Executive Summary

Story Story Supper is a collective listening and eating experience. Participants were invited to collectively listen to story story pod - an immersive audio drama in a physical space. Through deep listening, participants were transported to a key historical event in Black history. The podcast utilises immersive soundscapes, powerful storytelling and powerful soundscapes to situate listeners within historical encounters.

Eating and listening are communal experiences that are often taken for granted. During my experience as a co-convener with Naomi de la tour in the Change Module, I co-led a class on attention and noticing. A key observation from this class was the importance of listening and being present in a world that constantly demands our attention.

Leading up to the event, I developed playful pedagogies such as ice-breakers, quizzes and storytelling prompts that evoked nostalgia and encourage playfulness, messiness and child-likeness. Whilst history is associated with the past, Black feminist scholars have emphasised the linearity of time. Similarly, this event (by evoking the past) encourages participants to digest time and reflect on how they can shape their present and futures as agents of change. As Octavia Butler remarks, ‘all that you touch to change’. By awakening their senses (taste, touch, sights, smells and sounds), this event created a space for critical reflection and knowledge-sharing.

The feedback (evidenced in voice notes and images ) are proof of its co-creative and interdisciplinary spirit. I am thankful to IATL Project Support for nourishing this seed and to everyone who supported this project.