Here are the rest of the questions that Kaseina Dashe from Worcester asked.
3. How do you identify your projects?
4. What challenges do you encounter in carrying out your projects?
5. What are the gaps your practice is trying to fill?
6. How does digital storytelling enhance cultural and community development?
7. How relevant is cultural development to any society?
8. Who are the beneficiaries of the work that you carry out?
9. How do you use digital storytelling in workshops, training sessions, projects and festivals?
10. Do the applications and uses of digital storytelling vary depending on the project? If so, how?
11. What does corporate digital storytelling involve?
12. What do you foresee to be the future of digital storytelling?
13. What value do membership of professional bodies add to your practice?
14. What are the ingredients for a successful digital storytelling practice like yours?
Here are some answers and thoughts.
3. How do you identify your projects?
Usually they come to me. Often it is someone who has identified that they want to do a digital storytelling project and they do an internet search and find me.
Probably more important though is the long term relationships that are built up over time. For example, my relationship with the Inala Elders probably began with meeting Aunt Vi McDermott at a local storytelling festival. We got on well and a number of workshops and community projects later, I'm still developing new projects with Aunty Vi and other Elders from Inala.
Too often the nature of grants and other funding makes this type of long term relationship more challenging but it is the way I would like to work more often.
4. What challenges do you encounter in carrying out your projects?
There is nothing specific about digital storytelling projects here. If one can get the funding in the first place, then the projects aren't difficult. One simply follows good practice and they work out.
5. What are the gaps your practice is trying to fill?
My practice is not trying to do anything. Despite that however, I do think that Digital Storytelling does fill some gaps. Because, as a format, it allows satisfying and effective outcomes with relatively inexpensive technology and process, then it allows much more community and amateur production and distribution then network television or movie making allows.
Digital storytelling allows a wide range of age groups, literacy and technical experience to be digitally creative. The needed technology is available in homes, classrooms and community centres.
6. How does digital storytelling enhance cultural and community development?
I think I've covered this in previous answers but essentially it help ensure that stories are told and published. Telling one's own story is a healing process when it done voluntarily in a supportive environment. Hearing someone tell an important personal story build community bonds and identity. It can bolster our determination to work for social good rather than individual benefit. Identifying our own story in someone elses can help us realise that we are not isolated, our experience is shared. Digital storytelling does all of the above almost as well as non-digital storytelling. It's advantage can be a potentially wider audience.
7. How relevant is cultural development to any society?
Very. Cultural development is an essential counter and contradiction to accumulated distress and uncaring exploitation.
8. Who are the beneficiaries of the work that you carry out?
The people who tell and publish their stories, the people who support and assist the process and the people who listen/watch and think about their stories. Often it is simply enough to know that the project has taken place to gain some benefit. Society as a whole benefits through the community cultural development that takes place.
(I get a lot of benefit myself as well of course and I don't just mean it helps me earn a living.)
9. How do you use digital storytelling in workshops, training sessions, projects and festivals?
I will often find ways of including a digital storytelling variation into projects and workshops. For example, when asked to help students to create stories about their school and suburb in an Artist In Residency project recently I was able to also publish those stories as digital stories on DVD and projected as part of the community exhibition and celebration.
Another example was the Stories and Songs of Boundary Street Project where I worked with local storytellers, musicians and members of a choir to create songs about Boundary Street, West End. These songs were performed on stage, I compered, but also digital story versions were projected on the big LCD screen as part of the West End Live Festival (part of the Festival of Brisbane).
10. Do the applications and uses of digital storytelling vary depending on the project? If so, how?
Yes, of course. See above.
11. What does corporate digital storytelling involve?
The same as community digital storytelling but the outcomes are more usually associated with a training or public communication outcome.
12. What do you foresee to be the future of digital storytelling?
I think that it will continue. Their is a niche for it at the moment and I suspect that their will continue to be a niche for it as long as digital technology is accessable to the community.
What will change will be the technology of the publishing media. I still make use of DVD's as a publishing medium but it maybe that it is replaced with online platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo etc. The creative process will still be digital storytelling however.
13. What value do membership of professional bodies add to your practice?
I think it is valuable but not essential. Membership helps some clients be confident about your professionalism and your integrity but really word of mouth is more important.
