Stories Embedded in Our Logo
GGS is delighted with our logo, created for us in 2018, in consultation with Northern Village Computer creative designer, Leanne, and GGS member Sya. Each element captures some aspect of our vision of storytelling and GGS with themes like welcoming, inclusion, celebration, sharing, and community.
The tree is a metaphor for stories, - both trees and stories are ancient living organisms, dynamic, changing, and reproducing.
Trees are critical to life on earth with many functions, - practical and aesthetic. So are stories.
Trees come in all sizes, shapes, and varieties; they are the mirror image of the diversity in stories.
A tree has many parts, each with its uniquely important function and each a metaphor for storytelling:
Roots: Stories have deep roots in human history, dating back to the mist of the beginning time. Each storyteller is nourished in the rich soil of others.
Trunk: Holds up the stories, delivers nutrients, and wraps them in the protective shield of bark so they don't leak out and disappear. That is the sacred duty of storytellers - retelling, shaping, and sharing.
Crown: Leaves and branches held up for all to see, enjoy, offer protection, and act as gathering places. Think of links to storytelling and story listening within each element.
Leaves: See the leaves scattering? Each is a story released with an invitation to be snatched, admired, and retold. Once told, stories go where they will, each on its own journey, disseminated and free to be picked up by the next teller. If they fall to the ground and return to the soil, they may live to nurture another tale.
There is also the danger that they disappear. A story closing of African heritage adds an essential component: "This is a story I have told. Be it sweet or be it not sweet, take it and give it away. Give it away."
The ring of listeners in the logo: In the theatre of your mind, can you see them? Listeners throughout time, outdoors in the shade, shelter, and beauty of a tree just like GGS' Tea "N" Tales listeners in the Enabling Garden.
The colour is red. Red is the colour that captures the essence of stories. Captures the energy of stories, the fire-in-the-belly for stories, the value of stories as in red ruby. Red is vitality and passion. Red is get-up-and-go and excitement. Red is enthusiasm and action. Red is strength and courage. Red is heart. All these elements are found in stories and in storytellers.
Red has negative connotations too. Red is passion, which can be anger, hate, aggression, death, jealousy, anxiety, or cruelty, . . .. Stories have the power to hold these up to scrutiny and discernment for enlightenment and good. But in stories there lurks danger, if used, not as a filter to make sense of the world nor motivated to edify but to legitimize and spread with malicious intent to do harm.
GGS assumes that each of us wants stories to bring out the best in us and be a force for good. ~Sya ~