Mikey Leung & Natasha Akib On How To Tell Stories That Create Impact

Natasha Akib is a digital producer who believes in individuals and communities being empowered to tell their own stories, rather than having them told on their behalf. She created and drives the Stories for Impact workshops at Digital Storytellers and has been running workshops in Bhutan, Somalia, New Zealand and the Australian desert.

Previously, Natasha worked at one of the first non-government newspapers in Bhutan, and was Head Editor at youth non-profit, Vibewire. Prior to joining the Digital Storytellers team Natasha worked as a Community Builder at StartSomeGood where she engaged the platform’s community of international changemakers in both the online and offline world.

Mikey Leung gets more sh*t done in 5 years than other people do in 10 lifetimes. He attributes that to being born in the year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac, but we think he owes it to coffee. With over 15 years study in the practice of digital wizardry, Mikey has worked as a web designer, radio journalist and travel writer, before finally finding his spiritual home in the moving image. When he’s not behind the camera, he’s out advocating for impact storytelling and helping clients kick storytelling goals. He also does a killer rendition of ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ on guitar and vocals.

Over the course of figuring out what to do with his life, Mikey published two books, including the Bradt Travel Guide to Bangladesh. He also founded the Positive Light project, a crowdsourced and crowdfunded photography project and coffee table photo book that is changing the way the world sees Bangladesh. Today, he’s also a proud husband and dedicated dad of two adorable boys and a co-creator at Digital Storytellers. He’s also wearing another hat serving as the coordinator for the Social Enterprise Council of New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory in Australia.

Mikey and Natasha provide their insights and experience into effective storytelling for impact-led people, providing examples of stories that have resonated more strongly, as well as discussing the growth of Australia’s grassroots social enterprise movement.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - Could you please share a bit about your backgrounds and what led to your work in storytelling and social enterprise?

[Mikey Leung] - I think I first got a flavour of social change when I was in Bangladesh with the Travel Guide and the Positive Light Project and a few other experiences I had there, such as meeting Dr Muhammad Yunus, (the Nobel prize winner for creating microcredit). I was really just being inspired by Bangladeshi people who were incredibly resilient in the face of so many challenges: climate change, flooding, cyclones and disasters. But I actually found them really inspiring, very resilient, and alive with possibilities. They inspired me to really look closer at social change and what it actually means in a country like Bangladesh.

Of course, I was there on a development placement, so I was working as a volunteer, but I brought with me all my storytelling skills. As you mentioned earlier, being a radio journalist and photography and having a passion for telling stories, and I married these two interests to create the projects that you mentioned there. And really that was my formative time in connecting storytelling and social enterprise together. So when I moved back to Australia, with my partner who's now my lovely wife, Belinda, and started Digital Storytellers along with this wonderful team that we've had for so many years, including Natasha, we really wanted to change the narrative, see positive narratives about the world, create those narratives, film them, tell stories - inspiring stories of people creating change in their communities that just would inspire others to do that change. And for me, the storytelling is really the key to inspiring others to do those activities. It's being human to do that work.

So five or six years on now, Digital Storytellers, has had this wonderful team since the beginning, a group of passionate storytellers who really believe in storytelling, creating narratives for a better world.

And Tash has been on that journey from the beginning.

Wonderful. Tash tell us a little bit about your background?

[Natasha Akib] - Yeah, sure. I'll take it back a little bit far, but then I'll jump a little bit forward from that. I guess my fascination with storytelling, I realised a later point in my life came from my upbringing and my family. My dad is Indonesian and Muslim and my mum was born in Australia. I think I was around 11 years old when September 11 happened. And I remember very distinctly I was at this age where I was really starting to become conscious of the media. Conscious of the way that the world and the community looks at you, and I started to become really conscious of the way that the media played a role in telling the story after that and telling a very negative story around my dad's community and the really tangible impact that had on the way people acted and treated each other. I became really quite fascinated with the media who were telling these stories. Why were they telling these stories? What kind of stories do they want to tell? So that led me to go on to then study media with the idea that I would go on to work in the mainstream media and maybe be a mole, kind of trying to changing it from the inside out. However, I don't think I ever had the stomach to be working at a broad sheet publication or on morning television or anything like that. Instead, when I was at university, I wound up doing an internship at a newspaper in Bhutan, which many listeners would probably know is a country that focuses on Gross National Happiness and prioritises that over Gross Domestic Product.

