The original idea for this book came about during the two keynote sessions from John Hartley and Joe Lambert at Create, Act, Changeâthe 5th International Conference of Digital Storytelling (2013) in Ankara, Turkey; they both sought to bring a greater understanding of the practice of digital storytelling (DS) by arguing for a need to âtheoriseâ the work. John Hartley and Joe Lambert reached the same conclusion and engaged with it from starting positions on opposite ends of the spectrum: as the consummate media theorist and as the dedicated practitioner. Digital Storytelling Form and Content: Telling Tales shares much with two preceding key texts on DS, namely Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World (Hartley et al. 2008) and Digital Storytelling, Mediatized StoriesâSelf Representations in New Media (Lundby 2008); it seeks to build on them by bridging the divide between theory and practice so that the Digital Storytelling form or genre is better understood by practitioners, by theorists, by policy makers, by educationists. It also provides an opportunity for all concerned to reflect on the changing nature of DS as the practice continues to travel the globe as a tool to effect change and as the field gains traction within academia as a form to research and a means by which to conduct research.
As a relatively new cultural form drawing on a range of different roots, practices and interests, DS has attracted attention from a range of scholars and researchers. One consequence of this is that literature, research and practice is limited and exploratory, as writers, practitioners and academics work their way toward a fuller, more rounded understanding. Drivers for individual projects are often drawn from different sources with a desire to use DS with particular groups or communities. Sennett (2012, p. 55) notes how many community projects âoffer good experiencesâ but âhave to lead somewhere to become sustainableâ. This is true for community-derived forms of practice like DS as well as individual projects or programmes of activity. This sense of immediacy is found in many DS projects where the short-term benefits of the storytelling process are defined in terms of stories told or people trained. It is rare to find research that considers the content of digital stories or takes a longitudinal approach to the evaluation of the impact of attending a DS workshop on participants. Related to this is a feeling that practitioners and groups can often welcome the community-based modesty of their work and use this as a shield to avoid consideration of complex harder issues. DS is regularly referred to as a âmovementâ; indeed Joe Lambert, co-founder of StoryCenter (formerly the Center for Digital Storytelling) describes DS as having âevolved to become an international movement of deeply committed folks working with story in virtually every field of human endeavourâ (2013, p. 1). Whilst the volume of practice is undoubtedly large, DS has been critiqued for its seeming inability to exploit fully the digital environment for much more than the production of stories and the sharing of them with relatively small audiences who are already engaged with their specific change agendas. (Hartley 2008, p. 202; Hartley et al. 2009, p. 15).
As Lundby (2008) points out, the term digital storytelling is used to encompass a wide range of forms, ranging from gaming and interactive storytelling (Handler Miller 2014), to the use of digital visual effects in film, to the proliferation of self-representations in a range of social media forms, from Facebook posts, to Tweets, to self-made movies shared on YouTube (Dunford and Jenkins 2015, p. 27). So, before we get to start to address questions relating to form and content, we need to consider exactly how to define our notion of Digital Storytelling.
What We Mean When We Talk About Digital Storytelling
DS is a simple, creative process whereby people with little or no experience of computers, gain the skills needed to tell a personal story as a two-minute video using predominantly still images combined with recorded voice-over, and often including music and/or other sounds. Digital stories are self-representational stories that emerge from a collaborative workshop process using a âStory Circleâ, in which a range of writing stimuli and other activities are used to develop trust within the group and âfindâ the story.
The original approach to Digital Storytelling workshops set out by Lambert from his base at the Center for Digital Storytelling in his Digital Storytelling Cookbook (2007, 2010) demanded basic ICT competence as well as the ability to participate in an intensive creative workshop requiring emotional openness and a willingness to collaborate with strangers. Such interaction is the means through which oneâs story is identified, refined and told; it turns from a memory to a digital story ready to be shared with others. Lambert sets out seven stages in his storytelling process. First, participants work on developing the storyâthe phased Story Circle process is insightful and reflexiveâand they need to decide exactly on which aspects to focus (stages 1â3). In the next stages, participants select the images (from personal photo archives or from online, copyright-free images; or they create new imagesâphotos or drawings) in order to illustrate their stories (stage 4). Then, participants write a personal story as a script, not longer than three minutes, and combine key emotions or happenings alongside the illustrative photos. The author records the script and then edits the voiceover alongside the images, while the relevant pictures are being displayed (steps 5 and 6). Once the final story is told, the digital story is shared with the rest of the group in a screening of stories (step 7) (Lambert 2013, pp. 54â59). Sometimes, participants may wish to show their story to a wider audience, so many stories are uploaded on YouTube, Vimeo or other Internet spaces dedicated to gathering these types of productions (often a project-specific website). The Center for Digital Storytelling re-launched as StoryCenter in November 2015 and, to avoid any confusion, this volume uses the new name as appropriate.
