Stories Keep Giving
Advertising the Session at the International Fundraising Conference
As I sit writing this now, I confess I am feeling a little frustrated… I came down to the basement studio to record a script however it seems like the plumbers working next door have other ideas and the intermittent drilling is a challenge. I am not saying that there weren’t challenges in BBC studios - you could detect the tube in the basement studios - but it was less of a problem.
However to move to the title of this blog post! I was fortunate enough recently to go to Amsterdam and an International Fundraising Conference where I was co-presenting on a session called ‘Harnessing the Power of Stories’. It drew on many years experience working on the BBC Radio 4 Appeal where charities were given 420 words to craft into a 2 min 50 second appeal. (Yes I know that word count sounds a bit precise but trust me - it comes out the right length!) I witnessed many wonderful appeals that led to successful results and sometimes other unexpected bonuses. There was the retired doctor, with a legacy from a friend’s Will to be given to a charity, who was washing up in his kitchen on a Sunday morning and he picked that morning’s appeal to be the recipient for the money.
In the storytelling session we talked about how you find stories, in my experience most charities are sitting on incredible stories but sometimes the ‘curse of knowledge’ means you can take them for granted, they are just what you do and therefore you can forget how powerful they can be. My co-presenter had sat on/forgotten, an extraodinary story that at the time had made him very angry when he was unable to help a child who had called a helpline but once someone helped him to remember it, it had become a very powerful tool.
One of the things we talked about in our session was just the joy of being curious, of asking the next question because often that will lead to stories that keep giving. I am finding this all the time with this podcast. Two examples just from this week. Linda bought me a coffee on the website which was wonderful (it’s hard to describe how good it feels when you see that notification, it’s less the coffee and more that someone is enjoying what you are doing) but even more exciting was that she knew where to buy the Peasgood’s nonsuch apple tree! This is the link if you have been inspired by this story and would like apples the size of small training footballs.
Then there is one of the plant stories that I am working on for the new series in January. As you will know if you are a regular reader, I have recently been recording in the Lake District and the story involves a family. So it was a spine tingling moment this week when I was sent a recording from the Ambleside oral archive of the Grandmother talking about the garden, her family and her life.
So I hope that this story trail will be reflected in the structure of the new series when it begins in January. The plan is that each month there will be a plant story but then hopefully in the same month there will be an Offshoot or short bonus episode because so often there is more to tell. I am thinking of each month as a different chapter with a plant and a story that we can explore.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for me is marketing the podcast. At the fundraising conference, over breakfast, I sat next to a lady from Berlin who listens to podcasts and is a gardener and she said: “how would I find you” or perhaps even “how would you find me”? Of course I gave her a card but she has a point. So I will be asking all of you who are so kind as to read this every week if you can help just by sharing the podcast episodes with friends or putting it on your Facebook page or telling me if you think there is a gardening group or society that might be interested, who you think I should contact.
In the meantime I will look for a gap in the drilling and attempt to record the bonus Topiary episode which will be landing next Friday.