Short lecture by writer and producer, Bobette Buster. Followed by a panel discussion with actor Natali McCleary, director David Gilbert and producer Luke Walton.

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Maya Angelou said, “There’s no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Albert Camus said, “Were it not for the writer, civilization would destroy itself.”

We find ourselves here - since March in our social isolation during this Time of Covid, and now this global reckoning with systemic racism and the BlackLivesMatter movement - two pandemics interlocked. But what we must not lose sight of is that “the greater story behind the story” is our individual belief that seldom do any of our stories matter, that only the top 0.01% control the narrative.

Now more than ever we need the power of storytelling to bring us together in community, to generate new understanding and transformation. In this talk, we will focus on the power of our individual stories to change the world. This is the only way to bring order out of chaos, to express our confusion, disorientation and pain. Stories generate a new way of seeing.

The world has always and only progressed in moral upheaval and those who tell the stories of their time - no matter how seemingly ordinary - create the world anew. We need to believe in our own stories. Everyone has a story to tell. And, then they discover that it’s in the telling, that you discover who you really are in the world.

Bobette Buster is a story guru, writer and producer currently living in Hollywood. She is the Writer/Producer of the feature documentary, Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound, which premiered in 2019 at the Tribeca Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival, amongst many others. Her TED lecture, The Radical Act of Storytelling posted June, 2019.

She is also Professor of the Practice of Digital Storytelling, Northeastern University, is the author of DO STORY: How to Tell Your Story So the World Listens, now in its 10th printing (translated into five languages), and DO LISTEN: Understand What’s Really Being Said, Find A New Way Forwards. Bobette annually leads workshops for DO LECTURES (UK), and is on the Visiting Faculty of Pixar Studios, Disney Animation, Catholic University of Milan, as well as many film, business programs worldwide, including Google and the BBC. In addition, Bobette leads workshops on “How to Tell Your Story So the World Listens” to corporations, non-profits, unique brands and advertising agencies worldwide.

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