Life Story Work

Life story work is sometimes also known as biographical research. A biography is the story of a person’s life. Sometimes, people do autobiographical research. This is when they tell the story of their own life. See Patricia’s Art for an example of someone using pictures to tell the story of their life. Some people also use the word ‘narrative’ to describe the story of a life. Some life story work will use letters, diaries, official records, photographs, etc, as a way of building up a picture of a person’s life. For some examples of photostories see: www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/NorahFry Life story work has become popular in the recent past for the following reasons:

• People who have been silent in research (or silenced by research) have been encouraged to tell their stories. It is hoped that these stories of first-hand (or direct) personal experience will fill some of the gaps in previous work.
• It is hoped that life stories will be accessible (easy to read) and interesting to other people. This means that this sort of research may reach more people than some other forms of research. (See Dickinson (1998) for a discussion of this idea.)
• Some people believe that life story work is ‘empowering’ because the person who is telling the story is in charge of how they tell their story and what they want to tell. (Issues of ‘authorship’ and ‘ownership’ may be more complicated than they at first appear. See McClimens (2004) for discussion.)
• It is sometimes argued that a ‘life story’ is a good way of connecting the personal to the wider context in which people live. Life story work is popular in order to see how change impacts on individuals’ lives. (See Di Terlizzi (1994) for an example.)
• The emphasis on ‘life story work’ is connected to moves in the therapeutic community. Sometimes ‘life story work’ is used in therapy to help people find ways of resolving difficult issues in their past.

The rest of this document is about researchers collecting people’s life stories through interviews. Of course you do not need a researcher to help you tell the story of your life if that is what you want to do, although you may want to work with other people if you would like your story to be published or read by other people. If you are a disabled person who wants to tell your story you may find the British Council of Disabled People (BCODP) who can be visited at www.bcodp.org.uk is helpful. They have a number of ‘forums’ (different places on their website) where you can discuss your interests.

Some researchers believe that there are special techniques that you should use if you are interviewing someone about their life story. For example, they believe it is a good idea to ‘start at the beginning’ and to encourage people to tell their stories in chronological order. ‘Chronological order’ means telling things in the order in which they happened to you. Other researchers think it is more important to let the person decide where to begin. Some people recommend that you guide a person through telling their life story by focussing on ‘key events’ or ‘epiphanies’. An epiphany is a moment which the story teller feels was very important in their life. This approach may help other people understand the particular meaning of events.

Life story work raises lots of interesting questions about ‘truth’ and memory. Is there only one way of telling the story of a life or do we tell different stories to different people as we go through life? This is not to suggest that people will not be telling the truth when they talk to you, but that there are many possible truths about a life.

It is also important to think about what happens while someone is telling the story of their life. When someone tells their life story they may be trying to make sense of that life. This means that as people tell their stories they change and develop. This is because the process of telling has an impact on thinking. If you are interviewing a person about their life it is quite common for them to change their stories as they go along. Again, this is not because they have lied to you on previous occasions. Instead, it may be because they have thought some more about how to make sense of things. These points suggest that the ways in which a story is told (the form of the story) is as interesting as the events that are described.

If you are helping someone write (draw, tell) their life story so that they can tell other people about their experiences you will want to think very carefully about how you do that. Are they going to edit their life story into a form which is useful and interesting to other people? Long interviews that have not been edited will probably not be read by many people. Are you going to help them edit their own story once they have told you, or are you going to edit it, with their permission? Obviously, they should continue to control their story as much as possible and decide how and where it should be published. At the same time, you may want to influence how people present their story in order to appeal to other readers. In respect of such questions, all the usual challenges associated with working in partnership are raised (see Partnerships: Questions and Challenges). As we have already said, questions of authorship and ownership are often more complicated than they at first appear.

References
Dickinson , H. (1998) 'Perspectives on Learning Difficulties through Biographies', in Erben, M. (Ed) (1998) Biography and Education: A Reader. London : Falmer Press.

Di Terlizzi, M. (1994) 'Life History: The impact of a changing service provision on an individual with learning disabilities', Disability and Society, 9, 4, p501-517.

Denzin, N.K. (1989) Interpretive Biography. Newbury Park : Sage.

McClimens, A. (2004) 'What difference does it make who is speaking?', Journal of Learning Disabilities, 8, 1, p.71-88.

Minkes, J. (1995) 'Having a voice: Involving people with learning difficulties in research', British Journal of Learning Disabilities , 23, p.94-97.