“WeTell Project: Rethinking Storytelling as a Tool for Social Innovation”

The essay introduces the philosophy and main goals of the "WeTell – Storytelling and Civic Engagement" as a research project promoted and supported by the University of Bologna to encourage civic and social engagement among students in a variety of areas of studies within Higher Education by way of researching and exploiting the potentiality of storytelling as an empowering performative practice, using different media and forms of communication. WeTell proposes to boost social innovation starting from a new understanding of the role that the humanities can play at a time of deep cultural change. In particular, it emanates from some core areas that intend to gain (or regain) a functional use within our evolving and complex ecosystem: philology, literary studies, sociolinguistic. The project is conceived in the wake of the UNESCO Global Citizenship Education Guidelines (2014, 2015), starting from a renewed role of Higher Education today. As per UNESCO, “The role of education is moving beyond the development of knowledge and cognitive skills to the building of values, soft skills and attitudes among learners. Education is expected to facilitate international cooperation and promote social transformation in an innovative way towards a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world” (UNESCO GCE, 2014, 11). Consistently, this project translates into examples of good practices to foster social engagement and inclusion, as well as awareness of intercultural successful strategies to forge a new consciousness of what it means to inhabit a global and globalized world. Against such a context, core disciplines within the Humanities become strategic tools for reconsidering free will and civic awareness, reassessing the place that a more conscious and performative storytelling can and must play within our heterogeneous societies. The project has lead to the establishment of a Summer School that addresses some precise questions. How can our students be prepared to face the challenges of a complex society if they are trained only to practice their specific disciplinary knowledge with no real awareness of the richness and diversity already existing within their educational contexts? Should we frame the study of social inclusion and civic engagement only within specific university programs, or should we consider that a horizontal skill to be shared no matter the specific field of study? How can core areas in the Humanities pursue social (and also academic) innovation through a ground-breaking approach to performative storytelling? What is, in fact, performative storytelling but a fertile dialogue across areas of studies that want to go beyond notions and trigger action? Hence, WeTell approaches storytelling as a way to overcome a closed approach to methodological issues, considering method more a tool than a truth.