Pier Domenico Baccalario on storytelling: how stories unite, heal, and empower urban communities
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How stories unite, heal, and empower urban communities: our interview with Pier Domenico Baccalario
At Lucca Comics & Games, from October 30 to November 3, 2024, we spoke with Pier Domenico Baccalario, CEO of Book on a Tree, a partner of the IN-HABIT project. Known for his work as an author and storyteller, Baccalario shared his thoughts on the power of storytelling to unite communities and foster inclusion. In this interview, he discusses how narratives shape our identities, build connections within urban environments, and highlights how stories can promote mental well-being and address urban challenges.
Interview with Pier Domenico Baccalario
Q: How do stories help shape and unite communities?
“Stories are essential for all of us. We are social animals who have formed communities around stories since ancient times. Without stories, we wouldn’t have been able to share where it was good to be, where one could build a home, where to hunt, or where there was fruit to gather. Stories have connected us and brought us to this point, always using voice and narrative. It’s clear that the most important stories are those that the adult community passes down to the younger generations, as these are the stories that young people learn, embrace, believe in, and that become the essence of their lives. Today, no city, community, or place can exist without its own stories passed down from generation to generation, serving as tools for inclusion for those who arrive and later feel part of that community. These stories can also share something that someone else has conveyed to them in friendship. If we don’t create stories for the young, we have nothing to tell about the future.”
Q: How can storytelling be both informative and engaging for younger generations?
“There are good stories and bad stories. Good stories are effective; they are the ones that remain in our memory. Think about when you’ve seen a movie and you tell someone about it—why do you share it? Because there was a hook, something, a moment you want to share. Stories are effective when they are short, concise, and easy to tell, even to the young people who are here to listen to us. And why do they listen? Because we entertain them, excite them, and sometimes even scare them; we give them something that belongs to them. Stories are within us, and that’s why they need to come out.”
Q: What are the most effective storytelling tools for engaging young people?
“The most effective narrative tools are those that provide the reader, often without them realizing it, with a sense of enjoyment, excitement, and anticipation for the protagonists—hoping, for example, that they break up, kiss, run away together, or defeat the monster. These narrative mechanisms convey something that ultimately makes us feel better mentally. Stories are very beneficial for our mental health. It is through stories that we have learned how to communicate with others. When we hear about young people who lack language skills, it’s simply because they have read few stories, books, or comics. In other words, they lack the habit of using words. Stories are very useful when they soothe our thoughts, unraveling them like a tangled ball of yarn, because they remind us that a story has a beginning and an end, and in the end, the monster is defeated—sometimes without even fighting, just with the right words.”
Q: How can storytelling promote a more inclusive approach to urban projects, ensuring every voice is heard?
“So, there’s something interesting about storytelling: it’s part of our mental health and the mental health of all citizens in any city. The IN-HABIT project digs precisely in this direction, considering it a public good. Our mental health improves because there are good stories, because we write, because we share, because we can, as in Lucca, take our pets with us to work and school, because we have markets, like those in Riga, that offer food at reasonable prices for everyone and is a local hub, and because certain neighborhoods, like those in Cordoba, are being improved or an unsafe space is being illuminated so that it can be used safely by everyone who wants to use it. These are all elements that IN-HABIT weaves into a single narrative, at the heart of which is, as in all important narratives, the need for mental well-being. Public mental health is a valuable asset for our future, especially in a future filled with stories, smartphones, and virtual things. We won’t just have our bodies to train through sports; we will need to train our minds through mental health, which is nurtured by storytelling, the ability to narrate ourselves, not reacting to haters, being not politically correct— a term that is often misused— but socially correct, and therefore inclusive of everyone, because we want to be included too. If no one includes us, then it means we have a wrong story that needs to be changed. Let’s change it.”
To explore further the impact of storytelling on urban innovation and how it intersects with gamification, don’t miss our interview with Fabio Viola.
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