Due to the workshop structure and ethos, most of the stories told in the Story Circle are initially quite personal, but the final version which emerges through the prism of the full workshop experience is the agglutination of personal and social input. âThe sort of reflecting upon experience involved in the production of personal narrative can range from seemingly direct rendering of memory into words, to a self-aware evaluation and interpretation of experience, often constructed in interaction with anotherâ (Davis and Weinshenker 2012, p. 7). Participants pass through a process of creation and co-creation, of meaningful social interaction, of adapting the format to the digital environment, while at the same time keeping all short and significant.
This is underpinned by group exercises and individual processes that develop confidence and build self-esteem. These different elements combine to form the narrative basis of digital stories. On the surface these digital stories are all singular, personal audio-visual accounts of an individualâs story, yet the making of them is shaped by the collaborative experience in the workshop. Each story shows how someone envisages their place in a personal and a social world. Particular sets or groups of stories, such as those described by Misorelli or Lewis and Matthews in this volume, acquire a wider representative meaning and, in doing this, say something more profound about the geographical places or the political spaces from which they come.
It is a new junction where technology and storytelling meet to point in a new direction enabling authors to craft personal stories using imagery, text and the spoken word. To take the direction of travel signposted by Jackson (2006), digital storytelling is one of the ways in which technology can be used to enable people to tell their own personal stories in a new way.
Burgess (2006, p. 207) defines DS as âa workshop-based process by which âordinary peopleâ create their own short autobiographical films that can be streamed on the web or broadcast on television.â As a method, DS combines techniques to develop literacy and storytelling skills with an introduction to basic Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Different authors see it as a means to express vernacular creativity (Burgess 2006), as a research method for local health issues (Gubrium 2009), as a form of personal creativity (Lambert 2013), as a way to influence approaches to health care (Hardy and Sumner 2015) and as a means of preserving a communityâs identity and a form of oral history (Klaebe et al. 2007). Writings about digital storytelling specifically in the education sector as a âstrong asset to the 21st century classroomâ (Gregori-Signes and BrĂgido-CorachĂĄn 2014, p. 15) demonstrate the practiceâs growing momentum as a reflective learning process, as a research field and a research tool. The recently published Digital Storytelling in Higher Education (Jamissen et al. 2017) presents a collection of essays mapped to Boyerâs âfour scholarshipsâ to theorise the efficacy of DS as a means to advance pedagogy within the sector. These examples touch upon just a few of the territories in which digital storytelling is active.
Practitioner Perspectives, Theoretical Positionings: And the Spaces in Between
This collection is divided into four elements. Part OneâPractice presents a series of case studies looking at different uses of DS across the world. It deliberately draws on projects that have strived to stretch the boundaries of practice by using DS constructively in a range of different settings, showing the adaptability and hybridity of DS. Joe Lambertâs contribution eloquently articulates this by reflecting back to the early Free Software and later Open Source movement, the utopian ideals associated with the relatively (as opposed to what had been available before) low-cost production tools and the potential for distribution, far and wide. He describes the evolution of the practice as different sectors, like education, social work and community activism for example, appropriated the âclassicâ model that had been promulgated by StoryCenter and âinterpretedâ the practice to meet their own specific needs. DS is, most emphatically, a collaborative, co-creative approach and requires resources: a space to meet, facilitators to guide, technology to produce and to distribute. Inevitably, there is tension between perhaps the original drive to promote what Lambert calls âglobal democracy and liberationâ and the outcomes which funders or institutions (such as educational establishments or health care providers) want DS to deliver.
That being said, Lambertâs charting of significant âmedia activismâ work across the globe does again point to the potential for DS to effect change through targeted projects; he also documents the Centerâs new, broader focus on âStory Workâ that draws upon a wide range of story-based processes. Lambert draws upon the practitioner case studies that are the backbone of the first section of this book to describe the Centerâs own journey and celebrate experimentation as the life-blood of the digital storytelling movement.
Part One: Practice
The five case studies that follow Lambertâs piece all but scratch the surface of the ways in which DS is being marshalled for a whole plethora of outcomes. Rainbirdâs account of her volunteer-based project in Kenya describes the challenges of working with former street children in Kibera and the importance of working with an established and experienced partner. Misorelliâs contribution on the Museu da Pessoaâs One Million Life Stories initiative in Brazil, (also described by Margaret Anne Clarke in Hartley et al. 2009, pp. 149â153) provides an account directly from the perspective of her role as project co-ordinator and emphasises the importance of equipping the young participants with the skillsâand the responsibilityâto distribute and promote their stories through a range of public and online mechanisms and to continue to record stories after the first workshop, in order to stimulate the multiplier effect that was at the heart of the initi...