Story of Things

Story of Things is a participatory storytelling project exploring the hidden lives of everyday objects. Through workshops, interviews, and story collection, participants are invited to reflect on the materials they live with and the memories, values, and cultural practices embedded within them.

Bringing together voices from across Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and South America, the project reveals how seemingly ordinary objects become carriers of identity, belonging, care, and cultural continuity. Family heirlooms, clothing, tools, cooking vessels, textiles, and household items emerge as living archives of personal histories and collective memory.  

Through storytelling, participants explore questions of value, repair, reuse, and stewardship, uncovering how cultural traditions and everyday practices shape relationships with materials over time. The project challenges consumption-centred understandings of objects, instead positioning them as vessels of meaning, connection, and care.    

The resulting publication serves both as a collection of stories and as a framework for community engagement, demonstrating how storytelling can deepen our understanding of material culture while encouraging more thoughtful and regenerative relationships with the things we own.