linked to storytelling (Smith, Pedersen and­Burnett,­2014)­(Fletcher,­1996)­ (van Hulst, 2017) (Tangherlini, 2011) (Fayard­and­Weeks,­2007).­ These are spaces that hide in plain sight. The spaces that rarely feature in proud tours of our buildings to new joiners and important visitors. So, my research was designed to explore and potentially build on that evidence. For,­if­indeed,­storytelling­(with­all­its­ attendant­benefits)­was­attracted­to­ these­seemingly­insignificant­spaces,­ perhaps we might see them in a new light. Maybe these are spaces to cherish, to value and to protect? And this might have implications for the ways we work, design and privilege space and encour- age knowledge sharing and learning. Having­completed­the­first­stage­ of my research, the unexpected then intervened. In March 2020, the country — and many of our workplaces — went into lockdown. As I reviewed the transcripts and photographs, a curious parallel emerged between the things that my participants valued from those storytelling interactions and what people said they were now missing in a world of remote Zoom and Teams exchanges.


Suddenly, my research gained a contemporary resonance I had not anticipated.­The­question­of­where­we­ worked — and what this enabled us to do or not do, to feel and to experience — became a constant topic of discussion in both the workshops I was running at Linklaters with colleagues and clients, and in the wider media.


The story begins But,­let’s­start,­as­all­good­stories­ should, at the beginning. Why my


January-February 2022


interest in workplace stories? I suspect it began with my father. He started work on his­grandfather’s­farm­in­Suffolk­when­he­ was 12. And I loved to hear his accounts of the old labourers, the horses they worked with­and­the­tales­he’d­heard­—­some­ stretching back generations. It was clear such stories were used to diagnose and solve problems, share farming knowledge, vent frustrations and provide an under- standing of ‘how we do things around here’.­ And­it­doesn’t­matter­whether­it’s­a­ muddy­field­or­state­of­the­art­office­build-


ing,­people­tell­stories.­They­can’t­help­it.­ When, in 1992, I moved to Linklaters, I found lawyers were inveterate storytellers. They swapped tales of the deals they were working on, the client relationships they were trying to build, and the legal prob- lems­they’d­encountered­and­solved.­And­ it struck me that this knowledge was, in its own way, as important as the knowl- edge that I was collecting, indexing and searching as part of my day-to-day role. Stories comprised the tacit knowledge that provided context, richness and depth­to­the­explicit­knowledge­codified­


INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 29


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