Wendy Bancroft has been helping people to tell their stories for 40 years.
“It’s true,” she says. “My working career has included many years as a television journalist, but also as a qualitative researcher, and a jack-of-all trades: video producer, director, cinematographer, and writer.” During this time, she also joined the Association of Personal Historians (APH).
Bancroft began GAB in 2014. At the time, she was producing short video documentaries having to do largely with community development, and work.
“I loved what I was doing but lugging around heavy equipment was becoming a mite onerous,” she explained. “I was keeping my ears open for other work that gave me the opportunity to hear and share stories. I heard about GAB through APH and loved what I heard. I thought it sounded perfect—I’d be hearing all kinds of stories and I wouldn’t be the one doing the writing!”
Along with the appeal of story sharing, came other added benefits.
“I could earn income by just leading a couple of workshops. Two days a week! Easy peasy!” She said. “Turns out there’s more to this stuff than just showing up to lead a workshop a couple of days a week.”
Bancroft works full-time teaching GAB. She has developed many different workshops, trying out different formats, and designing new themes.
“Roughly half of my participants do GAB because they want to write so I developed a GAB2 curriculum that includes a strong component of craft learning.”
She was one of the first instructors to offer GAB online, something she began doing several years before the pandemic. She helped pioneer zoom in an interactive format for one of Vancouver’s universities. “This [format] was up and running when Covid hit so we were ahead of the game.”
Along with her success, she has faced challenges along the way.
“Frankly, I think the biggest challenge I find is handling the administrative things like recruiting and handling payments,” she said. She mentioned that she likes college teaching since they do all the recruiting and handling administrative aspects.
Another challenge is the time it takes.
“I work hard and it takes up a lot of my time, which is okay but I’m also wanting to do my own writing, especially as I get older.”
Another challenge has been trying to retire. “This is such meaningful work; it’s very difficult to walk away.”
Yet for now, Bancroft continues her GAB journey.
“In January I’ll be offering a new kind of workshop series—one expanded (4.5 hour) session per month, for four months. This session length was inspired by the curriculum developed by Bonnie Bernell and Cheryl Svensson. I’m also using several of their themes.
“I’m calling this series, ‘Bozos on the Bus,’ a phrase that originated with Wavy Gravy and was featured in Elizabeth Lesser’s book, Broken Open. It’s basically accepting that we are all riding on this rather bumpy life bus so we might as well sit back and enjoy it. My participants, and I, all love thinking of ourselves as bozos on the bus.”
With her new series, Bancroft expresses her joy for what GAB offers.
“I love what I see in front of me. I love people sharing and being inspired by each other and feeling a freedom to share intimate parts of their life with people who not long ago at all, were strangers,” she said. “I love witnessing the magic that happens with their writing—how in just a few weeks, people with no writing experience are writing stories that just take off, so open, so honest, so meaningful.”