Teaching storytelling at the BBC

Not many people can say their teenage dreams came true at the age of 17, but mine did: I got to co-present BBC Essex’s Saturday evening show. I loved it! I played my own records and interviewed my idols, like Billy Bragg.

30 years later I returned to the BBC to run a series of storytelling workshops. The brief was to open journalists’ eyes to fresh ways of telling stories. I travelled all around the country, from London to Belfast, Birmingham to Southampton, Cardiff to Glasgow. Attendees came from as far afield as Ukraine, Russia and India.

My favourite part of the day-long workshop was when I’d send participants out on to the streets for an exercise called ‘Story Safari.’ It was such a simple exercise and it always yielded great results. An attendee in Glasgow told me she’d learned more in a 30-minute neighbourhood walk than she had in 25 years driving through it.

That was ten years ago now. The examples of best-practice stories that I pulled together for the BBC project are still used by me in my storytelling work today.

Now more than ever we need stories to humanise the work we do; to connect us; to make our ideas stick.

The storytelling sessions I run today include stand-alone ‘Lunch & Learns’ as well as a training series for leadership teams. Recent clients include Ericsson, Fox Agency, The John Lewis Partnership and The Union for International Cancer Control.

Teams really benefit from understanding the power of stories: if you're interested in how it can help you, drop me a line. I’d love the chance of a chat: hello@iansanders.com

And here’s what I wrote on the BBC Academy blog ten years ago about telling stories differently