Tag: memory

creativity

Your story is not about you

Christa Avampato
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Had the most fascinating conversation with an expert in audience segmentation who is an oceanographer and thinks deeply about climate change communications. For our climate message to reach someone in a way that impacts their behavior, he said we need to be entrenched in the minds of the audience member we want to reach and be willing to change our story and language so it is created in that audience member’s mind in the way we want and need it to be. In this way, our story is not our story in the traditional sense. Our story is the imprint we want the audience member to experience and visualize when they hear our story.

He gave me this analogy: if someone wants to send a microwave signal across the city of Los Angeles, that signal will be distorted and filtered between the start and end points. Therefore, the person sending the signal needs to re-engineer the signal they send so the signal at the end point is what they want it to be.

Our stories are no different. They are filtered through an audience member’s language, prior life experience, biases, hopes, wants, needs, and fears. This is information that isn’t and can’t be aligned with an audience member’s base demographics that are easy to collect. Understanding an audience member on this level requires deep, intense, curious, and radically empathetic listening, a skill that is sadly in short supply in today’s world.

We also need to let go of the idea that there is one story to communicate one goal or one experience to a general audience. This understanding of the audience requires us as storytellers in any form to develop a library of stories that will reach audiences that are more thoroughly and thoughtfully segmented.

How to do this is the crux of my dissertation for University of Cambridge. I don’t know the answers yet, but I’m excited to find out as this dissertation unfolds. My hope is that my research will move the ball forward for the climate community in a way that benefits all beings.

creativity

In the pause: A life in moments

Christa Avampato

unnamed“We do not remember days. We remember moments.” ~Cesare Pavese

I passed by this sign on the street about a month ago, and it’s message hit me so hard my eyes teared up. I was especially struck by this line: “In true New York fashion, friendships were created here that crossed all barriers, and allowed strangers to become family. Like its namesake in Paris, our Barbès became a melting pot, one that celebrates all that is good in New York City and all that is good in America.”

A month later, I’m still think about this message to take a moment to have a moment that we will treasure long after the moment has passed. This is a note of thanks from the owners and staff of Barbès Restaurant in midtown that’s closing because the building is being knocked down. This happens a lot in New York. We tear things down. We build new things. People arrive. People leave. The constant turnover of places and people is a way of life here.

But something about this particular note hit me hard. The sentiment, gratitude, and deep sadness of the situation was so authentic in this simple sign taped to the window. And despite the sorrow at the end of its life, there was joy and gratitude. I looked in, and saw many people of all different ages, colors, and faiths enjoying a meal there. They were having a moment, made all the more poignant by the fact that this place would no longer exist in a very short time. It would live only in their memories. And I think that’s the very best we can to do with our time—to create memories that will outlast us by welcoming people into our lives.