Paul

Advocacy on behalf of libraries and the communities they serve thrives on our ability to tell compelling stories, but we often find ourselves mired in unappealing recitations of facts and figures rather than engaging and inspirational calls to action through storytelling. Join this highly-interactive session—an expanded version of the workshop offered in June 2022 at the California Library Association annual conference, in Sacramento—to explore key elements of storytelling and ways to quickly and effectively apply them to your own advocacy efforts.

Goal:

By participating in this session, you will further hone your ability to inspire positive action through advocacy on behalf of your library and the community you serve.

During the session, you will:

• Explore at least three key elements of storytelling to inspire positive action
• Participate in an exercise to workshop stories that can be incorporated into your work as an advocate for libraries and the communities they serve
• Identify at least one venue (onsite or online) where you can incorporate your story into a library-advocacy effort within the next four weeks

N.B.: Participants are encouraged, but not required, to come to the session with a specific advocacy issue/project in mind so that they can work on a story to support that effort.

Session Facilitator

Paul Signorelli, a storyteller in residence in Arizona State University's ShapingEDU project (reshaping learning in the digital era) and author of "Change the World Using Social Media" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), incorporates storytelling into all his work involving training, teaching, learning, and advocacy to strengthen communities. As Library Advocacy Training Project Manager for the California Library Association, he continues to help develop resources and workshops for library advocates throughout California.

About the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series

This program is part of an ongoing series of monthly online sessions offered through the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series; sessions are generally held online on the second Wednesday of each month, beginning at 10 am PT. The series honors the memory of Ursula Meyer, 1977-78 CLA President, California Library Hall of Fame inductee, longtime director of the Stockton-San Joaquin Public Library, and fierce advocate for library services and intellectual freedom. The Ursula Meyer Fund was established to provide for the training of librarians in all stages of their careers, and library supporters, in political advocacy and political action, in honor of Ursula’s belief that librarians need effective political skills to advocate for library support at all levels of government.