A story about storytelling: enhancement of community participation through catalytic storytelling

This article presents a new approach to stimulate conversations among community members to mobilize resources and improve community well-being. The approach emerged during an asset mapping study in a school district in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona when the researchers realized that they could not on their own capture the broad range of diversity within a community. The approach, which the authors later came to call catalytic storytelling, is interpreted in light of asset-based community development, appreciative inquiry, and community storytelling traditions. It requires the researcher to adopt an ambiguous position as insider–outsider, which was described by Dwyer and Buckle in 2009. Furthermore, catalytic storytelling purports that reports written by community development researchers and community organizers should pose key questions to community members in addition to summarizing main stories derived from community conversations.