And so even in the media, they saw their role as facilitating Gross National Happiness in a new democracy and they really took that message and that mission to heart. And so coming back to Australia after that, I was absolutely inspired by what they were doing in the media or the discussions they were having and really started to ask these questions of how could I play a role in using the media to create a better world. That's what led me to my role at Vibewire where I was writing about social enterprises. That's what led me to my role at StartSomeGood on a crowd funding platform for social and environmental impact projects. And it was when I was at StartSomeGood actually, that…

I was seeing all these incredible organisations - social enterprises, not for profits, community organisations - trying to raise funds on the platform for these incredible projects, but really what came down to whether those projects succeeded or not was not necessarily how capable they were delivering the project. Not necessarily their past experience in doing those kinds of projects, but really it came down to how well they could actually tell this story.

And in particular how well they would tell their story through video. So then I was like, ‘video is the thing that we need to be working within this space.’ And so when I saw this really inspiring project, which was using the media for social good. I reached out to that person who was running it and was like, ‘teach me everything you know about video!’ And that person happens to be Mikey, who was running his Positive Light crowd funding project on there. That was around the same time that we became the original team; Digital Storytellers.

It's a great story and it's great to see how both of you have such wonderful experience and how that became intertwined and essentially gave birth to the Digital Storytellers project. So tell us a little bit more about Digital Storytellers. What sort of projects are you and the team involved in?

[Natasha Akib] - I guess to continue on from where Mikey started talking about Digital Storytellers - we're so proud and honoured that we get to work with these incredible organisations doing good things in the world and help them share their story primarily through film, but through all these other mediums.

What I observed as kind of a newbie filmmaker coming into the team, that really there was a process that we went through as Digital Storytellers. There really were some key things that all organisations or communities could be doing to tell their stories better and that these could be taught and learnt. If I could learn them as a newbie filmmaker and storyteller, I felt like anyone could learn them and so that's where, Stories for Impact came from within Digital Storytellers - that capacity building and training where we teach workshops and online programs and storytelling. Programs for organisations, communities, and individuals who want to tell their own stories using smart phones and basically whatever technology that they have available to them. We've really had people from all walks of life in our workshops and training programs.

The youngest person we've had in our workshops was eight. The oldest person was 92 and in one workshop we even had the eight year old and an 88 year old in the same workshop at a library. So we've worked with teachers, scientists, working on country, you know, people in social housing, communities who want to connect through storytelling.

It's been really incredible to see people in communities and organisations telling their own stories in a way that I probably never could as a filmmaker because they're living these stories.

Wow. Such a diverse range of projects. Mikey, would you like to add anything to that?

[Mikey Leung] -

Facilitating other people's stories is really how we believe we can create impact through storytelling. How when people tell their own stories and it's not being told by somebody else, they have the ones with the most authentic lived experience of the issues that they might be facing, the challenges they face. And also in many times the inspiration that's created by someone who gets up and shares their story.

And it's not often just about disadvantaged communities telling their story. It's really about people who have overcome those challenges. Feeling proud to share those stories to really see themselves and kind of share their identities or their cultures or what's positive or strong about their story.

That's often the kinds of things that come out from Tash’s workshops in working with many of our student storytellers. They often do better stories than the mentors or the ‘masters’ in time. So I actually think Tash herself is a walking success story in digital storytelling and shows us someone who's comes with not much experience, but is literally inspiring other people around her to create change.

As a Canadian and now an Australian, I really love working with First Nations stories.

Here in Australia we have the oldest human stories on the planet. And sadly, we fail to see the wealth and the richness as a society inside those stories and what they could add to our national identity. Indigenous Australians are the original storytellers.

Whenever I meet Aboriginal people here in Sydney and hear their unique stories, when I meet artists when I meet other filmmakers, they always inspire me because Indigenous Australians have storytelling in their blood and they're really connected to being human.

