The ongoing debate on transformations at all levels, from the individual to the collective, lacks a unified and coherent perspective. Scholars across various disciplines from festive studies to psychology have yet to establish a common understanding of the role and function of narratives in society. In transformation research and practice, a theoretically robust framework for grasping the significance of transformative narratives remains undiscovered. Although narrative analysis and theory are well-established and widely utilized across many fields, what is missing is an effort to bridge the diverse schools of thought to identify the shared characteristics of narratives across different individual and social contexts (Kawai et al., 2023), such as festives. Our work is an experiment to bridge that gap through unconventional data collection methods and dissemination data through visual art within the context of transformative event communities.

Kawai, T., et al. (2023). Narratives for personal and collective transformations. The European Jrnl of Social Science Research

The data collection started 2019 and is currently ongoing via the AI platform. The field report "Transformation Through Connection? Insights From a Pilot Study of Story Sharing Cubes at Burning Man Events" explores the use of a novel data collection method at transformative events like Burning Man. Data collection was done with tailor made Story Sharing Cubes (SSC), which allowed festival participants to anonymously record their most meaningful event experiences. This method was piloted at The Borderland 2019 and Burning Man 2019 festivals with antropologist Terje Toomistu, and it then expanded to gather narratives without the traditional constraints of interviews or surveys. The data has been also collected in dedicated story sharing workshops in festivals such as BOOM, Ozora and Mo:dem, where participants write about their experiences. Additional data was collected 2018 through Burning Stories surveys, where participants could write their story to an online template.

Overall the findings highlight themes of transformation and human connection, with participants often recounting collaborative, deeply emotional, and also life-changing experiences. The SSCs in particular not only captured personal stories but also contributed to the overall event experience by encouraging self-reflection and community dialogue, which also became the grounding material for the AI together with other datasets.