Stories, places: storied place and placed story

Stories, places: storied place and placed story . . . the universe is not simply a place but a story –a story in which we are immersed, to which we belong, and out of which we arose. –Brian Swimme & Mary Evelyn Tucker ABSTRACT For a while now I have been ‘wondering’ about, pondering the link between story and place, inhabitant and colonizer: the inextricable and intractable connections that come into being between them. And so in this short diffractive piece where a constellation of concepts (space, place, story, performance, hospitality, refrain, vibe, power to/power over, rhizomes etc.,) come together with no one ‘truth’ privileged, I hope to explore those connections and provide some compelling examples of story as place and place as story with particular reference to one particular place, a school, and the inhabitants of one particular classroom in that school in Cape Town, South Africa. For in schools where matter, in all its forms, is ‘storied’–has its own story to tell–and storified, stories matter. &nbsp