3CMedia
Journal of Community, Citizen's and Third Sector Media and Communication
ISSN 1832-6161
Issue 5 (October) 2009
Making Links through Digital Storytelling
Editorial
Marcus Foth
YouthWorx Media: Creative media engagement for ‘at risk’ young people (145KB PDF)
Aneta Podkalicka and Jonathan Staley describe the development, operation and management of a youth media program, YouthWorx Media that engages disadvantaged young people in media creation. This paper explores connections between theory/philosophies and practice, social work and academic research, and contributes to a wider discussion of the role of community media/arts initiatives in stimulating positive social change.
Peta-Marie Standley and her colleagues introduce The Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways (TKRP), an Indigenous-owned community, training and environmental consultancy, that acts to record, demonstrate and communicate Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in cultural, environmental, educational and research initiatives and collaborates to strengthen outcomes for contemporary well-being. The TKRP uses new media tools in applying an ancient methodology to reconnect people to place and demonstrate the value of this knowledge system in providing solution to issues of contemporary concern. Through its Indigenous methodology the project demonstrates the ways these tools are used to communicate across cultural and geographical boundaries while retaining the integrity of the messages that are embedded in the places and people from which they come, connecting both Indigenous and non-Indigenous to place. This article reports on new insights generated through TKRP action research for improving media tools, training methods and approaches to solution making.
Hope Vale Digital Storytelling Project. Using the Camera: Telling Stories our Way (2231KB PDF)
In 2007 the Hope Vale – Pelican project (now in its 6th year) inaugurated a digital storytelling component into the program. The project is a partnership between Hope Vale Elders (championed by Des and Estelle Bowen) and Pelican Expeditions. In 2007 authors, Samia Goudie, a researcher and digital storytelling consultant, and Natalie Davey, a founding member of Pelican Expeditions, were invited to pilot a digital storytelling project. The Hope Vale – Pelican project is mainly run out of Connie’s beach, Cape Flattery in Cape York. The success of this pilot resulted in the design and implementation of a larger digital storytelling media camp being embedded as a co-creative practice in the 2008 Hope Vale – Pelican project. This article tells the story of this process and explores some of the early findings of both the benefits and problems of using digital storytelling in a trans-disciplinary partnership project to promote social and emotional wellbeing and caring for country with an Indigenous community.
Using Digital Storytelling to Capture Responses to the Apology (223KB PDF)
The project was an initiative of the State Library of Queensland (SLQ), conducted in collaboration with individuals from Brisbane-based Indigenous community, media and educational organisations, and a research team from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), including the authors, Jean Burgess and Helen Klaebe. The aim of the project was to devise and carry out a pilot project to explore the use of digital storytelling and oral history to capture a range of personal responses to the Apology, with a view to extending the program in other areas of Queensland. The digital storytelling workshop method was significantly adapted for use in the project—rather than a week-long hands-on workshop, the project combined intensive group meetings with a distributed production process, teaming up Indigenous facilitators, technical and creative practitioners with each of the participants. The outcome of the project was a small collection of stories that captured the emotional and historical significance of the Apology, incorporating a variety of personal and political perspectives, and serving to demonstrate the possibilities of using digital storytelling in this way. In the remainder of this paper, we describe in detail how the digital storytelling method was adapted for this context with a relatively constrained timeframe and budget. We share the methods and outcomes of the project, with the hope that some aspects of the resultant model might be applied to other co-creative or participatory media projects carried out by cultural institutions and community-based organisations.
Connecting through Digital Storytelling (492KB PDF)
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image is a cultural institution situated in Melbourne and dedicated to the moving image. It is a place where the moving image is presented in all its forms, with a charter to research, create, collect, exhibit, teach, nurture and advocate the use of the moving image in all areas of society. It is one of the few centres of its kind worldwide. Helen Simondson charts the development of the Digital Storytelling program at ACMI. In doing so, she captures some of the understandings gleaned as a result of being one of the first cultural institutions to develop a major user-generated content program, and identifies the challenges for the organisation in ensuring this program stays relevant in a rapidly changing media landscape.