I think storytelling is a part of being human and my Indigenous brothers and sisters have the closest connection to what that means and how important that is. The farther we get away from that, and the farther we get away from our original stories as humans, it seems to be, the more we can dissociate from our impacts on other humans or on the planet.

It's very important to me that these stories are told, that they're celebrated, that our First Nation storytellers across the world are enabled with the same tools and access as everyone else to telling stories. So I'm very proud of having that experience here in Australia.

Absolutely. And so between yourselves, you've seen these storytelling patterns and what makes strong, effective, great stories. So I'm keen to hear about some of the lessons. You've learned about telling these stories to create impact, so what advice would you give to those listeners who could leverage storytelling to create the sort of change that they want to see in the world?

[Natasha Akib] -

I really do think that the most powerful stories are not necessarily the most produced or overly-edited or technically perfect stories. They are the ones which at the heart of them are authentic and with that, that means really raw rough stories.

That may not be really finely edited or really technically perfect or produced as long as they're authentic.

Particularly in today's day and age, sometimes those kinds of authentic stories actually even have an edge and engage audiences because audiences today are so used to taking in content and looking at content. They really have an eye and an ear for things which have been overproduced and perhaps over filtered. And sometimes those raw stories are the ones that cut through.

I'm thinking in particular of a workshop where we had a group of young people creating stories about nature and what engages them with nature. In that group we had some students who were actually attending the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and were incredible cinematographers and putting together these really beautiful stories. And then we had a 14 year old Taylor who put together a story using her editing skills that she had just learnt and filming skills.

And it was actually her story. While it was not the most technically perfect and visually epic story, that was the one that cut through because it was authentic and it was real.

The second thing that I would say is the messenger is just as important as the message. People who are living these stories and who own these stories often have the authority to tell them. I would really encourage people to think about the unexpected voices who could be telling stories.

We're so used to hearing (in the social change space) stories from the same voices. But who would you not expect to be advocating on a particular issue? Because humans are hardwired to respond to different things. We're hardwired to respond to a new voice, a different voice. So who is perhaps a hard, hard skeptic who's been won over on an issue? And could they be the one sharing a story?

The messenger is just as important as the message.

There are some great points there Tash and Mikey I'm keen to hear from you too. Where do you feel people could typically improve in communication around social change?

[Mikey Leung] - That's a big question. Social change stories are asking for the audience to look at something uncomfortable, perhaps unsavoury. You know, I think about domestic violence as an issue here in Australia, and it's one that often gets swept under the carpet. So we're dealing with stigma, we're dealing with taboo, and we don't want to look at these stories sometimes because they actually require us to think about what needs to change, either in our systems, or in our culture or even just amongst our neighbours or amongst our mates. That's where stories need to actually empower those audience members. And I think we often tell them in a negative light. I think that's what journalism often does with so much of it, you know, pervasiveness and things that grab attention are often looking at a fire. It's hard to look away because something's burning and it's bad.

In social change, our task is to show problems as they are, but also create the pathway to solutions. So in social change, storytellers really need to be able to take people from one end of a challenge to another end of feeling like we can actually all play a role in creating a change around something.

In fact if we do that, the potential in each one of us to drive those changes and social change is quite a marathon. It doesn't happen overnight. It's often generational.

So when I think about those Australians and First Nations stories that I've been talking about. People are, I think they're quite apathetic to those stories in general. People who've already kind of decided what they think they know about Indigenous Australians.

So the task is to really debunk those stereotypes to create positive examples and role models that we wouldn't ordinarily expect.

