I’m working at the Urdd National Eisteddfod – a major European youth festival – in Aberaeron, Wales, this week. Colleagues from the BBC Welsh-language children’s news programme Ffeil have been recording viewers’ stories using an adapted London black taxi cab as an experiment here. It’s not something they’ve built themselves; it’s been hired in. The cab contains a video camera which starts recording onto a flashcard as soon as someone opens the door and sits in the cab. Question prompts can be given either on-screen or, in the case of Ffeil, by a presenter off-camera.This taxi strikes me as a fleet-footed story capture device. The best way to use this would…
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How storytelling is saving hundreds of lives in Welsh hospitals
“I was back in the hospital having my dressing changed after an operation. I’d had a lot of stitches. The nurse arrived with a pen in her mouth. She took off my old dressing and ran the pen which had been in her mouth along my chest to check all the stitches. After changing my dressing she walked on to the next patient tapping the pen against her teeth.” This is the kind of patient story that’s been used in re-training staff to be aware of ways in which hospital bugs are spread. Hearing a short account like this has proved effective in changing hospital staff’s ways of working. The…
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“What has been important for you in your life?”
That’s the question Hanne Jones and Eli Lea from Flimmer Film asked as they went from door to door at old people’s homes in Norway. The answers they were given were as different as the people they met. ‘My Days’ is a collection of 37 memories told by people between the ages of 79 and 104. These digital stories are in Norwegian with English subtitles and they’re each around three minutes long. The music’s beautiful and the storytellers’ voices have such warmth and, at the same time, gravitas that they took me by suprise and brought a tear to my eye. Watch, for example, Alf telling the story of his…
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StoryWorks: Looking for the Story workshop
Delivered on April 28, Pontypridd, Wales, by Gilly Adams and Georgie Meadows, who say: “To be effective practitioners and offer compassionate and good care, we need to be able to see each patient as a special and unique individual…Using pictures as our starting point, we will explore how we can be more aware of the stories of those who cannot tell their own.” The cost of this half day workshop is only £30 and there are details here. StoryWorks has a new website at http://www.storyworksglam.co.uk with mainly health-related digital stories about OCD, ADHD, cancer, etc. This organisation has also done work with explanatory storytelling. For example, they worked with the…
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Breaking Barriers Digital Storytelling screening in South Wales
‘Same Place; Different Routes’ digital stories are being screened by Breaking Barriers at Llanhilleth Institute on Thursday 28th January 2010 at 7pm. ‘Same Place; Different Routes’ has three strands examining the experiences of: recent migrants to Wales and people who moved here some years ago, different generations living together in the Valleys people with a range of mental health issues. Also being screened on the night are stories made as part of the centenary celebrations at Christchurch Aberbeeg and from Breaking Barriers’ recent Training the Trainers courses. Ruth Garnault of Breaking Barriers says: “We believe that everybody has a story to tell and these stories are touching, funny and moving. …
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Community Voices digital media grants
Digital storytellers will be interested to hear that one £500 award per week is available between now and March 2010. That’s what Community Voices has to offer those in England using digital media to help empower disadvantaged communities: “Media Trust is always looking to celebrate the varied and inspiring ways you are using digital media to help empower disadvantaged communities. And now Community Voices has 20 x £500 awards to give away before the end of March 2010 – that’s one every week. If you’re helping to give your community a voice through digital media we’d like to hear from you, and so would many other communities seeking help. Projects…
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BBC – understand, participate in and influence
Inform, educate and entertain was the old Reithian view of the BBC. Whilst continuing to be a worthwhile mission, it does sound a little ‘paternal’ or top-down for today’s world. It was refreshing to hear a new personal view of what the BBC needs to do today from Seetha Kumar – online access champion and controller BBC Online – in a presentation at BBC Wales I attended yesterday. In response to a question, she repeated this paragraph from her presentation to the Skills for Life conference on 3 November: “The Reithian tradition of inform, educate and entertain is as true today as it was over 80 years ago. In the…
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PS
This is a site by BBC Wales with personal stories by 14-25 year olds. In PS, you can submit and watch videos categorized Health, Entertainment, Education, Religion, News & Politics, Environment, Love & Sex, Animals, Race & Culture, Crime & Violence, Business & Economy, Sports, Life, Drugs & Alcohol, Science & Technology, Community & Society and Other. There’s an embeddable widget on the site with the latest comments and stories, so I thought I’d embed it here on the Aberth Digital Storytelling blog.
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Participatory Video Facebook group
George Metaxiotis sent me an invite from Greece today to join the PV:RF Participatory Video Facebook group. It’s described as “a networking forum for anyone involved in participatory video research – especially community based research.” So I wanted to share the link with you here: http://tr.im/FcCq The group’s only three months old but it already looks like a good way to link up with PV projects around the world. E.g. Chris Blythe posted a wall message about his ‘Inspired Productions’ in New Zealand/Aotearoa: “We’re developing our work to include drama and music media. Current project is supporting refugee youth from Burma and Bhutan to produce content for our national museum, Te…
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Free presentation: Sustaining and Developing Island Communities
Wed 2 Dec 09, 1 pm at the Tramsheds Building, Glyntaff Campus, University of Glamorgan, Treforest, Mid Glamorgan. Prof Do Coyle of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, presents ‘Sustaining and Developing Island Communities: Extreme Measures for Extreme Communities’. This presentation is about ‘extreme’ communities where the digital infrastructure is lacking. Prof Dyle will look at different kinds of community building in isolated places to enable connection and be connected. He’ll also tell the story of Telling Tales and I-Scape. This is a free session but attendeees need to reserve their place by emailing storytelling@glam.ac.uk This is the first of the University of Glamorgan’s George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling Communities…