Sally narrating at the 2020 Never Never Land concert.

Sally Perkins, PhD, has a long history with the Indianapolis Children’s Choir. It began with her daughter singing in the choir for over 5 years and her husband serving on the ICC Board of Directors. The choir has since woven itself into the fabric of her life and professional career as a storyteller and consultant.

Sally’s collaboration with ICC began with an idea for a concert that she shared with Henry Leck who made it a reality. “I narrated the story behind the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’. It was stunning the way we were able to weave the story and the song together, and that led to other ideas,” she shared.

Sally was hooked. Over the years, she has collaborated with Josh Pedde to use storytelling in choral performances, creating unique experiences for audiences. As a professional storyteller, she’s always loved telling stories about songs. “Some of my favorite storytelling work is with stories that are about music or have music as a part of the theme, so I have quite a few of those kinds of stories in my repertoire. These [performances with the ICC] have just been marvelous, creative opportunities for me as a story performer.”

Sally’s storytelling work has transformed over time from the performance realm to consulting, to now being an author. “For years, after a storytelling performance, I would have people come up and say, ‘My organization needs to tell our story better.’”  Soon she found herself in training rooms, helping organizations, businesses, and leaders learn to tell compelling stories to advance their purposes.

Her new book From Story to Action: Transform Your Storytelling to Win Support and Ignite Change dives into just that – turning the art of storytelling into something people can do to help win support for what Sally has coined their “noble causes.”

“As we all know, the ICC is a noble cause for a host of reasons […] The ICC does far more than teach kids how to sing well.  While kids do learn to sing and they learn the best of music from genres across the board and cultures around the world, they also develop deep friendships, self-confidence, and self-expression. ICC is a safe place where they can discover who they are, and that is serving a noble purpose,” she explained.

Sally’s book includes the Indianapolis Children’s Choir as one of the examples for her storytelling devices. Without giving too much of the story away, Sally shared that her book includes a pivotal time in ICC’s recent history for her readers. “There are different types of stories that are necessary for an organization to tell at different times.  One of those is what I call the hurdle story, and this is what I used the ICC for.”

She went on to explain the immense challenge that the ICC faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how that time serves as a powerful story of overcoming an obstacle to get to the other side. So powerful in fact, that she included this in her book to inspire others to tell their own hurdle stories. See a glimpse of the ICC COVID story on YouTube here.

“The ICC contributed to this book, which helps me as an author. But more importantly, the collaboration I’ve had with ICC over the years has been deeply meaningful.  Storytelling with the ICC has been some of my favorite work in my career, and our mutually beneficial partnership is a unique gift for which I’m exceedingly grateful,” concluded Sally.

And for that, we are grateful too. Thank you to Sally for sharing this magical, meaningful ICC moment with us, and with her readers.

You too can read Sally Perkins, PhD’s book From Story to Action: Transform Your Storytelling to Win Support and Ignite Change which is now available on Amazon in multiple formats.