And that's where Tash points towards unheard voices or atypical stories. The novelty of those is actually where I think we can really create a lot of change there. I think of the marriage equality debate, for instance, in Australia. That was a long time coming. There was a lot of people campaigning for years, and it really takes each person who might've faced some challenge. Whether you're from the LGBTQI+ community, and you're able to talk to your parents about it and tell your story. That's one way that I think actually we got to the place where 60 odd percent of people were able to vote ‘Yes’ for that change here in Australia. That did not come overnight. It came from a lot of stories being told, a lot of campaigns being created. So it's a long journey. I think it's that Martin Luther quote that ‘the arc of history is long, but it bends in direction of justice,’ right? Maybe not those exact words, but that's the kind of thing is it's, it's just keeping with the challenge and being authentic as Tash says. I think that being committed to these causes and telling positive stories, as opposed to ones that just make you feel depressed which is something that maybe the nonprofit sector is traditionally used to elicit donations. We can do better stories in that and we can move people better than that.

[Natasha Akib] - Just going off what you said, Mikey, I think something really interesting you said is that, we need everybody to get behind these issues and we need everybody to be able to be involved in creating social change.

And I think that's an important thing to consider when you are sharing your story is, thinking about…

how does the story matter to the community, or how could the community or my potential audience be a part in this story? How am I creating space for them to play a role in this story?

I think what I observe a lot of in the workshops is that social entrepreneurs and change makers are so passionate and so busy with their heads down doing what they're doing with their incredible work that oftentimes they don't have the time.

They haven't taken the time to sit up and look up and think about, ‘okay, how does this matter to the audience or the community that I'm trying to engage right now? And how can I tell a story in a way that enfolds them and makes them feel a part and that they belong to this story and can be involved in creating change?’

One thing I've really observed in effective storytelling is a story that involves that community and involves that audience to play a role.

Such great insights there guys and Impact Boom cannot wait to co-host the Impact Storytelling for Changemakers webinar with Digital Storytellers next week (15 April, 2020). So for any of our listeners out there that would like to join us, reserve your spot here.

It'd be great to shift the conversation a little bit now towards ecosystem building and what can we be doing to help grow this social enterprise movement in Australia? It's really timely given the circumstances we find ourselves in as a globe at the moment. Just last week, Digital Storytellers led the national social enterprise Unconference, which was a digital first here in Australia and it brought together Australia's social enterprise community. What were some of the key highlights from the event and what did you learn and putting it together?

[Mikey Leung] - For those who are listening, it’s the beginning stages of the Covid-19 outbreak around the world. You may be listening to this this week, or you may be listening to this six months down the track. So just want to set that place and time. We've just had our economy shutdown and a lot of sectors, a lot of social enterprises are facing challenges right now. The whole business community is, but particularly social enterprises that are working with disadvantaged communities, or people who would normally find it hard to be in work and need a lot of the other support structures around them in order to have the dignity of employment.

Then for us in Digital Storytellers, we also saw this change in our work. We can't leave our houses. Filming has to be done very, very carefully, but we still, at this time in Australia, it's still possible to do that. We were asking ourselves, what can we do now that our typical line of work has just completely been been shut down. So we came to this question and thought that we needed to do something for the social enterprise sector. We have a lot of skills and expertise in different digital platforms. One of my other hats here is coordinating for the Social Enterprise Council of NSW and ACT. So I was thinking about how to get the sector together along with the other networks across Australia, who are representing all those central social enterprises creating change in Australia.

We thought it'd be great to put on an event in a very short amount of time and make it a participatory Unconference. So for those who don't know what an Unconference is, it means where the participants create the agenda and not the conveners. So to be able to welcome everybody in participating and creating the things in the sessions that we talk about is our vision for how social change should be or could be - being more participatory. We feel the same way about storytelling. I could say at this stage it was a success. We had at one point, over 150 people tuned in and highly engaged and participating in the sessions.

We had many leaders across the social enterprise space and some up and coming leaders take on sessions and facilitate, and many interesting conversations were started in this particular time where I would say social enterprises have a major role to play in shaping the response to the Covid-19 crisis in representing those who are at the ends of the line in terms of people who can access support packages. They might not have previous employment history, and if they did, it'd be even harder to keep them in jobs now. So a lot of the focus is how the social enterprises can keep going in this current context.

The Unconference was a moment in what has been a very hectic, confusing and stressful time for many, many social entrepreneurs and the beneficiaries and people they represent to contemplate what will the future be. I have not yet had time to go through all of the talks and see where the thrust of the conversation is, but I know from the session list that we as a community are thinking about what the future is together.

