Today I want to talk to you about the PNI Institute, its history, its ending, and its successor.
(Book update: I am still working on the last chapter. It is shaping up well, though more slowly than expected. I hope to be ready to send the book to my early readers in the next 3-4 weeks. If you are not on the early reader list and want to be, send me an email.)
The rise and fall of the PNI Institute
The PNI Institute was created by myself and three colleagues in the fall of 2014. Our goal was to support and advance participatory narrative inquiry. Over the past six years, our main activity has been a monthly Zoom call. We have had about sixty Zoom calls. Many have been excellent conversations, with lots of attendees, lively discussions, surprising insights, and plenty of camaraderie.
However, the original energy of the group has waned. Two of the four founders dropped out almost immediately (for reasons they could not foresee or change). Myself and the other remaining founder kept the group going for about five years. For the past year or so, it has been mostly me keeping the group going. In collaborative efforts, I believe, whoever does the work should get to say what happens. At this point, I think I have earned the right to decide what happens to the PNI Institute. And I think it's time for a change.
To start, I never liked the name. It has been a thorn in my side all along. It seemed, and still seems, pretentious to call a bunch of people chatting an "Institute." Also, call attendance has been dropping off over the past year or two. Often it is just me and one other person on the call. The calls I looked forward to six years ago have slowly descended into obligations I would rather do without.
None of this is anybody's fault. It's just the normal ebb and flow of a social group.
What should come next?
This fall, I put out a survey to ask people what they thought the PNI Institute should do next. Out of over 130 people "registered" on the site (all of whom got a pleading email), there were 11 responses. From the low response rate, and from the responses themselves, I got the sense that there is only weak interest in the PNI Institute continuing and growing into something bigger.
This lack of interest dovetailed with a concern that has been growing in my mind for the past year or two. I keep seeing people mention PNI as though it belongs to me. As though it is my thing, as though people can use it but can't change it. That was not what I wanted.
I wrote a book about PNI, but I never wanted to own it. I still don't. I want to share it. I want people to join me inside PNI, to work on it with me, to improve it and enlarge it. Of course it will change somewhat as people do that; but I've always been okay with that. I've been hoping to see more books come out about PNI, or at least some book chapters. A few articles and a few Ph.D. dissertations have mentioned PNI. But I had hoped for much more.
One way I can counter the PNI-is-me trend, I think, is to stop talking only about PNI. Having a group that talks only about PNI keeps it separated from other approaches. But the truth is, most of the people who use PNI use it alongside other approaches. Hardly anyone uses it all by itself. I see that as a good thing, and I would like to explore it.
So I have decided that I no longer want to run a group that talks only about PNI. I want to talk about bigger things, wider things, of which PNI is just one part. I think that might be the best way to help the approach survive and grow -- as part of a family of approaches.
A wider view
What should a group that goes beyond PNI talk about? Should we drop the participatory part of it, and open the door to non-participatory, extractive methods? No. I would not want to join such a group. It would suck all the joy out of it for me. Helping ordinary people make sense of their lives, families, communities, and organizations is why I do what I do.
What about a group that discusses participation but without the narrative aspect? Again, I would not be interested in joining such a group. I have a special fondness for stories. And, I believe, they are being used too little to help people and too much to manipulate them. I want to keep talking about helping people work with their own stories.
What about inquiry? Could we talk about participatory story work that does not (necessarily) focus on finding things out?
Of the three possibilities, I am most open to this one. I care about people and I care about stories. I don't care as much about data and trends and proof. Besides, the sensemaking that is at the core of PNI happens whether or not you gather reams of data. I have always seen that part of the work as optional, nice to have, supportive but not central.
Introducing the Participatory Narrative Practitioner Network
I would like to invite you to join a new discussion group: the Participatory Narrative Practitioner Network (PNpn).
In this group we will talk about many approaches to participatory narrative, including: narrative therapy, narrative medicine, narrative coaching, appreciative inquiry, participatory narrative inquiry, oral history, action research, and participatory theatre. (We may change this list as we talk, but that's what we have right now.)
If you are a practitioner or a fan of any of these approaches, we would love to talk to you. Whether participatory narrative is the only thing you do, or whether it is one of many tools in your toolbox, we invite you to join us. You can read more at the group's new web site, pnpnet.org, which I encourage you to look at.
We will continue the same Zoom calls as we had for the PNI Institute,
but our topics will range much more broadly than they did before.
What are we not going to talk about? Story work whose primary goal is persuasion, promotion, influence, self-expression, performance, or entertainment. There is nothing wrong with any of those goals. They are just not what we plan to talk about.
