaching other cosmovisions makes audiences reflect on their own culture
and other cultures. Furthermore, if we are telling our stories to others, we have to find out what we have in
common in order to talk about what we do not have.
In addition, just as storytelling can help us to understand our commonalities as a group, it can also help us
to know what differentiates the identity group from other cultures; it contextualises the others and helps
people understand how others act and why. As in the storytelling experience:
The listener is able to relate in a meaningful way to the teller’s point of context by working through
personal experiences that result in a more profound and lasting understanding than would have been
possible with a generalization’ (Abrahamson, 1998: 1).
This establishment of relations could lead to a greater understanding of otherness and to the construction
of better relations in multicultural environments.

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Storytelling and Learning.

T
hus far I have looked at the uses of storytelling in social life, and in social and historical
reproduction. In this section I want to examine storytelling as a tool for education and also
as a learning experience in itself.
Learning is possible in so far as people live challenging and organised experiences (Hein, 1998: 2). We have
already discussed the role of storytelling as an experience, but I want to point out the function of storytelling
specifically in learning experiences. As a starting point, Jerome Bruner (1986) explains that ‘language is our
most powerful tool for organising experience’ (8). He explains that language has a pragmatic use, among
other functions, that enables the possibility to ‘affect the actions of others toward oneself and toward
others’ (Ibid.: 125).
Based on this, storytelling is - in the first instance - discourse whose vehicle is language, and ‘language is the
privileged medium we make sense of things, in which meaning is produced and exchanged’ (Hall, 2003: 1).
Storytelling is an imaginative form of discourse, which guides the listener to a process of meaning-making
in the openness of an ‘imaginative state’ (Bruner, 1986; 25). An organised storytelling event attracts the
attention of the listeners to situate them in a state of ‘relaxed alertness’ that can lead to a successful learning
experience (Wake, 2004: 36). Storytelling as an effective learning experience can be achieved when comple-
mented with other quality elements; a good story that engages people, a good storyteller, clear objectives,
relevant content, and so on.

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Thus, storytelling in the function of a narrative is a way of organising and contextualising events or facts.

Learning is about understanding the world, and its basic essence in spite of the centuries, according to
Abrahamson (1998), is the comprehension of the past to contribute to and understand the coming events
(1). This comprehension can only be possible in a communicative practice, in its more complex sense.
Learning is a process of communication, where meanings are negotiated and where all individuals bring
their own backgrounds and experiences to make intelligible whatever it is aimed at; it is a ‘sharing of culture’
(Bruner, 1986: 127). Learning is thereby transformative, because it modifies all the social actors included
in that action.
As social theories of knowledge explain, language has a key role in socialising knowledge, where communi-
cation and interaction between social actors are essential to the learning process. Socialising experiences is
an effective tool to develop knowledge and skills. Storytelling is social interaction, especially if story listeners
are encouraged to participate in the activity.
Nevertheless, storytelling is not only about recounting historical events, as different authors agree that it can
help to understand other areas of human knowledge, such as sciences. Jerome Bruner (1986) explains that
scientific hypotheses ‘start their lives as little stories’ (12). Abrahamson (1998) points out that even learning
of natural sciences and disciplines such as mathematics can be supported by storytelling. Yannis Hadzigeorgiou
(2006) published a paper that explains how the teaching of physics could be humanised by storytelling.
Sometimes, understanding the experiences from where a mathematical or physical principle stems, or
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introducing learners to the curiosity that leads scientists to reach their findings, is useful to understand how

the scientific idea developed, illustrate the idea itself, and to develop curiosity in the listeners.
Also, other types of stories (fictional and real) can help us understand different types of experiences. We
have to understand that stories are expressions and will never fulfil the experience itself. Learning is ‘making
sense of one’s experiences’. (Carnell et al., 2004:36). Based on Dewey’s statement that not every experience
is educative, I would describe a learning experience using as a starting point Edward Bruner’s reality -
expression continuum detailed above:
reality
expression experience
learning
Reality is everything that is out there and is experienced by means of our senses. The experience, then,
understood as the internalisation of the event, occurs when the individuals involved start to make
connections in a mental process. It begins with the recognition of ‘how various parts of an experience re-
late to form a unified whole’ (Constantino, 2004: 401). After that, individuals make sense of the experience,
relating the event with previous knowledge, experiences and familiar matters. Finally comes the expression,
as the socialisation of what was learned. This expression can take many forms: images, text, oral tales or
the application of the acquired knowledge or skills in a given situation. Storytelling can be situated at the
end of this process as the expression, but also at the beginning as the reality or the event that triggers the
learning experience.
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Memory is an important element of learning and it leads to widening the possibilities of application of the

knowledge. Stories make impressive experiences - in the words of Abrahamson (1998): ‘if one could code
the knowledge to be passed on and embed it in a story form, then it could be made more faithfully memorable
than by another means’ (1). Narrative is also an effective way to retain information. This is possible because
the context gives people a broader understanding, because we involve feelings and emotions in the story. In
addition, we can relate what we are listening to or telling with our own experiences.
When we read or listen to a story, we anticipate what is going to happen. Not only do we let the words
form sensations and emotions, we also make logical inferences, look at inconsistencies in the story
and connect what we read with our own experiences to make sense of the story. (Murris and Haynes,
2000: 19).
Even more significantly, stories are the vehicles people often use to remember experiences, as ‘people
remember what happens to them, and they tell people what they remember’. We are interested in what
happen to others, and Sara Cone (1996) explains that this is why people read tabloids to know what is going
on in other people’s lives.
Since we are human and we therefore share several characteristics, it is possible that a story from a different
cultural context has associations with the listener’s actions, thoughts, feelings, and so on.
If it is true that all the communities of the world work, eat, dress, talk, rest, entertain, clean themselves,
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produce art, and so on, not every community performs these activities in the same way. It is precisely

through the ways they carry out their daily practices that a social group seeks originality and distinction
to differentiate themselves from the rest. (Mac Gregor, 2005)2.
This implies that we can relate what we are listening to with our own experiences, which is always key in a
learning process. However, when the story told is relevant for the audience and it is told in a relevant way,
it becomes easier to relate with the interests of the listeners.
Listening to and telling stories helps to develop linguistic, expressive, and thinking skills. As story listeners
we learn how to listen. Stories usually mix real and fictional events or, if they do not, we know we have to
keep on listening critically to distinguish what elements may be true and which may not. Even if we know it
is a fictional story we need to listen carefully to notice the details that give coherence to fictional elements,
to be aware of the life-likeness of the story and to make sense of it.
Storytellers have to find the precise words and gestures, the accurate ways to express sensations, events and
feelings. They develop their skills to communicate an idea, which in words of Abrahamson (1998) is key to
achieving self knowledge: ‘a person can only know as much about himself or herself as he or she is able to
communicate to another’ (2). They have to use different ways to express themselves and engage the listeners
with the story. Storytellers need to pay attention to be coherent and to give the audience enough details to
let them imagine the specific situation, but not too much to bore them.
2
My translation.
31
Imagination is also a significant factor in the learning process. Listening to stories, especially to fiction

