The Storyline Group

The Storyline Group is an engaging technique that helps tell a story about a group experience to encourage collaboration and sharpen memory.

Draw an imaginary (a straight) timeline on the ground in front of your group, representing the beginning and end of a particular experience. Explain that you would like your group to work together to re-tell the story of their experience, fact by fact, where every moment is situated somewhere along the line.

To start, invite one volunteer to step forward and stand on that part of the line that represents when a particular memory (of theirs) occurred. When they arrive on their spot, ask this person to briefly recount (aloud) their memory to the rest of the group.

Next, invite a second person to stand on the line representing another memory of something that happened in the experience, standing to the left or right of the first person. Then, as will be repeated each time someone new joins the line, ask these two people to briefly recount their memories starting with the earliest recalled fact through to the last.

Continue to invite more people, one at a time, to add to this emerging timeline of memories. Bit by bit the storyline is populated with as many of the facts of what happened representing this group’s experience.

As soon as everyone from your group has joined the storyline, invite them for one final time, to briefly re-state their facts to tell their story from the beginning to the end.

You are now ready to dive a little deeper, to more fully understand what these facts mean.

The topics of this publication: integration, interactions, memory, foster relationships, collaboration