Powerful stories offer us the opportunity to live vicariously through another’s experience. With stories, we discover how to listen, learn and share, and that we have more in common than we think. Stories reflect the human condition with narratives steeped in what connects rather than what separates us.
While around the world environment, politics and climate shape people’s lives, the widely travelled Brian Cracknell finds people very similar in their aims and aspirations. While cultures differ, the deep-seated hopes, dreams and desires remain the same.
As an impressionable 11-year-old, Brian set off on his first trip abroad on a cruise with his schoolmates sailing up Norway’s fjords. Since then he’s never stopped travelling: he’s been a lecturer in Azerbaijan, trained trainers in Ufa in the Urals and in post-tsunami Aceh, and taught English in coastal Catalonia. In June, he led an international team assessing a project in Iran.
“No matter where I am, I am still struck by how ordinary people’s day-to-day concerns are not that different.” With that as a premise, Brian hopes LW’s Sustainable Stories will offer innovative ways to inspire us to live sustainable lives, “Not only to keep us going, but to achieve our respective goals without causing harm to other people or the environment.”
”It’s vital that we provide stories that are fresh, insightful and instructional – embodying a sustainable way of doing things in fresh contexts.” He insists that it’s simply not something you do to ‘go green’. In line with LW’s mission to help people develop through learning, these stories will seek to inform. “We need to collectively govern our worst instincts with a sustainable framework.” One way to protect hard-won peace and prosperity from threat is to tell powerful stories. “Why are there so many stories focussed on saving the world?” He cites Hollywood blockbusters and super-heroes such as the Avengers, Iron Man and the Dark Knight. “The themes are often similar. We’ve never had such a plethora of save-the-world stories.” For Brian, it reflects the fact that we have put ourselves in a position where we can destroy the world many times over.
Brian considers the Western business model, with its perpetual emphasis on the individual, a failed template. “We can’t just do what we want, what we sometimes equate with being free to choose. More often than not, that impinges on somebody else’s needs.”
The LW Sustainable Stories series, Brian stresses, is not about being fashionable or faddish. “These stories will have lasting value, seeking to highlight actions that people are taking to sustain themselves, their communities and their projects.”
LW’s vision is to be learning, leading and lasting, themes that will be reiterated and reflected in the stories. They will reflect what he, the company and its associates believe in. “It is what we have done with all our learning provisions in the last 20 years. Readers will hopefully find the stories of lasting value, both inspiring and memorable. Our stories must show innovation, insight or a practical application. People should be motivated by our stories to do something.”
“As we grow more affluent and ‘progressive,’” says Brian, “we need to be mindful.” He points out that the poor and the under-privileged are often better at sustainability. In 2011, over one billion people lived on less than USD 1.25 per day. “They can’t survive unless they are very thrifty and well immersed in the circular economy.” For example, in Kerala where the coconut trees still sustain her people, from providing coconut milk to coir ropes.
Learning could take place on the strength, for instance, of someone who has learned to go back to the circular economy. “Perhaps about a woman who has leant a trade so that she can carry on a small business or project to support her family.”
Stories echo a deep yearning, whether for peace, prosperity or pleasure. More than anything, Brian feels stories teach us human resilience. “With Language Works’ newly launched Sustainable Stories we’d like to connect these lives in a more meaningful, mindful way. Powerfully.”