stories, opens our minds to ‘new means of experiencing and learning (…) If the story has some of these
components [mild shocks] the students’ interpretations can alter their frames of reference and create the
opportunity for new insight and obtainment of new knowledge.’ (Ibid., 4).
Fiction stories with a sense of life-likeness unwrap in listeners the possibility to include in their frames of
reference more possibilities of ways of living, different imaginative solutions to specific situations, new
questions, and different ways to establish relations between events. Moreover, they invite the listener to
rethink and question some of their preconceptions.
History’s greatest thinkers have been distinguished by their questioning of what no one else had
previously thought to question, thereby challenging existing assumptions and prejudices. (Murris and
Haynes, 2000: 10).
A good focused storytelling and story listening event can be an accurate tool for learning in formal and
informal environments. It allows connections to be made between different areas of human knowledge
and personal experiences; it is an effective discourse form to grasp reality. It helps develop language skills
in native speakers and also in foreign language learners. It constructs a more relaxed environment of active
learning.
32
Storytelling in Museums and Galleries.
Chapter 3
33
A
s in different social sciences, the postmodernism paradigm has embedded museums and

galleries in a search of understanding the learning processes, meaning-making, and the
experiences of social actors. The role of museums and galleries has experienced a shift from traditional
concepts, as the authority of curators and sanctity of collections (Adams, Falk et al., 2003: 15) has been
replaced by a more community- engaged concept of these institutions.
The educational function of museums is no longer an additional benefit: it is now central to their
mission as museum staff and trustees seek to shed to their longlasting reputation as institutions for
the elite and refashion themselves as educational institutions dedicated to public service. (Constantino,
2004: 400).
Museums and galleries are developing exhibitions that bear in mind that learning is a relative and constructive
process, allowing a multiplicity of perspectives to coexist in the same space (Adams, Falk et al., 2003: 17).
I want to explore the characteristics of storytelling that contribute to this shift in museums and galleries and
that help emphasise the postmodern, postcolonial, and socially responsible perspective from which
exhibitions are being designed. I intend to highlight the contribution of storytelling to the educational
role of the museums. This educational role has been raised to the core of these institutions during the last
years.
34
Interpretation.

E
ileen Hooper-Greenhill (1999) explains the two senses of the concept of interpretation: In the
hermeneutic sense that influenced other social sciences’ theories it is understood as ‘how
individuals make sense’, as a mental subjective activity.
The second sense appears in the context of museums, where it has another use. It arises from the
understanding that objects do not speak for themselves and that curators obtain meaning from them given
their own knowledge and the way that the objects relate to their disciplines. Visitors do not enjoy these ways
of listening to the objects, so interpretation takes the role of translation, to let them see what the object
can signify in a certain context. It refers to allowing the visitors to understand the message proposed by the
exhibition. This means that, in order to allow a meaningful experience where visitors can make their own
interpretations, museum or gallery educators have to give them as many resources as possible.
Based on this, storytelling is an effective tool in museums and galleries in both understandings of the
concept of interpretation. Firstly, it assists audiences to interpret the collection, as it helps them to
contextualise the objects and therefore have a more detailed experience; it also gives audiences more
elements to find links between the museum or gallery experience and their lives and therefore helps them
in their mental activity of constructing meaning. Secondly, storytelling refers to the museum or the gallery
as an interpretation tool to allow the visitors to make meaning of the collections, to appeal to different
35
audiences and to deliver meaningful experiences. It helps the museum or gallery to interpret the collections

from a broader point of view.
Storytelling is also an interpretation by itself, since every recounting depends on what the teller wants to
include or exclude, where to start and where to finish, highlight some events or details, and so on. In the
case of museums and galleries, the story that is being told is an interpretation from the institution’s point
of view, which also has educational objectives.
Story listeners are potential storytellers and, even without a storytelling activity, every visitor becomes a
potential storyteller of his or her experience in the museum. In the case of storytelling, the story listener
makes an interpretation process of the story, and if he decides to tell this story to other people who were
not there, he will again choose where to start and where to end, what he or she wants to include and what
to exclude, and repeat the process all over again. Interpretation never starts or finishes; it is a constant
process. The same happens with the recounted story.
According to Sam H. Ham (1999), meaningfulness is an important element for interpretation. Thereby he
expects that within a non-formal educational environment:
Interpretation must be entertaining and interesting since external incentives for audiences to
pay attention (…) do not exist in leisure settings. Further, it must be understandable and therefore
relatively easy for audiences to process mentally. (Ham, 1999: 162).

36
This means that the language museums and galleries use to interpret collections should be at a level which

visitors are able to grasp. It has to give information that relates to individuals, which is relevant to visitors,
and it has to explain in a clear way the theme of the exhibition; thus an effective conceptual framework
(Ibid.: 164) should be given to people to make sense of the information.
Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something
within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile. (Tilden in Ham, 199; 162).
Stories are familiar to almost every person, people usually use them to communicate experiences, and
people hear them in their daily lives. Narratives are structured and organised ideas that link events. As a
result of this, they make it easy for visitors to establish links between different objects or artworks within
a collection and between the collection and their lives. Stories are a form of interpretation that seem less
academic in contrast to labels and other written explanations. As a complement to written explanations,
they appeal to different kinds of intelligences. They use a language that is familiar to almost everyone, as
people listen to stories during different stages of their lives. They also help to create a framework to encase
various objects from a collection.
Museums and galleries seek to deliver their messages in diverse forms to broaden their access to different
visitors and to allow viewers to engage with messages using a range of learning modalities (Hein, 1998:161).
Storytelling as an interpretative tool (inviting people to listen to stories and to tell stories) appeals to visitors
37
who find it difficult or boring to read. The visit is made more interesting for audiences that prefer to talk

rather just receive information. It opens the possibility to rethink the authorship of the museum and build
knowledge together, and makes the communication process a dialogue where the negotiation of meanings
can be expressed.
Active Learning.
A
ctive learning gives the responsibility of learning to the learners. If visitors are actively
engaged with the interpretation and the information from the exhibitions, they should
experience a more meaningful visit.
In storytelling activities, visitors will not always necessarily be story listeners. If the museum encourages
visitors to be storytellers, a more practical experience may arise. In words of Dewey: ‘knowledge depends
more on a practical experience and the application of ideas to action, than to a verbal description of truth’
(Hein, 1998: 17).
Storytelling is a dynamic activity that engages visitors with active learning. Depending on the structure it
can actually be a dialogue between the museum or gallery and the visitors.
One case exemplify this is the coming exhibition Once Upon a Time at the Tullie House Museum and Art
38
Gallery in September 2007. The objective of this exhibition is to ‘explore how information is passed on

through stories, tales, myths and beliefs using the Museum collections to stimulate imagination and inspire
creativity’ (Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery website). One of the objectives is to encourage visitors
to tell their own stories.
But ‘being involved in an activity does not necessarily mean (…) people are learning’ (Carnell et al., 2004:
35). Storytelling is not an educative experience in itself, it depends on many factors that educators have to
bear in mind when planning a storytelling session. That is why a storytelling activity in a museum or gallery
has to be organised in an educative way and should have additional time for activities that involve reflections
and enquiry on what is being learned.
Everyone who listens to a storyteller shares something with her or him; we all tell stories. Michael Wilson
(1997) explains that all the storytellers, professionals and the ‘storyteller in a bus’ have in common that
(…) they are both communicating a narrative to an audience through oral language and accompanying
gesture (where necessary) in a manner that by its very nature is ephemeral and shaped by a number of
factors which are external to the text of the story itself. (26).
This is the first relation we can establish between the storyteller in the museum or gallery and the visitors:
we all are storytellers. Listening to a story can make us repeat the stories that the museum told us.
39
Collaborative Learning.

