Testimonials

These are some of the things some students of the PNI Practicum had to say about it.

A better understanding

A life-changing experience

A priceless experience

Learning by doing

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A better understanding

Stefan Morales

Storytelling, story practice, making sense of stories, you know, coming to a better understanding of our shared context as humans? I mean, this is what it's all about. And this is what you teach us how to navigate in your course. And so I've greatly appreciated this. It's completely shifted my thinking around my whole practice as a facilitator, you know, and all of the techniques and practices that I use. I can now see, like, Oh yeah, here's how it can have a home in this method of

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I don't know, like, systems inquiry, systems evaluation, whatever, that is fully participatory, that isn't, like, extractive, and - here, this is our report, this is our analyses on what this means, and here's what we should do. Rather it's like it's in that same spirit as so many of the other practices and tools that I use. And I just

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yeah

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I really have enjoyed this time, and you are a very wise and experienced teacher, and I deeply honor that. And honor that we've been able to connect and kind of learn all of this from you. So, thank you so much.

A life-changing experience

Laurent Stoeffel

I will remember

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it was a life changing experience. And with all of the people from the group, I really liked it and very different. And I really enjoyed the meetings with all the different people as well. And I'm a little curious about how the projects went [that is, ended]. But anyhow, regarding your teaching, I feel lucky.

A priceless experience

Augusto Cuginotti

Hi. I'm here to recommend a course that I've just finished with Cynthia Kurtz called the Participatory Narrative Inquiry, the PNI, Practicum course. So this was a 20 week long course that I had the chance to take with my colleagues and Cynthia online, talking about working with stories, about the theories, about where it comes from, about the practice, and the examples, and at the same time doing a practicum, or applying this process in a client with a group.

So this was really important and powerful to my work, especially because I work with stories. And since the beginning, Cynthia has always been a reference. She wrote a book, Working with Stories, which I highly recommend. And after reading the book, applying the work that she's done, working with other colleagues, working with Cynthia herself supporting me in some of the projects, I think after all of this, it was really important to do this course, where at the same time we were unpacking the importance of stories, and how to create a survey to collect stories, or how to find patterns, how to generate interventions — in parallel we were having the real experience with a client, with all of the challenges that come into unfolding this work in practice.

So the way we could be reinforced by theory and examples but at the same time see how the real world looks like, and feedback that — got feedback from colleagues, and also from Cynthia, directly, that was priceless. So I highly recommend, if you're going to go an extra mile in understanding working with stories with organizations, with communities, to join the next cohort on the PNI Practicum that Cynthia is hosting.

Learning by doing

Elena Denaro

It's like

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just being around all of this PNI stuff. I can grasp all of the years of experience, of working with this and molding it and iterating it that you've been putting into this. And to be able to learn that with all the different forms of methodologies, like all of the book information, all of the kind of synthesis that you created for us to be able to read. But then also the hands-on sandbox sessions, I think, because that fits so much more my learning style, the learning by doing. It's really hard for me to grasp things just from the written form. But to be able to immerse myself in

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okay, what does it feel like for the participant to be going through this? I'm like, okay, I get it, and then I'm able to put it into practice so much more seamlessly. And yeah, just, there's such a wealth of knowledge, experience, wisdom that you seed in every section of this course, and it really is just an utter joy to learn from and with you.

More testimonials

For people wanting to dive into Participatory Narrative Inquiry, shifting between theory and applied practice, this course is a deep tour through the legacy of Cynthia's work. No matter your experience level, you will be stretched in practice and learning. This course does not download a complete set of ideas and approaches. Rather it is a course that sets you off on multiple starting points, using the flow of a PNI project to point to all of the interesting ways you can continue to deeply build your practice in story work, complexity and engagement. — Chris Corrigan, Harvest Moon Consultants
Participatory Narrative Inquiry is an amazing way for people to share their experiences with each other and co-create solutions to help make their workplaces and communities better. The PNI Practicum offers the opportunity to learn from the world's leading expert on PNI, practicing with others using real-life projects. — George DeMet, Palantir.net, Inc.
This course is a powerful container for understanding the depth of participatory narrative inquiry as a practice. This course demonstrated and exposed me to the multiple layers of what can be understood and investigated using stories. Doing this as a practicum, experimenting with PNI in the world with a real time project while learning in community with Cynthia's expert guidance gave me a much deeper understanding of the technique. Alternating real time planning and coaching with demonstrations of the practice in the sandbox sessions made it possible to answer questions that arose while implementing PNI in real time. — Lucy Duncan, reparationWorks
The opportunity to do a practicum with Cynthia, in a cohort of deeply experienced and committed story-workers, was truly an invaluable experience. The practicum allowed me to coalesce two decades of experience in the story trenches. With the feedback and support of Cynthia and my practicum cohort I was able to move through the full arc of PNI story work — from project design, through crafting story prompts, gathering stories, leading sense making workshops, and working with our target community to leverage insights to shape and motivate action. I didn't just gain technical knowledge; I explored the moral and ethical responsibilities of PNI project leaders to clients, communities, and anyone who shares or reads a story in the course of a project. — Rob Peagler
As an experienced facilitator and qualitative researcher, I was surprised at how much I learned in this course! I got so much more out of learning how to actually do PNI — to identify the kinds of stories that are good for working with, ask "story-ended questions," prepare stories for sensemaking, facilitate participatory sensemaking exercises — than just reading about it. — Susannah Laramee Kidd, PhD

Have a question about the PNI Practicum courses? Send me an email at cfkurtz@cfkurtz.com.