Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group, shared in his most recent blog-post his fascination for storytelling. In fact he likes to listen to other people’s stories, and telling a few of his own so much, that he commissioned a Aragorn Dick-Read, a local artist from Necker-Island, to create an outstanding fireball where he can gather around in the evenings on the Virgin British Island.
Telling a story is one of the best ways we have of coming up with new ideas, and also of learning about each other and our world. It’s been happening since humans first inhabited the earth. (Richard Branson)
Why storytelling is so important for our culture has been studied amongst others by Polly Wiessner, anthropologist at the University of Utah. He suggested that by extending the day longer into the night by sitting around a campfire, the culture of ancient people changed. Polly studied the Ju/’hoan people of Namibia and Botswana and discovered that their evening conversations differed enormously from their daytime discussions.
Also Bettina, founder of the ILF, is a great supporter of storytelling.
“Bettina has realised that the beauty of story telling is – well, one of them – that it is not about telling other people a story, which can be a little condescending sometimes, it is much more an invitation.”
She has highlighted this in her presentation for Amplify talks. You can listen to the full presentation here:
Original article published on Virgin by Richard Branson on the 13th of April 2015. Read full article here