C
ollaborative learning is ‘about complementing and building on others’ views to generate shared
knowledge’ (Crook in Carnell et al., 2004: 35). Some museums and galleries use this theory to
develop learning activities that help build collaborative knowledge. Groups work together to search for
shared meaning-making and solutions to a given situation.
Storytelling can also present this characteristic when the story, or the related activities, requires the partici-
pation of a group of visitors. One example to illustrate this is the Participatory Story Building, which aims to
encourage participants to develop together a story:
In the act of story building, children are encouraged to make up stories together using free and
creative thinking and team working skills. Story building helps children to use their imaginations and
express themselves, both to each other and to grown-ups, through play. (Johnsson, 2006: 12)
These types of activities appeal to different types of learners and help develop different skills: ‘speaking,
listening, writing, acting’ (Ibid.), ‘communicating effectively, building trust, and working on joint goals’
(Carnell et al., 2004: 36). It also helps in the meaning-making process as the individual understanding can
be supported or challenged by other individuals’ interpretations. It is about sharing and working together
to construct an enriched understanding. It is a communicational practice that, again, leads us to a more
explicit negotiation of meanings.

40
Storytelling in the Constructivist Museum

and in the Postmodern Paradigm.
M
useums and galleries have gone through a shift in their own perception, so much so that
modernist museums and galleries now think about themselves as places where people can
learn, whereas previously it was more about cultivating the public, with the museum as an authority with
the resources to provide the knowledge.
Museums as we know them today, are the creations of the Enlightenment, institutions that came into
being in what we now characterize as the modern period. (…) institutions such as museums were
established to spread out, as though upon a table, those things that could be observed, measured,
classified, named and that presented a universally valid and reliable picture of the world. (Hooper-
Greenhill, 1999: 71).
Nowadays, museum and galleries have turned into educational institutions where education and learning
are understood from the constructivist theories of learning. These institutions are rethinking themselves
as part of the postmodernist paradigm that works as an umbrella term for theories and social relations in
the present.
The constructivist museum lies on the constructivist theory of learning, which explains that the learner
constructs knowledge, establishing relations between the new information and previous knowledge and
41
experiences. It is characterised by Hein (1998) as a space that maximises the potential for learning, accessible

in different ways (physically, socially, and intellectually) (156), appeals to multiple learning modalities, and
encourages visitors to make connections between exhibits and their own experiences.
Hein proposes that the museum has to have the three components of any educational theory (Hein, 1998; 15):
1. A theory of knowledge
2. A theory of learning
3. Pedagogy
Storytelling would fit in the third component, pedagogy. It is about how we should teach, depending on
the first two components. As constructivist theory has been a major influence on education in museums
and galleries, visitors are now understood as active learners who bring into play their own experiences and
expectations to build meaning and make sense of the exhibitions. The pedagogy instruments applied in the
museum should therefore try to appeal to this view. In other words, storytelling in museums and galleries
helps to encourage visitors to make their own interpretations and takes them into account in sharing the
authorship. Thereby, visitors are understood as diverse individuals whose learning styles are different. This
must be taken into consideration in developing activities that are not exclusively for a few learning styles
only.
In this shift, important topics have the leading roles in developing exhibitions, especially in the education
42
areas. Access, active audiences, relation with daily life, democratization, context and interactivity are some

examples of these topics that museums and galleries use to develop interpretation tools.
Access.
Storytelling is a tool that can help make exhibitions more accessible. First, it sets a relaxed environment,
where the idea of the museum as a temple is left behind, as it is not a silent place where visitors just can be
by themselves. As explained above, stories can reach a greater number of visitors since this narrative form
is familiar to almost everyone, therefore it is easier to grasp and get engaged with a storytelling activity.
For intellectual access the connections established by stories can help visitors to find one or more ways to
relate with the collection and between objects within the exhibition.
Active Audiences.
Storytelling is a communication process where audiences are active because they are constantly negotiating
meanings and relating the story with familiar scenes. Displayed in a traditional way, however, where the
storyteller delivers the activity and the audience just listens to the story, it can turn out to be a passive session
similar to reading labels. Nonetheless, different types of storytelling and related activities can complement
the experience and embrace some action where visitors are involved more deeply.
43
Democratization.

Storytelling can also help achieve the democratisation of a museum in two senses. The first one enables
‘minority cultures to recognize and validate their own cultures’ (Hooper-Greenhill, 1999: 23). Presentation
of diverse stories from different cultural groups gives voice to them and helps their members feel part of the
narrative in the museum or gallery. Also, stories that contextualise objects from other cultures help to broaden
reductionist thinking of objects as folkloric items, and gives them a function in a specific time or culture.
Following the postmodern paradigms, it has become an important task among museums to give voice to
objects, cultures and groups previously recognised as minorities, whose point of view had been left behind
those of Western metanarratives. With storytelling, construction of subjectivity is possible, because a told
story is never going to be the same. It therefore permits multiple interpretations from the listener and the
teller, and is an open field of intersubjectivity and the negotiation of meanings. This flexibility goes beyond
the exhibit display, which because of its format can tell only one or a few interpretations (in the best
scenario). Storytelling allows the museum to add other voices, and to adapt it easily and frequently.
The second understanding of democratisation as sharing the authorship in museums and galleries, can be
achieved by storytelling when it is used in an active style, where visitors can feel that they are actively con-
tributing to the narrative of the display. The museum or gallery sets the space, the exhibition and the main
topic, but audiences are listened to, provide their own interpretations and share them with other visitors.
44
Context.

Contextualising the collection in an historical or social moment helps to integrate the collection into reality;
it integrates objects to actions that enable people to have more elements to do their own interpretation of
what is displayed. This fits in the constructivist museum, in which Hein (1998) suggests;
The idealist curator believes that meaning of an object (or of an entire exhibition) derives not from
some external reality, but arises from the interpretation it is given, either by the curator or by the viewer
(…) so it allows to draw various conclusions from the interactions with it. (21).
Stories are complex in the sense that they are made of numerous elements to try to express reality, which
is complex too. With this logic, it is possible that a greater number of visitors can establish a relation with
the story - perhaps through the historical context, perhaps through the description of a character, perhaps
through the activities of the characters, the general topic, and so on, that will allow the learner to engage
with the issue (Hein, 1998: 36).
Context is a key element in the display of objects or artworks. It need not necessarily be historical, but
should be explicit in some way. It gives the audiences a clearer idea of the whole message the curators are
suggesting. ‘Without a clear conceptual framework an audience will usually attempt to provide its own’.
(Ham, 1999: 164).

