Telling tales for a change

How Swedish storyteller Per Grankvist is trying to change the narrative around cities

Swedish storyteller, Per Grankvist. Street art, Hackney.

In his book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall argues that our desire for stories springs from a profound human need to give meaning to our lives. Gottschall writes that humans tell stories because our minds are “allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence”. We cannot accept that our lives are accidental. We don’t want to believe we are living through a series of random events and so we create stories to shape and give meaning to the chaos.

This is where someone like storyteller Per Grankvist comes in. Grankvist is a Swedish journalist who specialises in talking and writing about sustainable lifestyles and has written several books on human behaviour and sustainability. He has been dubbed one of the best storytellers in Swedish media for his ability to explain complicated things in an entertaining way.

He has also been appointed Chief Storyteller for Viable Cities, a project designed to encourage sustainable living in cities. His new job is all about using stories to make us think about living in the city differently, and ultimately, to change the way we behave. If we believe that our actions have consequences, we are more likely to think about what we do. Gottschall says that stories always have a moral element, but telling stories isn’t just about moralising or shaming us into doing the right thing, it is about making us engage with something on an emotional level.

That’s the theory anyway, and it’s why we’re giving Grankvist a shout out on this blog. Espresso and Notebook is interested in how the stories we read, write and watch shape our world, our city streets and even nature, and how these places gives rise to different types of stories.

Grankvist rejects the idea of a single unifying story, especially in today’s fragmented society. At the moment, he says, his goal is to create a sort of framework for telling multiple stories.

He envisions a process where citizens can be involved in “co-creating the stories about desires, human needs, underlying problems and possible solutions a city might face”. He also hopes that the collections of stories generated will be used to help give us a better understanding of different perspectives, encourage citizens to engage with their environment, and find solutions that will satisfy the needs of as many as possible.

Effectively, by encouraging us to create our own stories about the cities we live in, he is also encouraging people to take an active role in thinking about how to make the city more sustainable, rather than simply telling people to follow rules that are imposed from above.

Telling stories might seem an odd way to tackle an urgent crisis like climate change, but according to Grankvist, stories play a vital role because people find it hard to engage with facts on their own. His job, he says, is to help people to connect emotionally to the need for change and to ways of changing. “When they emotionally connect with an issue, then they engage.”

You can read more about Grankvist and Viable Cities here.

Grankvist rejects the idea of a single unifying story… his goal is to create a sort of framework for telling multiple stories.