The most powerful person in the world is the story teller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. – Steve Jobs

For thousands of years, since the first cave paintings were discovered, telling stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods. Stories are not a recitation of facts, but integrate human perspective and emotion to create affectiveness.

Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever. – Native American Proverb

Regenerative thinking identifies “three lines” of impact for the work in which we engage. The first line is individual personal development, and story creation provides a way for us to understand and structure experience. The second line, engaging the co-creators of work, uses story to ensure alignment around principles, values and purpose. Story of Place and stories of history define and inform the project process.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. – Robert McKee

7group actively integrates story into our process – facilitating project teams to collectively define project purpose, refine guiding principles for action and to originate design options.

The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories. – Mary Catherine Bateson

The third line level extends the work beyond the individual and co-creative stakeholder teams to the broader world, effectively extending the reach and power of project work, in effect amplifying the power of the project process to create awareness and inspire action in the world.

A story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience. – Uri Hasson, Princeton

Story has progressed through cave paintings, oral tradition, the written and printed word to the currency of visual moving images. Digital distribution via the internet has made the video story ubiquitous and universally accessible.

Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls. – Frank Darabont

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the worth of video stories?

A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. – James McQuivey, Forrester Research

7group has unique and deep experience creating video stories that communicate concepts and share understanding. Common to our video work are these principles:

• story is structure – how a story is structured reinforces the understanding of content.

Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.”– Jean Luc Godard

Screenplays are structure, and that’s all they are. The quality of writing – which is crucial in almost every other form of literature – is not what makes a screenplay work. Structure isn’t anything else but telling the story, starting as late as possible, starting each scene as late as possible. You don’t want to begin with “Once upon a time,” because the audience gets antsy. – William Goldman, screenwriter

• real-people authenticity – the incorporation of human emotion and energy makes a story relatable on a human level. Integrating authentic, real people perspectives into an emotionally progressive structure makes story compelling and remembered.

Stories create community, enable us to see through the eyes of other people, and open us to the claims of others. – Peter Forbes

• extend the work you do.

Tell a relevant, targeted, transparent story, and the whole world will share it. – Randall Lane

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. – Rudyard Kipling

7group is participating in the development of a non-profit entity – ImpactStory – that will develop and actively distribute a library of short video stories, each focused on a built environment project of significance in terms of climate change, social import, regenerative thinking. Working with BuildingGreen, the non-profit will discover, produce and distribute meaningful videos.

If you’re going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all. – Joseph Campbell

We invite you to come along with 7group as we seek to tell your story. Visit our latest Your Story web page for more information and examples of our work.

We will be unveiling, over the next couple of months, the specific areas where we can help you to seek the “difference that makes a difference” in the words of Gregory Bateson. Our fondest desire is to help you to manifest the life affirming change you wish to see in the world. Visit sevengroup.com.

What do you seek to transform?

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