45
With storytelling, people can contextualise objects within a collection, and enlarge the understanding of

its functions, its meanings, and so on. At the same time, storytelling can frame the objects and reduce
polysemy: ‘The hegemony of the text is never absolute, but it should always fight to impose itself against
the diversity of meanings that readers produce’ (Corominas, 2006: 4)3.
Interactivity.
Lately, interactivity in museums and galleries has been understood only as one of its meanings: ‘involving
the actions or input of a user; especially: of, relating to, or being a two-way electronic communication system
(as a telephone, cable television, or a computer) that involves a user’s orders (…) or responses’ (Merriam
Webster Online Dictionary). In other words, it has been understood as the use of ICT devices as interpretative
tools within the exhibition.
However, interactivity in its other sense also means ‘mutually or reciprocally active’ (Merriam Webster
Online Dictionary), which is the kind of interactivity that the storytelling can provide. Both the exhibition
and the visitors are active in storytelling. Storytelling is one way to make the objects or artworks from the
collection speak to visitors, and with storytelling in its dialogical form, visitors become actively a part of it
and can establish a dialogical relation with exhibitions.
3
My translation.
46
Other way of interaction and dialogue triggered by storytelling is the socialisation of the experience.

Storytelling is a dynamic activity; it is likely that after listening to or creating a story, people would feel the
necessity to tell it to others. This is one of various ways that could assure that the experience was effectively
educational. Visitors can take the knowledge to their lives and use it. Socialising knowledge is also one of
the most powerful strategies in an educational process:
In Dilthey’s view, experience urges toward expression, or communication with others. We are social
beings, and we want to tell what we have learned from experience. The arts depend on this urge to
confession or declamation. The hard-won meanings should be said, painted, danced, dramatized, put
into circulation. (Bruner and Turner, 1986: 37).
This might also be an indirect tool of the museum to reach more people, in the sense that stories could
transcend the boundaries of the experience in the museum to reach the new listeners who listen to the new
storytellers.
Fiction or Fact in Museums’ or Galleries’ Storytelling.
M
useums and galleries have left behind the stage where they thought they were show-
ing the world in an objective way, showing one universal truth. Now the openness to
multiple interpretations also opens the possibility to share a wide range of stories. From fictional to factual
narratives, museums and galleries can make the most of various stories as long as they have clear educative
47
objectives and relevant links to the collection and visitors.

If the storyteller explains clearly what is the story about - a myth, an historical account, a fable, for example
- visitors are able to figure out what they are listening to and distinguish imaginative elements from facts.
Nonetheless, every story can teach something in spite of where is set in the continuum between fact and
fiction.
As explained above, storytelling is one of various interpretative tools in the museum or gallery
that, together with the exhibition can help to establish connections between the exhibition and the world
familiar to the visitor. It can encourage social interaction in the museum or gallery and provide intellectual
comfort, as it is familiar to almost everyone.
I have so far been analysing the role of storytelling within the museums and galleries in general as educa-
tional institutions. Now, I intend to explore the potential of storytelling in three specific contexts: histori-
cal and ethnographic collections, art galleries, and science centres. I presume that storytelling can be an
effective interpretative tool in these three collections, as long as the activity is well prepared to achieve
educational objectives.
48
Storytelling in Three Different Contexts.

Storytelling within Historical and Ethnographic Collections.
The use of storytelling to transmit historical knowledge was one of its main functions before the written word.
The recounting of stories about the heroes that helped to build nations and communities is a recurrent
topic. However, in light of the postmodern and postcolonial theories where uses of storytelling are wider and
multiple narratives can be displayed, the selection of stories has to be thoughtful. In the postmodern debate
History with a capital ‘H’ has been called metanarrative, so the postmodern and postcolonial reflection on
giving voice to minorities and colonies turns the History to one possible story among multiple stories.
Storytelling can help to show visitors the stories that make up History: the multiple perspectives of one
event, a multiplicity of points of view. This can at the same time create an inclusive environment and reach
a broader audience. People who belong to the minorities that modern History had left behind can see how
they also played a key role in the development of events, and visitors who do not belong to minorities can
understand how every social actor writes the History. This is central in the social responsibility objectives
of museums located in multicultural environments, where the museum plays an important role in the
development of a sense of identity.
This kind of collections can specifically use the contextualising function of storytelling. Historical recounting
49
leaves fewer possibilities to resort to fictional narratives. Also, an imaginative construction of facts can lead

us to think about how historical processes work, and to understand that what is happening nowadays is the
result of a multiplicity of factors that cannot be isolated. Of course, as the set phrase says, understanding
the past is the only way to understand our present and construct our future.
Storytelling within Art Collections.
Art is much more than an emotional experience. It is one of the areas where people experience exclusion
when they do not understand. In this case, interpretative tools are a vehicle of access, especially in contemporary
art collections where the comprehension of art has changed drastically, codes change constantly and art and
artists see themselves differently. Many contemporary artists look to criticise social structures and an elitist
art history; they explore new materials and new forms to represent day-to-day structures. Non-specialist
audiences experience hostility when faced by a work of art which exceeds their understanding.
Philip Wright (1993), Pierre Bourdieu (2003), Carol Becker (1994) and Rhiannon Mason (2005) agree that
there is no such thing as a work speaking for itself, and that ‘meaning-making does not occur in a vacuum’
(Mason 2005: 210). Consequently, helping people to approach art from different ways is key to transforming
galleries into accessible institutions.
Non-art specialist visitors think that they do not have the competence to interpret artworks, but they may
be shown that there are many ways to approach them: the historical or social context where the artwork was
50
conceived and created, the social message that the artists sometimes try to reflect on, the materials used,

and how society reacts to it, among others.
Storytelling can help us to grasp an artwork in many ways, trying to understand what the artist was thinking
or how a creation process works. Storytelling can help to demystify the creative processes and humanise artists
as people who are embedded in a human life and use art as a form to express their own experiences.
On the other hand, art collections are a fertile field to explore fictional narratives that help us imagine what
is happening in the artwork and what could happen before or after. This can help to develop a creative and
imaginative thinking, which sometimes is relegated after a scientific and logical thinking.
Storytelling in Science Centres.
I have already mentioned that the use of storytelling in science education appears as a more recurrent
way to exemplify models, to contextualise findings and again to demystify scientists as people who always
have the correct answer. Stories within scientific exhibitions can contextualise but they can also present
problems that visitors could attempt to solve with, for example, mathematical methods or physics theories.
These types of narratives can show some applications of theories, such as illustrations of experiments.
Alternatively, if we use the fictional element, visitors may imagine how scientists arrived at those findings.
It is possible to use science fiction narratives to present, in an imaginative way, the application of scientific
findings or to reflect on the consequences and ethics involved in some scientific matters.
51
Boudica’s story at the Museum of London.
Chapter 4
Boudica’s Story at the Museum of London.
52
I
n this chapter I intend to analyze Katy Cawkwell’s script from the Museum of London’s: Boudi-

