ListenUpStorytelling C.I.C
We are a Social Enterprise that creates safe spaces and effective places through facilitated storytelling. We have experience across the third sector and in health and social care settings. We are committed to: collaborating with others, co-designing work, and embedding sustainable practice. We actively seek opportunities for new collaborations in evaluation research, culture transformation, well-being and applied performance.
ListenUpStorytelling supports people who care for others to care for themselves.
We offer a safe space to share stories, reflect on who we are and what informs our actions and explore ways to co-create alternative endings. With Storytelling as core to what we do, our practical, interactive and creative workshops and courses are delivered by skilled facilitators who offer a range of tools to develop self-awareness and self-care, build resilience, challenge practice and find joy and meaning at work. Alongside storytelling, our methods include: Lego Serious play, arts and crafts, mindful practices, poetry and role play.
Storytelling can be used to support team building, through examining work cultures, creating a shared vision and clarifying individual and organisational values. We also offer 1: 1 mentoring, to support personal and professional development.
Stories are a great way to explore people’s experiences: of healthcare, of caring, of living with illness, of Covid. ListenUpStorytelling can offer research expertise in capturing stories in a sensitive and ethical way to provide feedback to providers and inform future practice.
Dr Kath MacDonald
Dr Kath MacDonald (Prof Doctorate, MSc, SFHEA) is the founder of ListenUpStorytelling. She has a long history of working with Health Professionals. This comes from her teaching career as a Senior Lecturer in Nursing and Education, and in her clinical role in the NHS as a Nurse Specialist and as an Honorary Nursing Research Consultant.
She has published widely in the fields of chronic illness and adolescence, student and patient experience and in the use of poetry in Nursing. Recognising that stories are a powerful tool in professionals’ learning and development, ListenUpStorytelling was formed.
Kath is an Apprentice Storyteller and member of the Storytelling Forum at the Scottish Storytelling Centre Edinburgh, which is funded through Traditional Arts Culture Scotland: TRACS: https://tracscotland.org/
Kath works with a range of facilitators or storytellers who she draws on depending on the nature of the project.
Dr Caroline AW Dickson (RN; Prof Doctorate; MSc; SFHEA)
After a long period of collaborating with Kath in her role as educator, Caroline became the Director of ListenUpStorytelling in 2024. A nurse by background, she has a special interest in ‘lived experience’ and finding ways to hear voices seldom heard; person-centredness, leadership and developing healthful cultures.
She has experience in facilitating a range of development programmes and conducting research nationally and internationally that aim to develop collective caring cultures. Her research expertise lies in social research, specifically facilitation, practice development and other participatory methodologies.
She is a member of the Centre for Person-centred Practice Research https://www.cpcpr.org/ and a member of the Person-centred Practice – International Community of Practice https://www.pcp-icop.org/.
Caroline is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is also an Honorary Fellow at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, an associate facilitator with the Foundation of Nursing Studies and was awarded Fellow of Queens Nursing Institute in Scotland in 2017.
Dr Caroline Dickson
Some of the organisations we have collaborated with:
