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Maynooth University
Trading Places:
Story Exchange comes to life in new Mountjoy-Maynooth partnership By stepping into each other’s shoes and telling each other’s stories, students from Maynooth University and a group of young prisoners realised they had much in common By Kathy Donaghy A ground-breaking Story Exchange Project saw 10 students from the Maynooth Access Programme (MAP) and 10 inmates from Mountjoy Prison’s Progression Unit come together and learn that while they might inhabit different worlds, in reality they weren’t all that different. The project, which began last spring with Gaisce - The President’s Award scheme, was the first formal activity in the newly formed Mountjoy-Maynooth University (MJMU) Partnership, which aims to promote new pathways to university for prisoners, former prisoners and people with convictions. The project saw participants aged between 19 and 25 come together using global organisation Narrative 4’s Story Exchange tool as a way to build empathy and understanding. The story exchange
works by randomly partnering people from the group and getting them to tell each other a story from their lives. When everyone comes together again as a group, they re-tell their partner’s story in the first person. For Erika Savage, a 20 year-old post-graduate student and MAP ambassador from Dublin, the project has had a massive impact on her life. “It gave me a sense that we’re not that different. If we’d met in different circumstances we’d be friends,” she says of her experience of going into Mountjoy’s Progression Unit and working with prisoners on the project. “The Story Exchange means you connect on different levels – it’s bringing out those shared experiences. The different experiences were just as important because they made you appreciate what it’s like for someone else,” she says. As MAP ambassadors, Erika says they were able to dispel some of
