Take a free, online master class in organizational narrative! Khan Academy is offering a free online storytelling course from Pixar. As a public and social sector marketer, narrative is one of your most powerful and fundamental tools. Narrative helps you convey your organization’s founding purpose and mission. It lets you empathize with your clients. It motivates your staff, your volunteers, and your funders.
Pixar Animation Studios are among the best narrative builders on the planet. They’re the geniuses behind Oscar-winning movies such as Toy Story, Cars, and Wall-E. I use the Pixar Pitch in framing messaging and PR stories for my day job.
So who better to learn narrative from than Pixar? I’m sure that’s what Khan Academy thought when looking for partner to create a free online storytelling course.
What Will I Learn?
As I write this, the Pixar-in-a-Box course consists of three modules available:
- Storytelling
- Character
- Structure
For our marketing purposes, these three form the foundation of narrative. You’ll learn how to build compelling stories with engaging characters and plots that establish, explore, and resolve dramatic conflict.
You can use the hero’s journey and five villains of the social good to augment the Pixar lessons. After all, what’s a story without a hero and a villain?
Pixar and Khan will soon make three more modules available: Visual language, Film Grammar, and Storyboarding. These skills are useful in crafting specific narratives. Visual language is useful in many design tasks. Storyboarding comes from the world of film, but is a useful skill in mapping out any sort of process or story.
This free online storytelling course is online and self-paced. Do yourself a favor, and set a quarterly goal to finish the first three modules. That’s one module a month. Maybe you can find a study buddy at work to join you. I’m confident that you’ll enjoy and benefit from the skills you learn throughout your career, and life.
Need help establishing your organizational narrative? Contact me to learn more about my organizational narrative services.
(Image courtesy of Flickr)