ca’s Storytelling Session4 as an example of what has been explored so far in this dissertation.
The activity is aimed at Key Stage 3 (KS3) students, (11 to 14-year-olds) and is one of three activities
planned for school groups. The three are all related to the same topic: Roman Londinium. They include: the
storytelling session, a handling collection session and a visit to the galleries.
The story intends to present two perspectives of the same series of events. The storyteller tries to engage
the audience into the context and point of view of both the Romans, as the Imperialist, civilising, main-
stream culture, and the Britons as a group of autonomous tribes that share a territory and some beliefs.
The story starts with a brief review of the Roman Empire and how they spread into the continent and
onto the island. This gives the visitors the context of why the Romans reached Britain and decided to rule
it. The session delivered in the ‘London Before London’ Gallery introduces the visitors to the idea of how
London was born with the Roman arrival and it sets an approachable environment to the ‘Roman London
Gallery’.
The attempt to recount more than one perspective fits in the postmodern paradigm in general as a narrative
that is open to more than one voice: ‘postmodernism can be typified as a vigorously anti-systemic mode of
understanding with pluralism, borders and multiple perspectives’ (Quayson, 2000 : 132).
3
Appendix.
53
Specifically, it fits in the postmodern shift in museums and galleries, which stresses the importance of the

constructivist learning as it allows visitors to make their own interpretation of the story, and make their
own judgments of what they have heard. Further, as it describes how the Romans and the British tribes
lived, it helps visitors to establish connections and compare the content with their own daily lives, to find
the influences of these groups in the present.
Also within the postmodern paradigm, it appeals to the postcolonial and feminist approach. In the first, it
vindicates the version of the conquered that supports the recount of their stories even if they do not
finish in the ideal of victory of eternal glory. In the second, the feminist approach, it promotes the inclusion
of women’s perspectives in history. The story of Boudica is not only about a woman leader, it is not only
about including women in history, but, more substantially, it explains that there have been different views of
women’s roles in the history of humanity. It describes how the tribes in Britain were more equal in gender
issues, and how women played an active role in religious and political issues. This exemplifies that not all
cultures in the world had necessarily been male-ruled.
It is a story that shows us an encounter between cultures as it gives an idea of how Romans thought about
the Britons as uncivilised, but it also exemplifies the life of Britons as different rather than uncivilised. It
might seem that the Romans as the invaders were the ‘bad guys’ of this story, but set in the context of the
museum a deeper explanation shows us that an encounter of cultures enriches our lives.
54
Britain nowadays has remnants of Roman culture as well as that of the British tribes. London was, from the

very beginning, a place where multiple cultures lived together, and as the museum tries to show with other
galleries and temporary exhibits, it has gained many things from cultural encounters. It helps to understand
the history of London as a constant mix of traditions. This is relevant in the sense that present-day London
is a multicultural city where people from all around the world, from different contexts and different beliefs
share their daily lives. It promotes the understanding that this has helped London to become an interesting and
vivid city. This kind of story gives a sense of identity as visitors are confronted with others in an indirect way.
Exhibitions represent identity, either directly through assertion, or indirectly, by implication. When
cultural ‘others’ are implicated, exhibitions tell us who we are and, perhaps most significant who we
are not. (Karp, 1991: 15).
The storytelling session is delivered in three parts. First, the storyteller recounts the history and invites
visitors to answer some questions during the development of the story. The second part comes close to the
end of the story, before the main fight between Roman Army and Boudica’s troops. The storyteller pauses
and begins a wrap up activity where, by using a map, she briefly illustrates where the tribes were settled and
asks questions about the story to make sure that students remember some important facts. She then divides
the group in two and gives them the task to create a speech of what would they think the two leaders said
in their own words to their people when encouraging them to fight against the enemy. One group discusses
the Roman speech and the other Boudica’s words. Finally, the storyteller recounts the battle and how the
Britons lost their fight against the Roman invasion.

55
These activities frame the story in an educative experience, with active and collaborative learning. Pupils

have the opportunity to imagine why the Romans wanted to continue having the control of the island and
why some tribes wanted freedom. This also gives the group the time to internalise the notion of community
and belonging.
The Boudica storytelling session fulfils, in the sense of one of various interpretative tools, the ‘five points
to guide any museum interpretation’ (Tilden in Wright, 1993: 140):
- It relates the interpretation with the visitors as it describes the life of Romans and Britons, and
students can find in their lives some reminiscences of both ways of lives.
- It reveals the voices behind the exhibition; the story helps to broaden the understanding of what is
displayed in the galleries.
- Stories are an imaginative and engaging way to present the interpretation.
- The activity of creating the speeches of the two leaders promotes thinking in visitors.
- The story is full of details that ‘draw the larger picture’ of how London was in that time. (Ibid.).
I assume that Boudica’s script was created with fictional elements and facts, first of all because it is an old
story that probably was told and retold by people who added some imagined events before the Roman
historians recorded it. The version of the Museum of London is so rich in detail, even though it is not
possible to know that many facts from something that happened so long ago. Of course, it is not that these
56
details are necessarily untrue. Fiction is as Mark Currie (2004) explains, an element in historical recounts:

‘some artistic license is required in the reconstruction of events’ (75).
This session also promotes dialogue in the museum and about what is being learned. As students
are encouraged to discuss in groups and have to write a speech based on what they have heard, seen and
touched, they can socialise this experience to make it an effective learning experience.
57
Considerations and Conclusions.
Chapter 5
58
S
o far I have explored the positive aspect of using storytelling in the museum or gallery. Now I want

to explore some considerations that it might be worthwhile to bear in mind, as storytelling is not
the ultimate answer to interpretative tools in museums and galleries.
There are many possible ways to carry out a storytelling session; it can be in a more structured way, where
the storyteller is standing while the audience sits on the floor and listens to the story with a very little
interaction, to personified actors walking around the museum talking with visitors. Within this wide range,
some considerations and thoughts have to be taken into account in order to select which kind of session
suits each topic or exhibition best.
- Some formats developed in historical sites, where personified actors walk around the museum talking
with visitors, can create chronological confusion. This openness to dialogue cannot stick to a pre-
structured script, because what visitors can ask is infinite. This leads to the problem that the artists,
who are not specialists in the exhibition topic, have to be very well prepared to deliver the knowledge.
Even then, visitors might ask questions that only specialists in the area could answer. In that case,
actors and museum educators have to be aware of these possibilities and be prepared to respond to
the needs of visitors.
- Within the context of the museum and embedded in the constructivist and postmodern paradigm,
storytelling cannot be a simple activity where visitors just listen. Even if the activity or topic does not
59
require the active participation of audiences to create a story, other kind of activities and dialogue with