14. What are the ingredients for a successful digital storytelling practice like yours?
Integrity, respect, flexibility, being able to listen well and being an experienced spoken word storyteller.
The integrity and respect speak for themselves. Flexibility is an essential component of all community culural development work. Nothing works out exactly as originally planned and neither should it.
Being able to listen well not only enables one to work out what the storyteller is trying to achieve but also encourage them to tell a good story. Good storytellers are also good story listeners because the storyteller is constantly watching and listening to the story and the audience and adapting the story to fit the situation.
Being an experienced oral or spoken word storyteller is important as it allows one to know when a story, or voiceover, is being told well. It enables one to ask the questions that fill the gaps in the story. Authors and playwrites have different storytelling skills that often result in digital stories that are too literary or dramatic for good digital stories.
Thus ends the questions and my answers. Please feel free to contribute via comments or through email (mail@storytell.com.au).
The origina request and response is at http://enchantedmovies.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/riverview-stories-international-request.html . The two other posts are at:
http://enchantedmovies.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/what-does-my-digital-story-practice.html and
http://enchantedmovies.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/what-factors-influence-your-practice.html
Regards
Daryll Bellingham
04 April 2012
What factors influence your practice?
Many things influence my digital story practice.
Beliefs
We all tell stories and basically need to tell our own personal stories for our personal and our community well being.
People choose their own level of safety and will tell the stories that they feel safe to tell under the circumstances.
One of the ways that people are oppressed or controlLed is to prevent them telling the stories they want to tell. A good example of this is the way that Aboriginal people were regulated by the Controller of Aborigines under the Act in the first two thirds of the C20.
Part of my practice as a community cultural development artist is to help people tell the stories they need to tell.
I also believe that the process of collecting, editing, rehearsing, recording etc of digital stories is at least as important if not more important than the outcomes.
So an important part of my practice is respect.
Outcomes
The first important step in process is to help people work out their desired outcomes. Once they and I clearly know that then we can work out the best way to achieve it.
For example, if a group of Indigenous Elders want to publish their life stories so that the next generation and the community I general will know what they went through and they want to do it fairly quickly, then a digital story project may well be the best thing to do.
However if a groups wants to encourage other cultural groups to share with them I their own centre then a 'Stories and Songs of ... Project' might be best.
Digital Storytelling Process
The Digital Storytelling process itself has quite an influence on my practice. So, because digital stories work best when the visual elements compliment and support the voice over, it makes sense to create the voice over first.
For a lot of the people I work with, it doesn't help a lot to create a script to read from or learn. So usually I talk with my storyteller and say something like, "What things are you going to include in your story?"
Some times I might make a suggestion or two about things to leave out or add or change around but really, we'll start recording a voice over. We'll often have some important still images in mind as we do this. Often one of my jobs will be to find other imagery and to suggest if some video footage might be appropriate.
If you are a refugee, for example, you are unlikely to have photos of your refugee journey. People usually don't have photos of their workplace although there will be some school photos and often family event photos. These all have an influence.
Celebration and evaluation
One of the biggest influence is the celebration of a successful project. The launch of the Yarns and Life Stories - Inala Elders was an example. This was such a moving launch that it could not fail to influence my work.
Formal grant evaluations are also influential. They really encourage me to keep on improving my process.
Beliefs
We all tell stories and basically need to tell our own personal stories for our personal and our community well being.
People choose their own level of safety and will tell the stories that they feel safe to tell under the circumstances.
One of the ways that people are oppressed or controlLed is to prevent them telling the stories they want to tell. A good example of this is the way that Aboriginal people were regulated by the Controller of Aborigines under the Act in the first two thirds of the C20.
Part of my practice as a community cultural development artist is to help people tell the stories they need to tell.
I also believe that the process of collecting, editing, rehearsing, recording etc of digital stories is at least as important if not more important than the outcomes.
So an important part of my practice is respect.
Outcomes
The first important step in process is to help people work out their desired outcomes. Once they and I clearly know that then we can work out the best way to achieve it.
For example, if a group of Indigenous Elders want to publish their life stories so that the next generation and the community I general will know what they went through and they want to do it fairly quickly, then a digital story project may well be the best thing to do.
