"We have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude". The Solitude of Latin America. (1982).
Santiago Aparicio is a former Applied Imagination student with experience in environmental issues in Colombia. I originally wanted to focus the conversation on research, but the most valuable part ended up being the personal side: his experience in the course as a Colombian, his future plans, how his interventions worked, and how the program has helped him professionally.
What surprised me most was how generous he is with his contacts. He was very open to connecting me with interesting people and offering feedback. That was probably the most valuable outcome of the conversation.
He also clarified an important point about my approach. He warned me to be careful not to fall into a “saviour” dynamic, where it seems like I’m bringing oratory to people from the outside. It’s a useful reminder, although it’s something I had already discussed with Carlos León.
One important thing I learned from these interventions is the value of giving feedback collectively, especially in English. Since English is not my first language, I don’t feel ready to run a full workshop on my own. A couple of participants had accents I couldn’t fully understand, and the facilitation expert told me that this is exactly why having two facilitators helps. I used to co-teach at my university in Colombia and it worked well, so I think I’ll keep that approach. At least the feedback process should be collective and not depend only on me, even if I know my input can be useful.
The fourth intervention was a one-to-one session with a Peruvian anthropology professor preparing a TED talk. It was challenging because I couldn’t use my storyboard, so I had to adapt to her material. At first it felt like a struggle: I wanted to help, she wanted to be heard, and I didn’t want to impose my method. In the end, I didn’t use the storyboard but I helped her visualize her talk on a whiteboard in a new way. Two weeks later she told me it had helped her shape her TED talk, which I consider a real achievement.
Overall, participants reached out after their presentations to say the method made them feel more comfortable, which means I am supporting narrative agency. Now I need to structure the workshops more clearly and decide the theme for the next one. For now, I think it will focus on ideation: finding the core idea and simplifying it.
For the first intervention, I originally planned a three-hour session with a maximum of three participants so each person could iterate their speech several times. In practice, people were not willing to commit to three hours, so I adapted it to two. The session went well overall. One participant later told me the tool helped and gave them confidence. Another resisted using the storyboard, arguing that it required dismantling their existing structure. I did not find this critique fully convincing; it felt more like resistance to change. The main takeaway was that I needed clearer slides to guide the process, so I focused on improving them for Intervention 2.
Intervention 2, also at St Martin’s, involved three participants. Each person presented twice, and the structure felt smoother. The improved slides helped. Two participants clearly improved in their second iteration, while one performed worse, which I think is part of a non-linear learning process and normal nerves. Something that needs work across all interventions is gathering feedback a few days later, after people have had time to reflect. This connects directly to what I learned in Sweden.
The third intervention was more complicated. The first attempt failed because no one showed up, mostly due to poor publicity.
A week later, six people attended, but only after I clarified that no one would be forced to speak in public. Several issues appeared. I started the session rushed because of a logistical problem with the room booking, which left me agitated. I skipped introductions, did not ask why people were there, and jumped straight into theory. Because we began without rapport, no one volunteered to present in either iteration. However, participants still said the workshop felt relaxing and useful, and a facilitator with expertise in disability-inclusive workshops gave me positive feedback.
Despite that, I left feeling disappointed. The silence during the presentations affected me more than I expected, and since then I have avoided organizing new sessions. Even the Applied Storytelling Society I founded has been on pause. I realize now that part of this is emotional fatigue, but acknowledging it is already a first step toward moving forward.
Here is the feedback of the expert I invited, mentioned before:
As the Dragons’ Den presentation approached for the Applied Imagination students, I decided to design an intervention focused on strengthening narrative agency. By narrative agency I mean giving people control over the process of creating and structuring a talk.
I kept returning to a hypothesis I’ve been forming about public speaking anxiety. It often comes from three different places.
The first is trauma or past negative experiences, which is a psychological field I cannot and should not enter.
The second is physiological anxiety: accelerated breathing, shaky voice, and the usual reactions of the body. That part is manageable.
The third comes from a lack of control. Many participants have told me they simply do not know where to start. They feel there is no structure, no roadmap, no sequence they can rely on. Without that, the process feels abstract, and stepping in front of an audience becomes much more vulnerable.
