Everyone has a story to tell, and Park City resident John Davis wants to help share them.Davis is the founder of Tell Me a Story, a six-week class offered through The Compass — the Park City School District’s community education program — that coaches a diverse group of people how to tell their stories.“I started thinking about this two years ago,” Davis said. “The reason is because I was on an anti-Semitism task force for the Jewish Federation, and I came to the conclusion that different groups and organizations that are set up to fight bias and bigotry can be good at identifying, recording and calling the cops but aren’t very good at hitting the roots. So, I thought I needed to do some research and find out what the deal was.”Davis, who is a Chicago restaurateur, magazine columnist, wine marketer and men’s group host, dove into research and even tapped into ChatGPT and asked, “What is the basis of prejudice and bias?”“The answer I got was that a lot of it starts in the home and it gets imprinted into people,” he said. “So, I asked what some of the effective ways to fight bias and bigotry were, especially during the 1960s when they were integrating the schools, and one of the answers that got me was ‘putting diverse groups together to do a common project, a challenge, and they have to work together.’”With that key, Davis came up with the idea of throwing people together through storytelling.“When you have a diverse group who help each other with their individual stories, their biases lower,” he said. “Then, once you master the skills of storytelling you can entertain friends but also persuade groups, challenge stereotypes and advocate for change. And the storytellers can learn to overcome their fear of public speaking.”With the idea in mind, Davis’ next step was to reach a wide and diverse audience.“After I thought about it, the idea came up to invite friends and relatives of the storytellers to hear their stories in a salon-like atmosphere,” he said. “So that’s what I did.”Davis modeled his concept after The Moth, a nonprofit in New York City, dedicated to the craft of storytelling.The Moth published a book called “How to Tell a Story” that included coaching tips from such storytellers as Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Neil Gaiman, Tig Notaro and Molly Ringwald.“I read the book on a plane when I went to visit my brother in South Korea, and I read the book on the way back,” Davis said. “And that’s how I learned how to coach.”After Davis returned to Park City, he set up his first six-week course through The Compass earlier this year.“At first I didn’t get a lot of response, so I got friends to sign up,” he said.One was an older Jewish man who, while working with the Census Bureau, got arrested by the Kenyan police who thought he was corrupt, according to Davis.“He called the U.S. Embassy, and no one backed him up, but after quite a long time the Kenyan police found he wasn’t corrupt at all,” he said. On the flight back to the United States, the man decided to not count on anyone but himself, and he became a successful realtor in Washington, Davis said.“That was a great story, and we were all sitting on the edge of our chairs when he told us about how he was arrested by the Kenyan police,” he said.Another storyteller in that first group was a Hispanic high school student who was involved in what they called “Pizza Gate,” Davis said.“He didn’t like the food in the cafeteria, so he ordered pizzas,” he said. “The school administration told him to stop, but he kept doing it and kept getting caught.”The principal kept giving the student excuses as to why he couldn’t order pizzas for lunch, Davis said.“So, the kid kept finding ways to order the pizza while complying to the principal’s rules,” he said.The last reason the principal gave the student was that the rest of his class didn’t have access to the pizzas, Davis said.“So, the kid organized the class and they all ordered pizzas,” he said with a laugh. “So, the delivery van shows up with 300 pizzas, half cheese and half pepperoni. And the principal calls the student’s dad in for a disciplinary meeting.”During the meeting, the principal and student struck a deal.“They agreed that the pizzas would be redelivered off campus after school,” Davis said. But the guts of the story wasn’t about how the student and principal came to an agreement.“It came down to the kid’s relationship with his father wasn’t very good, but as they were driving home, the father put his arm around the kid and said, ‘I’m proud of you,’” Davis said.Stories like that are what Davis and his team of coaches look for during the class.“All of the stories are only seven minutes long, but you would be surprised just how long seven minutes can be when you’re standing in front of an audience,” he said with a laugh. “But these aren’t epic stories. They’re down-to-earth.”The low-key element of the stories are another key to bringing a diverse group together, according to Davis.“When we did our first salon gathering, there was a great transformation in what these people in the group were like at the beginning of the stories and what they were like at the end,” he said. “Because the storytellers showed their vulnerability, the audience picked up on it, and at the end everyone who would not usually talk with one another was talking and laughing with each other. So, that encouraged me to keep going, and we’re now working on a second group.”Registration for the next Tell Me a Story session, which will be held from 5:30-7 p.m. on Tuesdays, starting Oct. 8, at McPolin Elementary School, 2270 Kearns Blvd., is now open.“We have two storytellers registered so far,” Davis said. “One will talk about his mental-health issues, and we have another woman from Israel who was in the Israeli military. She has a great story about when she was 10 and had a huge crush on a guy, but he would always steal her lunch.”To register for the upcoming Tell Me a Story classes visit pcschools.us or email Jane Toly at [email protected] information about Tell Me a Story, call 435-565-1708, email [email protected] or visit tellmeastory.cafe.The post Parkite John Davis asks the public to ‘Tell Me a Story’ appeared first on Park Record.