What is Participatory Narrative Inquiry?

Participatory Narrative Inquiry (PNI) is a form of Participatory Action Research in which groups of people share and work with their stories of personal experiences to understand each other and to make collective sense of complex issues and situations.

PNI focuses on the profound consideration of values, beliefs, feelings, and perspectives through the recounting and interpretation of lived experience. Elements of fact, truth, evidence, opinion, and argument may be used as material for sensemaking in PNI, but they are always used from a perspective and to gain perspective.

Why work with stories?

When we share stories with each other, we enter into an ancient social ritual that helps us to reveal our values, beliefs, and feelings in an oblique, indirect way that is (somewhat) safer than direct declaration. Stories also help us solve problems. They help us make sense of what has happened and how we feel about it, whether we are telling stories or listening to them.

PNI builds on these ancient rituals and purposes to help groups, communities, and organizations learn and grow together. Asking people to share stories (with you and with each other) invites reflection, conveys respect, and opens doors of understanding.

Who wrote these books?

I'm Cynthia F. Kurtz. I'm a consultant, researcher, writer, coach, and software developer. I have been helping communities and organizations work with their stories since 1999.

You can read about my background, my consulting services, and my other publications on my web site, cfkurtz.com.

Other than reading these books, what can I do to learn about PNI?

If you have a budget, you can take one of my paid online courses (the PNI Practicum). At the moment I am not yet ready for new course sign-ups, but I will be ready soon. You can send me questions about the paid courses at cfkurtz@cfkurtz.com.

If you don't have a budget, you can use the PNI Practicum course materials (yourself) for free. You can also use my free PNI project software (NarraFirma) and my free story-sharing game (Narratopia).

You are also invited to join our peer-support group (Participatory Narrative Practitioners), which meets quarterly to talk shop about participatory story work of all kinds.

That's a lot of free stuff.

Yes it is. I'm not a wealthy person, but I care a lot about helping people get along and build a better world.