However if a groups wants to encourage other cultural groups to share with them I their own centre then a 'Stories and Songs of ... Project' might be best.
Digital Storytelling Process
The Digital Storytelling process itself has quite an influence on my practice. So, because digital stories work best when the visual elements compliment and support the voice over, it makes sense to create the voice over first.
For a lot of the people I work with, it doesn't help a lot to create a script to read from or learn. So usually I talk with my storyteller and say something like, "What things are you going to include in your story?"
Some times I might make a suggestion or two about things to leave out or add or change around but really, we'll start recording a voice over. We'll often have some important still images in mind as we do this. Often one of my jobs will be to find other imagery and to suggest if some video footage might be appropriate.
If you are a refugee, for example, you are unlikely to have photos of your refugee journey. People usually don't have photos of their workplace although there will be some school photos and often family event photos. These all have an influence.
Celebration and evaluation
One of the biggest influence is the celebration of a successful project. The launch of the Yarns and Life Stories - Inala Elders was an example. This was such a moving launch that it could not fail to influence my work.
Formal grant evaluations are also influential. They really encourage me to keep on improving my process.
What does my digital story practice entail?
Generally speaking it entails getting work creating or helping other people create and publish digital stories.
I like the more specific definition of digital stories as being a short movie created by recording an audio VoiceOver and adding still photos, art work, documents and some video clips to compliment and support the voice over.
This form of digital story has both power and advantages of accessibility of technology. It is also cheap - a big advantage when you are working with community.
I've just put one of my own digital stories that fits this definition very well. It's a homage to my father called 'Making a Life'. http://vimeo.com/39613712
My most recent project that used digital stories was the Riverview School Artist In Residency Project. One of the outcomes was a DVD of digital stories of the stories that I created with the primary students. We created orally and recorded as we went, some on an iPad and some on a laptop but in both cases projected to a smart board for the students to watch and help edit. From the voiceovers the students worked with a visual artist colleague, Narelle Oliver, to create foam board prints which were then scanned.
I then created digital stories with voice over and prints and published to DVD. Some draft versions of them can be found on ourriverviewstories.blogspot.com .
'Yarns and Life Stories - Inala Elders' is a DVD of digital stories and video stories that I produced and created for and with a group of I digenous community Elders. Some of them such as Aunty Edna Bond's 'All Together' has only a couple of short video segments and I'm happy to call them digital stories others are all, or nearly all, video and I'd rather say video story.
I had a meeting this morning with an Indigenous community leader who is publishing a book of Dream Time stories and wants to add a DVD of 'digital story' versions to them. I hope this project works out. Will depend on a couple of grant applications however. Well there's some of my practice.
Regards
Daryll.
I like the more specific definition of digital stories as being a short movie created by recording an audio VoiceOver and adding still photos, art work, documents and some video clips to compliment and support the voice over.
This form of digital story has both power and advantages of accessibility of technology. It is also cheap - a big advantage when you are working with community.
I've just put one of my own digital stories that fits this definition very well. It's a homage to my father called 'Making a Life'. http://vimeo.com/39613712
My most recent project that used digital stories was the Riverview School Artist In Residency Project. One of the outcomes was a DVD of digital stories of the stories that I created with the primary students. We created orally and recorded as we went, some on an iPad and some on a laptop but in both cases projected to a smart board for the students to watch and help edit. From the voiceovers the students worked with a visual artist colleague, Narelle Oliver, to create foam board prints which were then scanned.
I then created digital stories with voice over and prints and published to DVD. Some draft versions of them can be found on ourriverviewstories.blogspot.com .
'Yarns and Life Stories - Inala Elders' is a DVD of digital stories and video stories that I produced and created for and with a group of I digenous community Elders. Some of them such as Aunty Edna Bond's 'All Together' has only a couple of short video segments and I'm happy to call them digital stories others are all, or nearly all, video and I'd rather say video story.
I had a meeting this morning with an Indigenous community leader who is publishing a book of Dream Time stories and wants to add a DVD of 'digital story' versions to them. I hope this project works out. Will depend on a couple of grant applications however. Well there's some of my practice.
Regards
Daryll.
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