visitors can make the difference and help them establish connections with familiar experiences and
construct knowledge.
- Bearing in mind the context of postmodernism theories like feminism and postcolonialism, the
museum needs to be careful in choosing stories that imply various perspectives, and try not to only
reproduce the Western male colonialist point of view. The museum can have in stock a wide range of
stories in order to rotate them and express different points of view.
- It is key to keep the relation between the storytelling and the collection, because in the context of
museums and galleries, storytelling is an interpretative tool to support a richer understanding of the
display. The main resources of the museum or gallery are the collections or the exhibitions. Storytelling
sessions help to build visitors’ curiosity about the museum or gallery, and about other museums and
galleries, and also to teach them a broader way to look at collections. Museums’ educative programmes
help in making the visitors think about the collection as a complex whole.
- Regarding physical access, the length of sessions has to be planned carefully and depending on whether
visitors are going to be sitting on the floor or on chairs, or standing, moving around the museums,
allowing visitors to be comfortable to follow the complete session.

60
- Storytelling has to be full of vividness and emotions in order to distance itself from a good museum

or gallery guide. It is a narrative that should establish coherent connections between events and create
in the audience the feeling of have being there.
- As with every attempt to represent a culture, stories have their limits of representation, even if they
show a larger picture than the objects (this is especially true in ethnographic collections where objects
have been removed from their original contexts). We cannot forget that the meanings change and that
people are not able to grasp alterity in its totality. Storytelling is also a partial way to represent otherness.
Storytelling can be used for other areas in museums or galleries. For example, in evaluation, visitors could
be asked to tell in story form what they have experienced in the museum. As explained above, such a
story is only an expression of the experience, but because its format is freer than that of a structured
questionnaire, museums can understand a little bit more of how visitors articulate and frame their visits.
The structure of a story can also be exported to displays, and the exhibition can be shown as a story where
visitors can clearly understand a plot, dialogues, characters, and so on. The ‘Great Fire’ exhibition at the
Museum of London is one example of this kind of narrative used in displays.
As highlighted throughout this dissertation, storytelling and stories are not the only way to contextualise, to
approach otherness, to communicate, to organise and express experiences, to create a sense of identity, to
61
make meaning and so on. However, as Graham Black (2005) explains, an inclusive museum exhibition ‘will