I think many of us believe that this could be a time where we could advance the social enterprise cause. So I'm very excited to see where that community goes and how we can deliver on our promise of social change at greater scale than ever possible before. Because we are being called in this moment to meet the crisis.

Absolutely we are. It's great to see that around Australia, these state-based networks have been forming, many over just the last 12 months or so. Mikey, you are coordinating or have been coordinating the Social Enterprise Council of New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory and Tash you’re fully aware as well on what's happening within this ecosystem in Australia. What are your perspectives? What are the updates here from a state based level and where do you see us heading into the future?

[Mikey Leung] - That is a big question. I should be asking you that one too, Tom. Because I think you also have a unique view on where we're all headed.

Look, I think the Covid-19 crisis has thrown us all for a curve. Nobody expected such rapid and quick change to land upon us and the economy in general. So for us - it's SECNA for short - and our members, a lot of it is just crisis and triage management and a lot of pivoting going on amongst the social enterprise communities, not just in our state, but across Australia.

That's one of the things we heard at the Unconference. I'm very happy to say that a lot of support was announced at the Unconference. So I think for those who are listening and need support and figuring out what to do with their businesses or how to keep their people and keep their impact mission alive, that the help is out there and you just need to look for it and call for it. And hopefully within SECNA, we can get together and support one another. But we are actually being inspired by people in Queensland, such as yourself Tom, but also QSEC and SENVIC have been already well established and leading a national charge. We now see these networks popping up in the other states (SASEC) and we're just becoming aware of them. So I think what's most exciting is at a federal level in Australia, where, the networks are starting to lead a charge of supporting one another and collaborating in ways that weren't possible before.

And I think Tash is going to see a lot of these stories coming out now and from many different social enterprises across the country. I would put this question to you, Tash - what would excite you about seeing a lot of these stories?

[Natasha Akib] - I think in this moment there's so much innovation going on around the way social enterprises work. And I think it's really a time that social enterprises and their ability to be resilient is really going to shine. Last week was a really great example of everybody really pivoting and using these online tools to work together to collaborate without these barriers of geography, keeping everyone out a pot and keeping these conversations from happening at one big national level. So that was really incredible to see. I'm really excited to see some of those stories coming through from the community. Something that I would be really keen to see how innovation is going to happen here, particularly during this time of Covid-19 with many of these conversations happening in the digital space and in the technology space. How your digital access is going to be, will be amplified to communities where it may not have existed to this level that it needs to exist now in order to participate in these conversations.

I think that's particularly important to the social enterprise space, being that many social enterprises are working in these communities or working with these communities where digital access is potentially an issue.

[Tom Allen] -

Great points Tash and Mikey.

I say let's bring on that national strategy. Never before have we seen the practitioner-led, grassroots movement in Australia, as strong as it is right now. And I think there's such huge potential for us to really get behind it, create an Alliance and pull together a national strategy that has the potential to see business as a force for good really grow within Australia and around the world.

So that's certainly exciting. You've both been mentioning a bunch of social enterprises, so I think it would be great to hear which ones you are both particularly inspired about that have been tackling some really important social, cultural or environmental problems.

[Mikey Leung] - So many great examples. It's actually really hard to choose. It's like picking the favourite child there, Tom. It's a really hard question to answer.

[Natasha Akib] - I want to give a huge shout out to Humankind Enterprises, led by my good friend Sophie Weldon. They're, in this time of digital engagement and isolation, particularly relevant. They use digital storytelling for intergenerational connection and belonging and are running some amazing programs around that. So I think they're particularly relevant during this time.

I want to give a shout out to all the incredible, Indigenous owned art centres that are represented, in particular through the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair.

I think yet again, during this time of Covid-19 seeing many of those centres which usually rely on tourism to run and to function. Seeing them pivot to online has been really incredible to watch through social media and things like that. And I just think they're all inspirational social enterprises because they function not only as art centres, but as community centres and daycares and all these other things in communities. If you go on the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair website and you want to look up some great places to get some homewares while we're all spending this time at home and making your home look great, there's some great arts centres you can get behind and support there.

