Editor’s Comments
Daniel Pink’s Story Suggestions
• Write a mini-saga (extremely short
stories, just fifty words long).
• Enlist in StoryCorps (record your own
with a family member or friend).
• Whip out a tape recorder.
• Visit a storytelling festival.
• Experiment with digital storytelling.
• Read great stories.
Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New
Mind: Moving from the Information
Age to the Conceptual Age, can be
ordered online at www.davisart.com.
The ARTof the Story
“Story is just as integral to the human experience as design.” — Daniel Pink
My life has always been
full of stories. When I
was a child, the bookmobile stopped in front
of my house every other week and
my siblings and I always checked
out the limit of books. The only
time I have been able to stay up all
night was to finish reading a book
because I couldn’t wait until the
next day to find out how the story
ended. Fiction is still my favorite
escape, and I am especially drawn
to artwork that tells stories. My elementary students are always eager to StoryCorps
tell me stories about their artworks, Before we bought our own Airstream
stories that deepen my understand- trailer, I had noticed that Storying of them. Corps, a national project to inspire
and help people to record their
own personal stories, was using an
Airstream as a portable recording
booth. For these stories,
two people record their
conversation, often
answering questions or
remembering a special
time.
StoryCorps stories are
broadcast on National
Public Radio and
archived at the American Folklife Center at
the Library of Congress.
There are two station-
facts and information are immediately available online, the ability to
place these facts in context and to
deliver them with emotional impact
is more important. In other words,
the ability to tell “an emotionally
compelling narrative has become an
essential aptitude.” How better to
do so than through art? This month
we offer many forms of storytelling
through art and invite you and your
students to enter our first digital storytelling contest.
ary StoryBooths in New York City
and two traveling Airstreams, called
MobileBooths. You can make an
appointment at a StoryCorps near
you or check out StoryCorps at
www.storycorps.net and listen for
ideas you can use for recording your
own students’ stories (about art) on
podcasts and digital movies. (Daniel
Pink’s book also recommends StoryCorps.) A simple do-it-yourself guide
(
www.storycorps.net/participate/do-it-yourself_guide/) is very helpful for
making podcasts with your students.
Please keep sharing your students’
stories of art. We will all be richer
for it.
“Story represents a pathway to
understanding that doesn’t run
through the left side of the brain.”
—Daniel Pink
Nancy Walkup, Editor
In A Whole New Mind: Moving
from the Information Age to the
Conceptual Age, author Daniel
Pink considers story as one of six
essential right-brain-directed senses
or aptitudes that are needed for success in our contemporary world,
a time he calls the “Conceptual
Age.” Pink believes that now that
4