This third point is where I want to focus. If people understand why a scene belongs in minute three rather than minute four, or why a certain moment follows another, they stop depending on memorization. They start relying on logic, sequence, and meaning. The presentation becomes a chain of ideas they know by heart, not because they memorized it, but because it makes sense to them.
My goal is to help them build, deconstruct, reorder, and experiment with the structure, so they genuinely feel in control. When someone tells a personal story, they do not struggle to remember it; the causal links guide the memory. I remember reading that memory improves when information is organized in causal sequences, although I can’t recall the exact source. What matters is that this principle fits naturally into narrative work.
Giving people agency over the process may reduce anxiety more effectively than any memorized script. That is the direction I want this intervention to take.
I just found the concept of “serious play”. I love it. Is close to what I’d like to do. Would that be too difficult to do? Something tangible, like Lego blocks, where you can appropriate to the perspective of how to structure a story. Something that makes stories feel like clay: you can shape it, deform it, cut it.
Through Carlos León I was connected with Pedro Alfonso, a professor and expert in rural pedagogy in Colombia. He is part of the Salesian Order, which, like many religious orders in Colombia, combines ecclesiastical work with deep involvement in education. It was striking to see how much he knows about ethnography and rural learning processes.
He confirmed two key points. First, storytelling and oratory training are genuinely needed in rural contexts. Second, and most importantly, he highlighted the lack of systematization in Latin American education. It is common for teachers to design workshops, test methods, or create learning strategies, but their work remains in personal notebooks or memories. Even when someone writes their process down, it rarely gets published. And even if it is published, it is not indexed in a way that allows others to discuss, challenge, or build on it.
The result is serious: our work is not scientifically debatable. We repeat the same efforts again and again, trying to design workshops or methods that others may have already developed. The question of how to teach storytelling in rural communities is difficult, long-term, and I am not the first person to think about it. But we keep starting from zero because we cannot access each other’s knowledge.
This made me rethink my own project. One contribution I could make is designing a format that is open, explainable, and easy to discuss. People should know where my ideas come from and why I propose certain steps. And it should be accessible enough that others can use the same structure to document their own processes. If the system is too complicated, people will not use it.
In fact, this diary itself shows the problem. The moment the process felt too complex, I stopped documenting consistently. That is exactly the gap Pedro was talking about.
I interviewed Carlos León Quintero, who holds a PhD in Rural Colombia, he now works in the Ministry of Agriculture in the rural development section. We talked about the role of rurality in Colombia, and I asked him two main questions: whether storytelling workshops make sense in rural contexts, and what the right approach should be.
He told me they are relevant, but only if they respect the fact that rural communities already have their own forms of oratory and storytelling. The goal is not to arrive as saviors or to impose external methods, but to create a two-way learning process. According to him, rural dialogues can teach Colombia and the West a lot: how to deal with slow consensus-building, alternative ways of resolving conflicts, different rhythms of conversation, and different cosmogonies. He mentioned an Indigenous community where a dialogue lasted fifteen years.
From this conversation, I realized that my project should act as a bridge between rural communities and the Western or institutional world. He emphasized how communication often breaks down when communities need to speak with companies or the State. In many rural areas, oral communication is the main medium because of educational gaps. He noted that it is common for people not to finish primary school, although this is not the case everywhere. Still, it is a factor that shapes how communication works.
We also talked about Orlando Fals Borda and participatory action research, which fits well with the idea of mutual learning. The main takeaway from this interview is simple but essential: any meaningful work in rural Colombia has to be a two-way process. Learning from them is the starting point.
In November, I traveled to Sweden, which gave me the opportunity to meet with the Swedish Popular Education Association and share the evaluation method I have been using in my workshops. Their first reaction was that my 1-to-4 self-assessment scale might feel too direct or even harsh, especially immediately after participants speak. I had not fully considered how exposed people can feel in that moment.
They explained their workshop structure: start with an icebreaker, then discuss expectations and shared goals, then move into the main topic, and finish with reflection. For them, reflection works best after the session and sometimes even days later, because learning needs time. This made me realize that I had been structuring my workshops like speeches, trying to open with impact. A workshop is different. It needs to begin by helping people feel safe and comfortable.
