Participatory Storytelling is the intersection of story, play, and community.

Participatory storytelling is a way of looking at storytelling that acknowledges the importance of play and community. It is a critical framework for analyzing storytelling media, from traditional storytelling to video games, with an eye on its ability to include the audience in the storytelling process. It is also a goal of story as conversation, where a storyteller and her community play together in the creation of story.

The roots of our participatory storytelling theory can be found in the whitepaper, Games and Storytelling, by Corvus Elrod. Continued thoughts on the topic can be found on Corvus’ blog, Man Bytes Blog. Participatory storytelling is also the guiding principle of Zakelro Story Studio and we hope you’ll find that it is reflected throughout all of our projects.