[Mikey Leung] - The art fair is really a wonderful initiative that is powered by the purchase of Aboriginal artwork and craft, and as an economy that really supports a lot of those artists. So that's definitely one of my favourites. I don't even think they call themselves a social enterprise, but they are.

We have filmed out in those communities and they've been inspiring. I feel there's so many stories to shout out to of work that I've seen done.

I'm thinking of some of my colleagues work, and a lot of the work we do is supporting legions of social enterprises. I had the good pleasure to speak with Cindy Mitchell at Milhouse Ventures, which I guess you could say as intermediaries supporting other social enterprises through an incubator program. I think what is really required at this stage is supporting an ecosystem and a scaffolding structure that can support many more enterprises, to take seed and to bear fruit. So that's really where my thinking and my focus is, in terms of the system changes and there are a lot of people who have been working in that system in different ways. But I see it jelling now, as you mentioned Tom, so Mill House for me and the microcosm of Canberra is one of those organisations that's doing it. And I know that Cindy has such a wonderful touch with each of those enterprises and really supporting them. Women-led or Indigenous backgrounds; these are the kinds of initiatives that can really deliver social change that I think our society needs now and this is the window we can drive a lot of those initiatives forward with.

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We're very lucky that you recorded a wonderful interview with Cindy Mitchell on Impact Boom.

To finish off then, I'm really keen to hear about some books or resources or blogs that you'd recommend to our listeners.

[Mikey Leung] - I am a reformed mindfulness, I won't use the word 'junkie', but I will say that there's something about the inner work that actually empowers the outer work. And I think Brene Brown's resources in leading change have actually helped me to be a more effective change maker.

A couple of the more recent titles like Dare to Lead and also her Netflix lecture, which is amazing, have just really made me feel comfortable in being in the vulnerability that goes along with doing social change, of which Brene is so well known for. It just means that I can come to this space with humility and grace and you can meet all the challenges that we're facing with just patience and kindness and things that make the work that we're all doing really vital. And I guess you could even say, a bit spiritual and really healthy from having done that inner work. So when it comes to my personal recommendations, I really point at that kind of work for helping stay sane while leading or generating social change as a social entrepreneur or as a change maker.

The other thing I'd like to recommend though, that's really helped me a lot is, is the writings of Charles Eisenstein. He's a philosopher in the States and his latest title is called Climate: A New Story. He does dwell a lot on the negative things within the book. But really, the things that are underpinning our desire for social change, such as love, and living according to your values and respecting the planet, are things that, if we can touch those things within our hearts and our souls, it really creates the fuel needed to take you beyond passion in generating social change.

When we start in this, we're all passionate about the changes we want to make. But I think to sustain that, you really need to search for deep wells of inner-knowing to empower your journey. So I recommend those titles to people and I love speaking from that place if I get the opportunity to. But it's not something we often talk about in social change. You'll probably hear me covering that in future podcasts at Impact Boom.

Some great books there Mikey. What about you Tash?

[Natasha Akib] - I'll choose one that's inward-looking and one that's outward-looking. So inward-looking, one book that really had an impact on me was written by Sonya Renee Taylor, who is a Fellow in a network that we're also a part of, the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. And the book is The Body is Not an Apology. The reason it really resonated with me, as a changemaker, is we're so often focused on looking out into the world at all the things that we want to change, all the narratives that we want to change out there in the world. But the book really invites you to look internally, and look at the narratives that you're telling yourself around your body, around your image. All these colonial, patriarchy-driven narratives that you're actually reflecting onto yourselves, and if you can start telling yourself a different story about these things, how do you expect to undo those narratives in the world?

So that one really created a shift in me. I think I'd often have avoided those internal stories and those internal narratives. And it's just a continual work, undoing those, both internally and externally as well. So yes - Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body is Not an Apology.

Then outward facing - a really practical one around storytelling and communication was given to me as a gift from a really awesome mentor, Tom Dawkins from StartSomeGood, and it was Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. A classic around marketing and storytelling. Some really practical, tangible ways that you can improve your communication and storytelling.