My name is Gareth Morlais and I’m was one of the BBC Cymru Wales Capture Wales Cipolwg ar Gymru Digital Storytelling team from 2001-2008. The first Digital Story I ever saw was Daniel Meadows’s Polyphoto. I saw it at an inspiring presentation Daniel made here at BBC Wales in 2001, where he also showed Dana Atchley’s Home Movies. I made my first Digital Story with Gilly Adams at a 2001 bootcamp for BBC Wales, led by Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen in the Elan Valley, mid Wales. That workshop was organised by Karen Lewis, Mandy Rose and Maggie Russell.The people I worked with in the Capture Wales Cipolwg ar Gymru Digital Storytelling team included Gilly Adams, Huw Davies, Carwyn Evans, Lisa Heledd, Lisa Jones, Melanie Linsdell, Dafydd Llewelyn and Simon Turner. Nothing you read on this blog could have been written without learning what I’ve learned from the rest of the team.
BBC Capture Wales’ strategy has always been to try help make Digital Storytelling a sustainable proposition in Wales. We always planned to run fewer and fewer workshops ourselves as more and more community organisations began offering Digital Storytelling opportunities. We planned to stop running monthly workshops ourselves one day and that day came at the beginning of April 2008.
Two of our team have now moved on assignment to the University of Glamorgan, where the production activity and innovation continues with the aim of setting up a Centre for Excellence in Digital Storytelling there. Back at the BBC, the focus will be on publishing the stories that are being produced.
Back in 2001, only Capture Wales was helping people to make Digital Stories in Wales; now, over 70 organisations in Wales are doing it or have been funded for a project that involves an element of Digital Storytelling. Almost 700 people have made their Digital Story with BBC Wales and, if you look at all projects around Wales, the figure’s into the thousands by now. I think this kind of planned sustainability with inbuilt self-redundancy is a remarkable model for a broadcaster, and I’d personally like to see more of it.
I may be less involved day-to-day in my work with helping people to make Digital Stories, but I’m still actively involved with digital storytelling. I’ll use this Aberth Digital Storytelling website to keep you updated.
Although I work for the BBC, the views and opinion I express in this blog are my own, not the BBC’s.
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