The Centre’s storytelling research has made a significant and wide-reaching impact on civil society and cultural life by taking storytelling (in all its diverse forms) out into a range of communities and organisations. Our research has helped enrich the lives and imaginations of the people and organisations with whom we have worked, providing them with opportunities for personal expression and creativity.

Our strong collaborative ethos of working in partnership with diverse social organisations and charities, often at grass roots level, has been central to our ability to bring about change through renewed understanding of different lives and voices. In the process, our research has also delivered tangible educational and economic benefits by transferring technical skills from our research centre to the citizens and communities with whom we have worked.

Rooted in the conviction that storytelling is a creative practice that can have a positive impact on quality of life and mutual understanding in civil society, our research has also had an impact in policy making by both providing powerful evidence of the effects of policy decisions and debates on the lives of ordinary people and by advocating for the value of creative arts practice as a process that helps build individual and community assets, by fostering social inclinations and skills critical to civic renewal.