What matters most to them is cooperation. Their Study Circle model is fully self-managed, which matches what I want to develop. They told me that mastering the specific skill, whether guitar, storytelling or cooking, is not the most important part. What counts is learning how to work together, how to organize a group, how to understand one’s own way of learning, and how to identify what works and what does not. Several people in Sweden said that Study Circles have shaped their culture. They work well in groups because they grew up learning in self-organized circles guided by interest rather than obligation.
This conversation helped me see my project with more clarity. If I want a self-managed model, I need to design sessions that invite participation instead of pressuring it, and that treat cooperation as a central outcome.
Before starting my project, I invested a significant amount of time to understanding the course program. I wanted to fully grasp it, hoping this would give me a clearer perspective on what was ahead.
Pros: I don’t feel as lost anymore.
Cons: I felt like I spent too much time on this (I started on Friday and finished on Saturday), which left me with less time on Sunday and forced me to rush.
Here it is one of the pages of my notes.
Saturday 18
After I finished familiarizing myself with the course program, I tried free association writing. I wrote things down by hand without thinking about whether they made sense. I had just one rule: I had to be completely honest with myself about what I truly wanted to do and why I wanted to do it.
It was a gratifying exercise. I wrote a total of three pages, which helped me realize that one of the reasons I want to be an artist is to “put Colombia on the map.” From that text, I highlighted some key objects and created a list.
Solitude
Living apart
Western world acknowledgement
Schools and statues
Maps
Athletes, Writers, Idols
Gabriel García Márquez / Pablo Escobar
Cultural Colonization
My idea was to look for those objects/symbols outside and take photographs.
Then, I went out for a beer with a friend, who introduced me to an English friend of his. During the conversation, I asked him about statues he considers idols in England or the United Kingdom.
He mentioned the Churchill statue at Parliament Square, the Lions in Trafalgar Square, Cleopatra’s Needle, and one of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford. Honestly, the information he gave me wasn’t useful later, but it was interesting to learn about Cecil Rhodes.
Sunday 19
My plan today was to go outside and take some pictures based on the list from my text. Before heading out, I did some research to clarify my ideas.
First, I listened to a Colombian podcast. The episode was called “Why do Colombians want to succeed abroad”[1] It gave me many insights. The main idea was that we are desperate to be recognized by the rest of the world, and it’s very common for Colombians abroad to feel the duty of being cultural ambassadors for our country, taking any opportunity to highlight positive things about Colombia.
There, they satirized this enthusiasm we feel every time we read something related to our country. For example, when Schwarzenegger got involved with a Colombian’s wife, some news portals celebrated this event as we were standing out[2].
I wonder if this enthusiasm happens with other nationalities, especially with those that dominate global narratives, like the United States.
There are some important premises to understand the Colombian imaginary, in my opinion:
A large part of us doesn’t like to be associated with the idea of drugs or drug trafficking, yet every time we cross an airport, we are all treated as potential drug dealers. So, we are used to dealing with delays at immigration and being forced to answer more questions than usual.
Regularly, when speaking with people outside South America, we have to expect a joke or a reference to cocaine or Pablo Escobar. I’m not saying that Colombians are the only ones who live under a stereotype, and yet it feels every time uncomfortable.
Our way of standing out beyond drug trafficking is through art and sports. It seems that we all have an unspoken pact where we try to excel on behalf of the rest of the Colombians to reshape the idea of drug trafficking. For that reason, whenever an actor, musician, or athlete achieves something, it is expected that, at the very least, a school in Colombia will be named after them.
I found it funny that, that same night, while I was talking to my dad on the phone and after mentioning the podcast to him, he told me about the excitement he felt years ago when he was reading Les Misérables and found that in one sentence, Victor Hugo mentions Simón Bolívar and the independence of South America.
I have been raised under the myth of Gabriel García Márquez, which goes something like this: The highest a Colombian can aspire to is represented by García Márquez, as he managed, in a time when Colombia was only known for the war on drugs and had never won any international recognition, to later win a Nobel Prize. In my imagination, this is the first and only time a Colombian has ever achieved that, and he did it by telling our stories.
I’m not sure if this is completely true, but it’s the myth I’ve been raised with.
That aside, I admire García Márquez and truly feel that he is one of the highest idols I can aspire to. Not because he won the Nobel Prize, but because of the way he writes and the things he tells in his stories.
