Community Storywork
Creating safe, honest spaces where people and communities can share their lived experiences, explore new possibilities, and build meaningful connections together.
About André van Wyk
I'm André van Wyk, originally from South Africa, now living and working in Wales. With over 20 years of experience working alongside communities in South Wales and parts of Africa, I bring a wealth of knowledge in detached youth work, arts development, local community coordination, and cultural wellbeing.
I founded Community Storywork in 2024 to bring together facilitation, media production, and long-term community engagement to support thoughtful, people-led approaches to learning, connection, and change.
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I weave together three powerful frameworks to support meaningful change for people, organisations, and communities.
Understanding the connections between people, organisations, and communities to identify patterns and leverage points for positive change.
Systemic practice is about seeing the bigger picture — how individuals, groups, and organisations are interconnected, and how change in one area affects another. Rooted in family therapy and organisational consultancy, it helps us move beyond quick fixes to address underlying patterns. For me, this means working with communities to surface what's really going on beneath the surface, identifying the stories and structures that shape people's experiences, and finding leverage points where small shifts can create ripple effects across whole systems.
I am a member of the Centre For Systemic Studies
Honoring lived experience through collaborative storytelling that helps individuals and communities find their voice and shape their own narratives.
Storywork is about honouring people's lived experience as a form of knowledge and wisdom. It's not just about collecting stories — it's about creating the conditions where people feel safe to share, where their voices are heard with respect, and where their narratives can shape decisions. Whether through one-to-one conversations, community workshops, or digital storytelling, I help people and communities tell their stories in ways that build understanding, challenge assumptions, and create space for new possibilities to emerge.
I honour the true keepers of Indigenous StoryworkUsing creative arts as a tool for community engagement, healing, and social change — bringing people together through shared creative experiences.
Drawing from Systemic Practice, Jo-ann Archibald's Storywork, and over two decades of community work across South Wales and parts of Africa, I've come to understand something simple but powerful:
For people and communities to thrive, three things need to be in place.
Social
We all need a genuine sense of belonging. This comes through meaningful social interactions—spaces where we feel included, connected, and part of something larger than ourselves.
Arts
Within that social space, we also need to express our own uniqueness. Creativity—stories, voices, art, movement, film—helps us show who we are. It allows our story to be heard, understood, and valued, rather than lost in the crowd.
Work
And we need to contribute. Everyone has something to offer their group, their community, their collective. Having a role, making a difference, and knowing that our contribution matters builds purpose and confidence.
Why it matters
When Social, Arts, and Work come together, people flourish. Belonging, expression, and contribution reinforce one another, creating environments where individuals feel recognised, communities strengthen, and meaningful change becomes possible.
This is SocialArtsWorks — a practical, human framework for connection, creativity, and contribution.
These three layers — Systemic Practice, Storywork, and SocialArtsWorks© — shape everything I do. Together, they help support meaningful change for people, organisations, and communities.
In the end, it all comes down to the stories we tell — and the stories
we believe — about ourselves and our communities.
We Are The Stories We Tell.
What I Offer
Collaborative approaches tailored to the unique needs of individuals, organisations, and communities.
Creating safe spaces for groups to explore ideas, resolve challenges, and discover new possibilities together through skilled facilitation.
Through Community Storywork, I design and lead participatory workshops that help groups surface lived experience, build trust, and co-create practical solutions. For Tai Tarian, this included facilitating tenant–staff sessions using story-based methods and systemic practice to identify shared themes and shape meaningful, grounded improvements in the repairs journey and wider service experience.
Using photography, video, audio, and digital storytelling to capture and share community narratives in powerful ways.
For Community Lives Consortium, I led the creation of the Valuing Lives media storytelling project — a relational, story-driven film process that centred tenants' voices, everyday experiences, and the Welsh concept of Cynefin. This included co-developing the narrative, filming across homes and community spaces, and producing an induction short film that communicates CLC's values through real lived experience. The work combined qualitative "warm data" analysis with creative production to ensure the final piece genuinely reflects the people CLC supports.
Guiding individuals and groups through collaborative, story-led processes that honour lived experience and build understanding.
For the Swansea Poverty Truth Commission, I designed and delivered a story-led media process that centred Commissioners' lived experiences and wisdom. This included creating short testimonial films, bilingual subtitles, and qualitative insight drawn from narrative interviews, ensuring both Community Commissioners and Civic/Business Commissioners were represented with dignity and clarity. The process supported the Commission's aim of shifting understanding through personal story, using film, audio, and creative data analysis to bring those experiences into public dialogue.
Building lasting partnerships with communities through long-term engagement that creates genuine connection and trust.
For South West Wales Connected, I led the development of Port Talbot: Herstory — a community-rooted audio walking project that gathered and elevated the stories of local women, past and present. Through sustained engagement with residents, creatives, archives, and partner organisations, the project wove lived experience with place-based history to create a GPS-guided trail that connected people to Port Talbot's heritage, everyday voices, and the town's ongoing story of resilience, identity, and belonging.
Sharing knowledge and building capacity within organisations and communities through workshops and collaborative learning.
Working with the Local Challenges Research Office (LCRO), I
supported their community research and learning on behalf of Tai
Tarian around home retrofitting and green technologies in Neath Port
Talbot. My contribution included:
Recording high-quality audio of residents' experiences and insights
Creating AI-assisted transcripts and thematic summaries to inform
LCRO's research
This work strengthened Tai Tarian's community-centred approach to
retrofit planning and provided LCRO with practical, human-centred
material for ongoing research and training.
Offering strategic guidance on community-led approaches, cultural wellbeing, and integrating storywork into organisational practice.
With over two decades of hands-on community work across South Wales and parts of Africa, I offer grounded, people-centred consultancy that helps organisations design approaches rooted in lived experience. Drawing on backgrounds in detached youth work, arts development, community coordination, and cultural wellbeing, I support clients to shape thoughtful, practical, and relationship-led methods for engagement, learning, and systems change.
Important Information
Transparency and trust are at the heart of everything we do.
Principles:
At Community Storywork, I am dedicated to cultivating an inclusive and equitable environment for all individuals and communities I engage with.
I recognise the critical importance of data protection and privacy in our storytelling activities. My commitment to GDPR compliance ensures that when handling personal data:
My Pledge:
I am committed to weaving not only impactful narratives but also a sustainable and eco-conscious approach into the fabric of my business:
Get in Touch
Whether you're an individual, organisation, or community — I'd love to hear from you.
Whether you're an individual seeking to explore your story, an organisation looking to build stronger community connections, or a community wanting to create meaningful change — I'd love to hear from you.