use a palette of display approaches and have a layered provision of support material to meet the differing
needs of visitors’ (64). Storytelling is one of a wide range of tools museum and gallery educators can resort
to in order to achieve their main goal, which is to provide the visitors with as many resources as possible to
generate an educative experience in the museum or gallery.
The main advantage of storytelling is that it is a familiar way of communication. It has been part of human
history since its beginnings, and that has been in almost every individual’s story since childhood.
62
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67
Boudica – Museum of London – session plan for KS3 audience.
Appendix.
By Katy Cawkwell.
1. Story told by Katy (25 mins) – see below
2. Group retelling/discussion about story led by Katy (15 mins) – see separate doc
3. Work in pairs/4s on speeches and share work (15 mins)
4. Wrap up and end of story told by Katy (5 mins) – see below
Intro
Welcome to the MoL. I’m Katy, here to tell you a story – links to the Roman London gallery here. You may wonder why
we’re standing here in this roundhouse in “London before London”, but as you’ll see, the story is very much about the
clash of cultures – the traditional British way of life and the civilisation brought by the Roman occupation of Britain.
We have an hour together and the session’s in 3 parts – start with the story and then discuss it and fill in some of the facts
and then in the last part, you’ll be doing most of the talking. I’ll explain when we get there…
Story
This is a story about 2 great leaders: one a man and one a woman. Each of them led their own people to war and they
came face to face on the field of battle. And the battle that was fought was one of the greatest ever fought in our land,
the island of Britain.
But to tell the story of that battle, we must first set the scene… nearly 2000 years ago, the centre of Western Europe
was the city of Rome. And the Roman empire spread from Turkey in the east, south to Spain, north into Germany and
Gaul (which we now call? France)… and the province of Britannia was a wild, remote island across the sea, on the very
fringes of the empire.
Each province had its own Roman governor and when our story starts, a new Roman governor had just been appointed
to govern Britannia. His name was Suetonius Paulinus. He took a boat, sailed across the sea to the island of B, up the
great river Tamesis (? Thames) into the middle of the new settlement of Londinium growing up on the banks of the
river.
He’d heard the rumours:
- it’s a terrible place
- so far from Rome
- so uncivilised
- the weather’s awful
- the food’s appalling
- and the tribespeople, well some of them are friendly, but some are hostile
- they’ll leap out at you from the trees
-they’ll murder you in your beds
- it’s a terrible place to be posted…
68
but he wasn’t put off. He was a military man with big ambitions, He reckoned if he could subdue this rebellious prov-
Appendix.
ince, it would be greatly to his credit.
And so he landed in Londinium and took stock of his new province…
In the south, the tribes were the most friendly to Rome – the Regnenses, the Atrebates, the Cantici – they had been trad-
ing with the Romans for long before the invasion and had welcomed the Romans and begun to live in the Roman style.
In the new town of Londinium, Roman citizens lived in townhouses, side by side with Britons in their roundhouses and
merchants from all over the empire – the people of the town had tableware from France, silk from Syria, olive oil and
fish sauce from Spain, wine from Greece and Italy. The south seemed safe enough.
When he looked to the east, there was the Roman capital, a great city growing up – a temple was being built to the
emperor Claudius who had ordered the invasion of Britain, there was a theatre, bathhouses and everything you needed
for a truly Roman way of life. The tribes in the east – the Iceni and the Trinovantes – along with the tribes in the north
– the Brigantes – were being ruled by British kings and queens, but the king of the Iceni was a client king, the queen of
the Brigantes, a client queen – they paid their taxes to Rome, they did what Rome asked of them and in return, they were
allowed to retain some independence and some of their old way of life. The east and the north seemed safe enough.
It was when he looked into the west that the problems started. Here, in the mountains and wild places, the tribes – the
Silures and the Orodovices - had never accepted Roman rule. They knew they could not defeat the Romans in open
battle and so they had hidden away in pockets of rebellion, using a kind of guerrilla warfare – using their knowledge of
the land to worry away at the edges of the Roman forces.
But what was even more worrying than the rebellious tribes was the island of Mona, just across the water from the
western mainland. (Mona? Angelsey)
Mona was important because it was the religious centre of Britian and if there was one thing that united the British
tribes it was their religion - each of the tribes had religious leaders, men and women who acted like priests for the tribe
– these priests were known as druids and they had great power and influence over the British tribes. And the centre of
the druids was the island of Mona – one of the most sacred places in Britain – the religious heart of the whole island.
The governor was deeply suspicious of Mona, rumours even of human sacrifice and he thought – “if I could crush this
place of strange power, I would crush completely the spirit of the Britons and bring the whole island under my rule,
subject to Rome…”. And so he gathered together the best part of the Roman army in Britain and set off into the west,
to crush the last traces of rebellion in the mountains and wipe out the druids’ power on Mona.
He left behind in Londinium, a man they called the procurator. Now if the governor was the head of the army within
the province, the procurator was the head of the administration. This particular procurator was a mean-minded, small-
minded, short-sighted man – he took delight in extracting the wealth of the Britons down to the very last drop.
The first thing he took from them was land. He decided that the old soldiers – the army veterans – needed a base, some-
where to settle down after they’d left the army. The new city in the east was perfect – there they could live a civilised,
69
Roman life and there they could take land from the people who lived round about and farm it as their own. And so the
Appendix.
Trinovantes who farmed that land were forced to hand it over, some of them even had to work on the land in the service
of the veterans, the land that their families had lived on for generations.
And as well as land, there were taxes to pay. And if they couldn’t pay in money, they could pay in corn, in horses, cattle,
even their own children sold as slaves.
Drop by drop, he was draining the Britons of their life blood.
Now at about the time the governor left for the west, something happened in the east: the old client king of the tribe
of the Iceni died. He left behind him a will and in his will, he left half his wealth to the emperor of Rome and half to
his two daughters, with the provision that their mother would guard the wealth and rule the Iceni until the girls were old
enough to do so themselves. In this way, he thought he would keep the Romans happy and still safeguard some of his
inheritance for his own family.
But when the procurator heard about the will, he took a very different view of the matter. One of the biggest differ-
ences between the society of the Romans and that of the Britons was the way they viewed women. In Rome, women
might be respected, but officially, women were the property of their fathers and then, when they married, their husbands
and they certainly couldn’t own any property of their own. In the British tribes however, it was completely different
– men and women were much more equal – women could own land and wealth, women could rule as queens, intercede
with the gods as druids, even take up weapons and fight to defend their tribes as warriors,
So when the procurator heard about the will, the idea of the two girls inheriting their father’s wealth and the idea of their
mother ruling in his place was just ridiculous. “No, this just wouldn’t do – the whole lot must be brought into the care
of Rome…” He summoned a small troop of soldiers led by a centurion and ordered them to go to the Iceni heartlands
and take all the wealth of the royal household in the name of the emperor of Rome, “And mind you do whatever it takes
to show these people that they are our subjects and Rome holds all power.”
The centurion and his troop of men set out into the east – they came to the heartlands of the Iceni people. They came
to the royal household and there they found the new queen and her daughters were ready for them. They had dressed
themselves in all the wealth of the Iceni people that they could hold on their bodies – they wore their finest clothes,
fastened with golden broaches, they had braided their hair weaving golden ornaments into it, they had clasped great
jewelled, golden torcs around their necks and heavy golden armbands on their arms. The mother wore a round shield
on her arm and a long sword at her belt. They stood their proud and defiant as the soldiers approached.
The centurion stopped. “You shall submit to Rome. Hand over your wealth. We order this in the name of the em-
peror,” cried the centurion.
“Never,” said the queen, “You may rule our land for now and take half of what we have, but we shall not give up what
is rightfully ours and we shall never be servants of Rome.”
The centurion hesitated, he took a step backwards, “Enough,” he cried “Men, you know what to do.” The soldiers ad-
70
vanced. The woman drew her sword and moved to defend her daughters, but the soldiers were too many for her – they
Appendix.
pulled the shield from her arm, twisted teh sword out of her hand, they pinned her to the ground and the stripped her
– stripped off the fine clothes, the golden jewellery, loosened her hair and shook out the gold. Then they bound her
wrists and they tied them to a stake. They took rods and they began to beat her. They flogged her until the blood ran
down her back and she slumped, hanging from the stake, barely conscious. They seized her daughters then and they
stripped them – stripped off the fine clothes, the golden jewellery, they loosened their hair. Then they flung them on
the ground and there, in the dirt, before their mother’s eyes, there, one by one those Roman soldiers raped those two
girls. When it was over, they untied the mother’s hands and flung her on the ground by her daughters and they left them,
naked, bleeding, throbbing with the pain and throbbing with the shame of what had just been done to them.
The soldiers piled up as much of the wealth of the Iceni that they could find into carts and set off back to Londinium,
thinking it a difficult job, well done. But a whisper of what had happened had already begun to spread through the east-
ern tribes – as more and more of the Iceni and the Trinovantes came to hear, the whisper grew louder. And that whisper
was like a breath of wind that fanned the smouldering resentment of these people that had been building up so long
– they’ve invaded our country
– thye’ve taken our land
– we’ve built them temples
– we’ve become their slaves
– we’ve paid them taxes, corn, animals, even our own children
For years, this had been smouldering, building inside them, but now, when they heard of the outrage of the treatment
of the royal family of the Iceni, it was as if someone had fanned the smouldering embers and a fire had sprung up into
life – a fire of rage and hatred and desire for revenge, stronger than the fear that had kept them slaves. As the whispers
spread, the people of the tribes began to gather, and they gathered around the woman and her daughters who had been
treated so shamefully.
And when the people were gathered, that woman rose up before them – the woman who had seen the rape of her own
daughters, who bore on her back the scars of her flogging - she had borrowed what finery she could to dress herself as
a queen, she stood tall and proud, her red hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back, her eyes flashing, a shield
on her arm, a sword at her side, she spoke to her people:
“Britons of the east, all you who unite in hatred of Rome, the time has come to fight back, to take our revenge and drive
the Romans from our land. I call on the war goddess Andraste. May she be with us now!” The people cheered and as
they looked at her, with the sun blazing from her shield, shining on the red hair like a halo around her head, she seemed
to them to be the war goddess herself, the one who would lead them, the one who would bring them victory and a great
cry went up of “Boudica” – which means “the one who brings victory.” And so she was named, Boudica, the queen of
the Iceni, she led her people into battle against the Romans with a cry: “To the city of the East!”
And so the warriors of the tribes of Britain set off to the hated, Roman city of the East. The city was utterly unprepared
for the wave of the British rebels that crashed over the city. Every building was set on fire, every inhabitant slain. And
everywhere was Boudica, her sword flashing, her red hair gleaming, urging the Britons on. The veterans hurried to put
71
on their rusty armour and dig out the swords they hadn’t used in such a long time – for a while they fought, driven back
Appendix.
into the temple of Claudius – for two days they held out, but on the third day, one of the Britons managed to hack off
the head of a great statue of Claudius, he mounted it on a pole and when the tribes saw that they cheered and the veter-
ans crumbled, their temple crumbled with them, ground to dust and ashes – the city was destroyed.
But already a Roman messenger was riding fast, from the east into the west, he came at last to the governor fighting on
Mona. He was on the brink of crushing the island of the druids, squeezing the heart of Britain in his hand. “Sir, a ter-
rible revolt in the east, they have tekn the city of the east and now they are marching on Londinium”
The governor was silent, his advisors gathered around him wide-eyed, what would he say, what would he do. At last he
spoke
“There is no need to panic. Our army cannot reach L in time and besides, they have a job to finish here on Mona, how-
ever, I shall take a few men, our fastest horses, I shall ride southa dn assess the situation, we shall crush the rebles, but
we shall do so in due course, on our own terms”
He set off himself with a small band of men, riding the fastest horses in the army – they set off down the Roman road
that led south with all speed.
The Britons were moving slowly – they stopped to plunder and burn every village on the way where the people had been
loyal to Rome. So, although the governor had four times as far to come, he reached Londinium first. He thought quickly
– it was a town of merchants and citizens, not soldiers, there was no way they could hold it against the Britons – it must
be sacrificed. he gave orders for the town to be evacuated –they should travel up the river Tamesis to Silchester, in the
kingdom of the Regnenses under the care of their king Cogidubnus, one of the British tribes most loyal to the Romans.
The people hid what treasure they could and fled, but some were too slow, or could not bear to leave their homes – when
the Britons finally arrived, thirsty for blood, they found their victims – Roman citizens – hateful oppressors, Britons who
had lived alongside them – despicable traitors – both fell to British swords – but death was not enough – their bodies
were mutilated, shamed in death – the breasts of the women were cut off and sewn into their mouths, people were
impaled and left as horrible reminders of the carnage. And everywhere the fires raged. The new town of Londinium
– scarcely 10 years old, scarcely 10,000 inhabitants - was razed to the ground.
Thirsty for more vengeance and more plunder, the British tribes turned north to nother Romanised town. It fell to fire
and the sword.
Meanwhile, the governor had met with his army marching south. He was looking for a site where he might fight the
rebels on his own terms. And in the middle of Britain, he found it – a wooded ridge in a V-shape, where his troops might
have the upper ground, with a thick forest behind them to prevent an attack from the rear and a narrow way up to the
ridge, so the Britons could not come all at once at them. There he waited and there he lured the Britons to him.
The British tribes came, still with Boudica – unscathed – at their head – their war goddess, the one who had led them
to victory – now they came, unconquerable, heros and heroines to drive the Romans from their land – and not just the
72
warriors, they brought their families and their cattle with them and waggons heaped with plunder from the towns they
Appendix.
had destroyed. They were so sure of victory now.
The two armies met on the site the governor had picked out. The night before the battle, perhaps 1,000 fires burnt in
the Roman camp, with 10 nervous, battle-weary soldiers grouped around each one. But if there were 1,000 fires on the
ridge, in the British camp, perhaps 10,000 fires burnt bright with hopes of victory, of ridding their land once and for all
of the hated Romans.
As dawn broke, the governor gathered his army. And across the plain, Boudica rallied her troops. And there, on the
dawn of the great battle, this man and this woman spoke, each to their own people.
And we’re going to pause there in our story, on the dawn of the battle.
Wrap up and end of story (if running short of time/concentration, I sometimes shorten this a bit)
Final Q: who do you think won the battle? Hands up for the Britons. Hands up for the Romans.
So to finish the story… the Roman army’s superior armour, discipline and formation won out over the wild, disorgan-
ised, unarmed Britons – as the Britons fled, they became entangled in their own wagons and cattle, adding to the carnage.
The revolt of the British tribes was crushed. It is said that Boudica herself survived the battle, but was so ashamed at
the defeat of her people, she felt that she had nothing left to live for and she would not let herself be taken prisoner by
the Romans, so she swallowed poison and died. We don’t know what happened to her daughters – perhaps they were
poisoned too, perhaps they escaped into hiding...
As for Suetonius, he took vengeance on the tribes who had rebelled – not only did they suffer because they had planted
no crops that year, their land was divided up, Roman forts were built in the east to keep them under control and the
Britons were forced to work as slaves to rebuild the towns that had been destroyed into the great Roman cities of the
province of Britain. But he didn’t last long as governor – it was felt in Rome that his approach was too harsh and military
and he was soon replaced.
But although Boudica died and her people were defeated, her story survived and much later, it was rediscovered and
retold in many different ways and so she lives on in the hearts of the people of Britain. Today, hardly anyone has heard
of Cartimandua, the client-queen who was friendly to the Romans, or of Suetonius Paulinus who so effectively crushed
the revolt, but many many people have heard of Boudica, the warrior queen, the one who brought victory and hope of
freedom to her people, even if it was only for a short while.

