Long Story Short... 🗣️
Yesterday was a movie
blog.sixty-three // Yesterday, we welcomed over fifty-five artists, filmmakers, and creators to our full-day storytelling event, Short Story Long.
We kicked off the day with three goals for our attendees:
Leave with a new friend (or two)
Leave feeling hopeful, and inspired
Leave with a damn good story to tell
Scroll down for a recap of the day’s festivities. Before we get there, however, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to Colleen Yu, our partner-in-crime. She’s built something special with her “Let’s Ripple” event series, and we were honored to bring our communities together, right here in Chicago.
Additionally, thanks to our partners Notion, Brevitē, and 3rd Space Social for supporting this event! We couldn’t have made this possible without you.
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, we talked with director Raymond Tisch about saying goodbye—and how storytelling defines how he sees himself. You can read it here.
Sponsored by Notion
We Built This Entire Event on Notion 🧱
No, we’re not joking.
From our first call with Colleen two months ago up until the day of Short Story Long, we used Notion to…
ideate our storytelling-centric theme
delegate and manage tasks
and organize our full event schedule.
But we don’t just use the productivity tool for events. The Creator Mag roadmap (think how we manage stories and videos at various stages in the editing process) lives in our Notion workspace, where we share projects and collaborate across our team.
Readers get up to 1 year of free Notion Plus—get started on Notion today.
On Saturday, we kicked things off with a brief introduction: who we were; why Colleen and our team joined forces; and how the universal language of storytelling can help build bridges during increasingly divided times.
Next, we introduced Scott Whitehair. Scott is an award-winning storyteller and the producer/host of This Much Is True, Chicago’s longest-running verbal storytelling event.
He’s also worked with everyone from writers to SNL alums to even chefs to help tell their stories, and he walked our entire group through a workshop—touching on the importance of everything from embracing vulnerability to prioritizing body language.
Afterwards, we split up into seven breakout groups, giving attendees an icebreaker to start: What was the last great walk you took around your neighborhood?
From there, we moved into paired storytelling, allotting time for members of each group to practice their unique story with one-to-two other people. Some folks traded ideas and organized their thoughts in notebooks; others got their reps in and spoke their stories out loud for the first time.
We followed up our breakouts with a quick lunch…then, an open mic. We had time for eight attendees to share their stories in front of the whole room, and the variety was quite incredible.
One person talked about the time he got kidnapped. Another walked us through the reasons she bought a boomerang. One more spoke on how his addiction to Pokémon Cards has affected his relationships.
I’m summarizing here, of course. You had to be there. But what was even better than the stories themselves (which were great!) was the energy of the crowd.
If there was a theme of the day, it was that perfectionism is the enemy. When someone stumbled, the entire crowd cheered them on, encouraging them to keep going. I may be biased, yet I think it drew us all a little bit closer, which was cool to experience.
Upon wrapping things up, we kicked it over to our final room of the day, which featured intimate musical performances from two Chicago natives: rapper, poet, and activist The Third, and multi-instrumental singer Gayun Cannon.* Both of them have a penchant for weaving stories into their lyrics beautifully, and the entire audience was locked in.
All in all, between the Pre-Party at our studio Friday night, Long Story Short throughout the day Saturday, and a small group that popped out to Navy Pier to watch Saturday night’s fireworks, it was a heckuva weekend.** Head on over to our Instagram for a closer look at the festivities—we’ve been resharing stories from everyone who attended and tagged us!
Which brings me to my last point: While we may have organized the event, you all are the ones who made it great. The team is collectively pretty tired, yet we’re feeling quite grateful for the thought and energy everyone brought into the room.
We can’t wait to run it back in some way, shape, or form. In the meantime, we hope you left with a new friend, a feeling of hope, and a damn good story to tell.
Take any photos at Short Story Long? Feel free to send our way—we’d love to feature them in our next blog.
Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.
* Appreciate the team at 800 West Fulton (the building where we hosted) for letting us use the entire second floor! The Study made for a fun spot for a mini-concert.
** Some folks even got breakfast and did a photo walk today!
the best team. the best energy.
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