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StoryMuse helps foster storytelling
with a purpose
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StoryMuse partnered with Tronzai Media to help
Pittsburgh community members tell their stories. (Photo
by Rikki Brew/Envisioning Freedom Photography)
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tD CAFE&SYNCHRONI4
|jPRIL30, 2023 1:30 FJ
•jk Richie
By Clare S. Richie
Storytelling was a steady presence in
Shannon Turner’s life — in school clubs,
at summer camp, at work — but the 2016
presidential election fallout motivated her
to make storytelling her focus.
“It felt like I’d been ignoring a calling
to help us hear each other,” Turner said.
“So, I left my job with $4,000 in the bank,
six-weeks notice, and never looked back.”
And StoryMuse was born. The
organization offers private coaching,
workshops, residencies, content
development, and more for individuals as
well as teams and communities.
Turner got her first major contract with
the Georgia Council on Developmental
Disabilities (GCDD) While there, she
developed profile stories, a podcast, and
short documentary films culminating
in a six-city tour to help individuals
with intellectual and developmental
disabilities raise their voices to advocate
for government funding needed to live
independently in their communities.
One of her most recent assignments
was with Zaban, the only couples'shelter
in Atlanta. Turner worked with Deborah
Hendreth and Percy Cooper — who have
been together eight years —after they were
evicted from their home earlier this year.
“This is my first time in a shelter,”
Cooper said. “We are moving to manage
a personal care home. It’s a live-in facility
and we get room and board — so we can
Chris Gray
Carapace
storytelling
at Manuel’s
Tavern. (Photo
by Andrew
give back.”
At a recent Zaban fundraising event,
Hendreth used what Turner had taught her
to tell the crowd how she and Cooper had
met.
“One day at the bus stop, I was patting
my head, when a man [Cooper] asked me
what was wrong. I said my scalp was so
tender, burning from surgery. He said his
wife had died from the same thing a few
years prior.”
Hendreth spent weeks in the hospital
and Cooper was there for her when she got
out.
'‘“StepyMuse
founder
Shannon
Turner, right,
uses‘life maps’
to help people
''—-visualize the
1 stories they
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Turner also helped coach Zaban
volunteer Keith Yaeger. “Shannon got my
thoughts in order,” Yaeger said. “She said
‘Let’s pick one or two ideas that you are
most comfortable with’... She’s so patient
and gave me direction.”
Turner said everyone has a story to tell.
“It’s your story. You can’t get it wrong,
but you can get it better,” she said. “That’s
what I do. It’s all about building empathy
and connection in a world that’s constantly
distracting us and driving us further apart.”
In 2021, Turner did a six-week
residency in Pittsburgh, the southwest
Atlanta neighborhood which has been
rapidly gentrifying as developers pressure
longtime residents to sell their properties.
“Legacy and newer residents told
summer,
Turner took
over producing
Carapace, a
free event to
tell and hear
stories based
on a theme
every fourth Tuesday at Manuel’s Tavern in
Poncey-Highland.
“This is true-life storytelling with a
room full of strangers who by the end of
the show will know you and you them a
little better,” said Carapace host Cris Gray.
The April “Struck” theme brought
forward tales of a barfight, a girl’s soccer
injury, and a family vacation from an
autistic storyteller, Ronald, who drove all
the way from Stockbridge.
After Ronald’s charming tale of his
family trip to Costa Rica, the crowd
erupted in applause.
“That’s how we learn about each other -
through stories,” Gray said.
Learn more at StoryMuse.net.
stories in pairs
about the
past, present
or future they
would like to
see become
true of the
community,”
Turner said.
Last
10 I JULY 2023
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