Oral Storytelling is the long held practice of verbally sharing stories, myths, histories, and experiences, often passed down through generations to preserve culture, teach values, and foster communal connection.
Voice of Witness is a nonprofit which uses oral history to amplify the lived experiences of communities impacted by systemic injustice. They assert that storytelling can be used as a form of documentation as well as resistance.
Other platforms such as StoryCorps or The Moth allow individuals to share stories that humanize social issues, spark dialogue, and preserve cultural memory in accessible digital forms.
In UNESCO Story Circles, participants from diverse backgrounds share personal, often meaningful stories related to identity, culture, belonging, or conflict, finding common threads while building empathy, compassion, and cross-cultural understanding.
Narrative Medicine integrates storytelling into clinical practice, helping medical professionals better understand patients' experiences and reframe suffering through human connection and interpretive care.
Some hospitals and treatment centers have narrative medicine practitioners who through the process of storytelling, listening, and writing, support patients in reflecting on their journeys as they integrate their health realities into their identities and lives’ meanings.
Witness Literature is a type of writing which documents and gives voice to experiences of trauma, violence, and social injustice, often focusing on the perspectives of those directly impacted by such events. It is writing that can feel like a blend of reporting and lyrical prose, bringing poetic attention to headline news topics that are often tragic and shallow and can provide healing to the writer and the reader.
Ava Homa’s novel Daughters of Smoke and Fire serves as an example of witness literature, blending personal and political narrative to bear testimony to the Kurdish struggle for identity and justice while offering readers an intimate lens into the cost of systemic oppression.
Narrative Mediation is a conflict resolution approach that views conflict as a clash of personal and cultural stories. Rather than focusing solely on facts or assigning blame, narrative mediation helps participants externalize the conflict, reflect on the roles they've adopted within the conflict narrative, and co-create new stories that offer possibilities for resolution, understanding, and growth. This approach is rooted in the belief that identities and relationships are shaped through storytelling—and that by re-authoring these stories, people can transform how they relate to themselves and one another.