Later, I read “The Solitude of Latin America”[3], which is the Nobel Prize-winning speech by García Márquez. I read it not because of the prize, but because I really liked its content. It also talks a bit about the European and North American perspective on South America. It was gratifying to read it again, as it states the idea of not being acknowledged and, at the same time, not being understood—thus, one feels solitude.
The argument of the speech is about Latin America’s search for validation as an “adult” with free will who can have its own politics. It’s important to remember that this was written in the 80s when all South America was experiencing significant political intervention by the United States.
Lastly, I read some articles about the quantities of cocaine in the Thames River because I feel it serves as proof of the role that cocaine plays in English society[4].
Later, I went to Greenwich Park Museum, moved by the idea of the “Solitude of Latin America” and the fact that the Greenwich Meridian somehow places London at the center of the world. It was a bit disappointing; they didn’t provide information about the process of how London was selected as the zero point.
Overall, I expected that looking on the streets the objects that I selected was going to be more insightful. It was useful in the case of Greenwich because it put me on the ground, and gave me a less political perspective on the meridian.
Monday 20
Today I had to present my Box of Uncertainties. With all my photos taken, I filtered them and created a presentation with them as my Box of Uncertainties.
I expected to be a little more organized during the presentation, and there were some things I didn’t say because I felt I was talking too much. It wasn’t a bad presentation, but I could feel the lack of practice, which made me realize that the two days spent reading the course program might not have been as effective as I had hoped.
Maybe in the long term I won’t regret that decision.
At the end of the feedback, we all felt a bit uncomfortable.
I’ve been thinking about many of the comments I received. One stood out: It seems that I don’t want to do any kind of art, but specifically storytelling, which I agree with. I already knew that, but I forgot to mention it. Why did I not mentioned it?
Maybe my question isn’t about what I want to do, but how I want to tell stories. To be fair, any kind of art can tell stories if intended, but I get the idea, and it helps me set a clearer boundary.
For example, I don’t want to do any kind of art, I am not interested in pottery or dancing for now. I want to focus on narrative arts.
Also, I felt that the comments that made me the most uncomfortable are the ones I’ve been thinking about the most. That’s interesting. Just because something makes me uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useful feedback, but it’s interesting to acknowledge that correlation.
Tuesday 21
I’m thinking about doing an intervention to give visibility to Colombian and Latin American stories. I was considering borrowing a digital screen, placing it in the main hall of CSM, and showing some interesting news about Colombia on it, along with a small survey through a QR code.
Wednesday 22
Borrowing a digital screen does sound a bit complicated for now.
I had a fruitful walk back home today and I think I have new ideas for my Box of Uncertainties I would like:
Something that represents the fear of being a storyteller as a job (What do I want to do?)
Something that communicates the feeling of why we Colombians don’t like to be associated with drug trafficking (Why do I want to do it?)
A story that shows the Latin American perspective without victimizing ourselves (Why do I want to do it? And how?).
I was thinking about a new intervention: to sit down in the canteen, play some Colombian music videos on my laptop, and put up a sign that says something like, “Do you feel interested in this music video? Do you want to know more? Let’s chat for a couple of minutes.” It exposes me a little, but I like that. I feel that I’m not making the most of this course if I don’t take risks and step out of my comfort zone.
I read today “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces”[5], and it was really helpful; I didn’t expect that it was going to be so enlightening. It was helpful because, when talking about drugs and colonization, I’ve felt in the past few weeks that it’s easy to make some people feel offended. So, I was questioning myself if I should avoid raising these subjects or maybe if I should be more careful not to make anyone feel uncomfortable.
Now, after reading that paper, I think that as long as I am respectful, it’s not my problem if people feel offended when talking about drugs or colonization. For some reason, when I speak in general about this matter, I feel that people tend to personalize it, as if I’m saying “it is your fault” or “you think that way,” which is not my intention. I’m going to be more aware of this, but at the same time, I don’t want to be afraid of speaking about things we all South Americans can relate to.
Thursday 23
I’m thinking about what stories I could use. I have a couple selected. I told one to an artist friend, and she told me that it sounded like I was mocking Colombians. So now, I’m a little worried about the portrait I’m going to create of Colombia and the reasons I want to do this. Is it to entertain others? Who am I wanting to receive these stories?
[5] Arao, B. and Clemens, K. (2013). From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice. In: L. Landreman, ed. The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections from Social Justice Educators. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