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Building Echoes. The Role of Storytelling in Museums and Galleries.

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MA Museums and Galleries in Education.

Building Echoes. The role of Storytelling in Museums and Galleries.

Maria del Carmen Villaseñor Ferrer.

issues of storytelling in modern paradigms and theories developed in museums.

learning experiences to their visitors.

exemplify one way to use storytelling in museums.

Chapter 1 What is Storytelling? 08

Chapter 2 Storytelling and Contemporary Issues. 14

Storytelling and Postmodernism. 15

Storytelling and Identity. 23

Storytelling and Learning. 26

Chapter 3 Storytelling in Museums and Galleries. 32

Storytelling in the Constructivist Museum and in the Postmodern Paradigm. 40

Fiction or Fact in Museums’ or Galleries’ Storytelling. 46

Storytelling in Three Different Contexts. 48

Storytelling within Historical and Ethnographic Collections. 48

Storytelling within Art Collections. 49

Storytelling in Science Centres. 50

Chapter 4 Boudica’s Story at the Museum of London. 51

Chapter 5 Conclusions and Considerations. 57

imagination, interpretations and meaning-making.

characteristics of an inclusive museum.

audiences, if complemented by other interpretative resources in museums and galleries.

of museums and galleries.

What is story telling?

What is story telling?

What is story telling?

meaning-making (in Corominas 2006: 3)1.

What is story telling?

those actions and feelings. (Ibid.: 5).

the processes of communication in which we become involved in our daily lives.

Storytelling as the communication of an experience is simultaneously the expression of an experience and

deal with them.

What is story telling?

storytelling: playing invaluable archiving roles. (Johnsson, 2006:5).

and expression as ‘how experience is framed and articulated’ (5).

what has been experienced. (Turner and Bruner, 1986: 5).

What is story telling?

it carefully we may notice that it is always richer.

Storytelling and contemporary issues.

Storytelling and contemporary issues.

distinguish it in contemporary society.

is one of the most common ways people can achieve that.

Storytelling and contemporary issues.

(Quayson, 2000: 140).

perceptions are welcome to understand and represent reality.

of a pilgrim settlement in Massachusetts (30).

Storytelling and contemporary issues.

other ways of grasping reality and communicating it have been revalued.

answers are what we are seeking.

which to speak or act. (Gough, 1993: 621).

Storytelling and contemporary issues.

are attempting to become more socially responsible.

place and coexist.

Therefore intersubjectivity as the consensus of meaning can be reached in dialogical relations.

interpret the reality.

their human characteristics.

of education - arises as a main discussion.

Storytelling and contemporary issues.

could be less true, however.

The next two quotations illustrate this statement: