What is Story Neighborhood?
At its core, Story Neighborhood asks a simple question:
What stories live near each other inside us?
Story Neighborhood is a copyrighted storytelling framework designed by Lily Be to help you better understand yourself and one another through lived experience, emotional intersections, and storytelling.
Not only does it help you see the moments in your life that are worth exploring, but it allows you to connect and navigate a world better with people.
Instead of debating opinions or reducing people to labels, you explore moments from your life that are connected to feelings, people, places, and experiences. You start to see that while you live life differently, you live it in the same neighborhoods and the same streets as everyone else.
Every Neighborhood Needs A Name
Neighborhood Names are determined by the storyteller or the collective of story residents.
The name of the neighborhood guides the moment we turn into a STORY PLOT.
A STORY PLOT is a moment made real by answering a series of questions that form the foundation for a story.
Mapping Your Neighborhood
THE ADDRESS
That address is a five word title that tells us a little or a lot about the STORY PLOT. It makes every STORY PLOT identifiable by the teller and the reader.
Every Address Sits at an Intersection
THE STORY ADDRESS LIVES ON AN INTERSECTION OF FEELING & NOUN
Every Story Plot has a feeling and a noun that is more prominently featured.
Every Story Developer gets to decide what noun and feeling stuck out to them in their moment.
Bring Story Neighborhood to You
- Schools – Help students build empathy, reflect on their experiences, strengthen writing skills, and discover shared connections through storytelling.
- Universities – Capture student, faculty, and alumni experiences to foster belonging, research, orientation, and campus engagement.
- Nonprofit Spaces – Preserve community voices, measure impact through stories, and strengthen relationships with participants, donors, and stakeholders.
- Community Spaces – Create living archives of local stories that celebrate identity, document history, and encourage connection among neighbors.
- Leadership Development – Help leaders uncover the stories that shape their values, communication style, and decision-making while building trust within teams.
- Workshops – Turn participants' experiences into interactive story maps that deepen learning, reflection, and collaboration.
- Retreats – Capture meaningful moments, breakthroughs, and shared experiences, creating a lasting artifact participants can revisit long after the retreat.
- Storytelling Experiences – Guide people from lived experience to meaningful narrative while revealing the connections between individual and collective stories.
- Intergenerational Conversations – Bridge generations by preserving family and community stories, fostering understanding, and documenting wisdom that might otherwise be lost.