Mr David Denborough

Collective narrative practices
in response to trauma
David Denborough
Dulwich Centre Foundation

• Welcome
• Introducing key principles through
example of working with an individual in an
isolated context – how can collective
narrative practices be used in this context?
• Collective documentation of skills and
knowledges
• Linking storylines and songlines
• Tree of Life: an approach to working with
vulnerable children

Key principles:
• To find a way to richly acknowledge the
real effects of the hardship/abuse
• To listen for double-storied accounts –
storyline of hardship AND storyline of what
people give value to (responses to
hardship, skills and knowledge)
• To link lives and experiences to some sort
of collective
• To enable individuals, groups,
communities to make a contribution to the
lives of others

Nine years old, nine years young
Nine years old
Nine years young
First locked up in a boys’ home
40 years on
Looking back now
I don’t know how that kid survived
Was just life at nine

Just had to adapt
Just had to cope
Find ways to get by in the institution
They did things to him
He did not want to do
He knew it was wrong
He knew it then

When he was nine years old
Nine years young
First locked up in a boys’ home
40 years on
Looking back now
I don’t know how that kid survived
Was just life at nine
He knew he had to keep it quiet
Make sure his parents did not know
But 40 years on it’s time for speaking
He knows

• To conceive of the person/people meeting
with us as representing a social issue
• To enable the person/people to join a
collective endeavour in addressing, in
some local way, this social issue
• To enable people to speak through us not
just to us

1. The name of a special skill, knowledge,
practice or value that gets you or your family
through hard times
2. A story about this skill, knowledge, practice or
value, a time it made a difference to you or
others
3. The history of this skill, knowledge, practice or
value: how long has this been with you, who
did you learn it from/with?
4. Is this linked in some way to collective
traditions (familial/community) and/or cultural
traditions? Are their proverbs, sayings,
stories, songs, images from your family,
community and/or culture with which these
skills and knowledges are linked?

Ibuka: ‘Remember’
National association of genocide
survivors in Rwanda

Kaboyi
Benoit

‘the invention of unity in diversity’
Paulo Freire (1994, p.157)
Pedagogy of hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the oppressed.
New York: Continuum.

‘communitas’ Victor Turner
a shared sense of unity among
individuals which …
‘preserve individual distinctiveness’
‘is not a merging in fantasy’
do not depend on ‘in-group versus outgroup’
opposition
Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure.
New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Producing and documenting a ‘social
memory’ of resistance and sustenance:
‘They will remember that we were sold
but they won’t remember that we were
strong. They will remember that we
were bought, but not that we were
brave’
William Prescott

• Listening for the shared values,
the self-transcending ideals, that
are implicit within survivors’
expressions of anguish

• Noticing and acknowledging
ways in which survivors have
carried on these ideals

• Making it possible for
survivors to name these
shared ideals

• Inviting survivors to tell stories
about the social histories of these
ideals, where they come from,
and with whom they are shared

• Creating contexts in which
survivors can contribute to the
perpetuation of these shared
ideals

Yia Marra: Good stories
that make spirits strong

The Tree of Life
narrative
approach: born
from a
collaboration
between REPSSI
and Dulwich
Centre Foundation
and between
Ncazelo Ncube &
David Denborough

Key principles:
* ‘Riverbank’ position
* People always respond
* Implicit in responses are skills,
abilities and special knowledges
* There is always a social history to
these
* Rich story development

Part One
- Drawing a Tree of Life
- Riverbank position

Roots: Where we come from
– rich textual heritage

Ground:
Where we live, what we do each day

Trunk: Our skills, values
- what people value/care about
- think collectively
- through the eyes of others
- trace the histories
- rich stories

Branches
Our hopes, dreams & wishes
- combination of big hopes and
smaller
- self, family, community
- hopes have a history (trace them!)

Leaves: Those who are special
to us
- Alive or no longer living

Fruits
What those special people have
given to us
Seeds
Gifts we wish to give to others

Part Two: Forest of life
- Moving from individual to
collective

Part Three: The storms of life
- Collective disclosure
- Externalising the problem

Part Four: Celebration,
certificates & song

Enabling contribution

Dulwich Centre Foundation
www.dulwichcentre.com.au
dulwich@dulwichcentre.com.au
www.narrativetherapylibrary.com
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