This workshop will demonstrate how the creative art of storytelling can used to engage low technical literacy audiences with technical and professional practice concepts. The workshop will use three original oral stories, The Fifty-Nine Story Crisis, Bridging for Bridges, and Chasing the Sun, to illustrate how three literary strategies: change of perspective, use of suspense, and use of the quest storyline, can be used to insert technical and professional practice concepts into traditional oral storytelling. Reflection/discussion activities will encourage participants to identify how these literary strategies impact audience engagement. Besides being able to identify the three literary strategies it is hoped that participants rediscover the wonder of story and are motivated to consider integrating oral storytelling into their professional teaching practice.
The workshop assumes no previous experience in storytelling. While storytelling skill will not be developed in the workshop, links to resources for developing storytelling craft will be provided.
Note that this workshop is very similar to the workshop delivered at CEEA-ACÉG 2026 (Moncton NB) in June 2026 and one of the stories, The Fifty-Nine Story Crisis, was presented at the Turkstra Talks speaker series in July 2026.
In retirement, Gordon joined the Baden Storytellers’ Guild in Fall 2021. Since then, he has drawn upon personal anecdotes, engineering case studies, and traditional folk tales to regularly contribute to the Guild’s monthly Stories Aloud events and annual World Storytelling Day concerts. He has also told at the Guelph Guild of Storytellers’ Tea’N’Tales summer concert series, Button Factory Arts Centre’s Bloom and Grow Open House, and the Queen-Margaret Neighbourhood Fair.