Jenny-Anne Bishop explains what life was like as a transgender person growing up and living in Wales. She talks about the difficult experiences she has had with her family as a result of her transition. It’s one of four digital stories made by StoryWorks for the Equality and Human Rights Commission Wales and I first saw it at their workshop for journalists and programme-makers called ‘Not just another statistic‘ on 17 January 2011 in Cardiff. Guardian columnist Juliet Jacques spoke about trans-related portrayal challenges and Romani journalist Jake Bowers called for the media to stop being so shockingly racist when covering Gypsy and Traveller Community stories. Jake works with the…
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DS6 digital storytelling conference advance notice of date and call for speakers
DS Cymru has announced on its blog that the “DS6 International Digital Storytelling Festival will take place on Friday 17th June 2011 at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales“. DS Cymru’s Esko Reinikainen is calling for “suggestions for our speaker and breakout sessions long list”. Deadline for submissions is Monday 14th February and the form is at http://goo.gl/aBelk. Booking details for delegates will follow. I met DS Cymru member and head of Aberystwyth Arts Centre Alan Hewson over the weekend and he’s really looking forward to this sixth annual get-together. Another digital storyteller who’s looking forward to the event is Daniel Meadows who’ll be in Aberystwyth this summer. All in all, DS6…
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Hacio’r Iaith – hacking the Welsh language
I spent Saturday in Aberystwyth at Hacio’r Iaith – the second annual Welsh-language code camp. Highlights included: A fantastic one-hour crash crowd-sourced creative session aimed at translating newly-out-of-copyright Welsh poet Gwilym Deudraeth’s work into multimedia, digital stories and more. This session was very well facilitated by Carl Morris of NativeHQ. Here’s a summary of the work, including a ten second video based on Deudraeth’s englyn about Gandhi which took me twenty minutes to make and publish using Zoom H2, JayCut and YouTube. The announcement of a Welsh-language PhD scholarship at Aberystwyth University, researching local and hyper-local Welsh language multimedia for Golwg360. Meeting some enthusiastic people, including Telsa Gwynne, who translated…
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Menna Richards
Tonight, I’m going to say goodbye at a party to an old friend and colleague who’s leaving the BBC soon. Menna Richards is the woman who commissioned BBC Capture Wales / Cipolwg ar Gymru back in 2001. I hope some of those who made a digital story with Capture Wales might feel that digital storytelling has been as big a gift to the people of Wales as the hugely-enjoyable Doctor Who and Torchwood TV programmes. Menna brought those two hits to Wales too. I remember Menna coming back to work with BBC Cymru Wales more than ten years ago when Greg Dyke was director general. There was a real buzz…
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Who’s missing from this list of 43 Digital Storytelling Influencers?
As part of the process of redesigning this Aberth Digital Storytelling blog, I decided to look again at the links from the point of view of listing some of the digital storytelling people and projects who’ve influenced me over the years. Here’s the first draft. I know I’ve left many people off this list. If there’s someone from the field of digital storytelling you’d like me to consider adding, please use the Comments system to let me know. Akiko Ogawa, Alec Couros, Angharad Dalton, Barrie Stephenson, BBC Capture Wales (archive) , BBC Cipolwg ar Gymru (archif), Bernajean Porter, Breaking Barriers , Cadwyd, Cardiff Story, Carwyn Evans, Communities 2.0 , Culture…
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Six steps to a sustainable digital storytelling project
If you’re planning a digital storytelling project, and you want it to be a sustainable one, here are six steps to consider: 1. write an outline of the ethos your project will employ, encompassing: * fair dealing with contributors and participants, * contracting, * intellectual property and third-party rights, * licensing-on the products your participants make, * capturing and storing consents by parents/guardians/carers of minors and vulnerable people, * diversity policy * disclosure policy * how to keep participants’ personal data safe, * etc. 2. write a summary of all your storyteller recruitment methods. The difficulty of this isn’t to be underestimated, as this was an element that turned out…
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Aberth Digital Storytelling site changes
I just wanted to let you know that I’m redesigning this site and relocating it from my old server to a shiny new one. Hope you can bear with me while I sort out the site maintenence over the weekend. Crossing fingers…
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Digital Storytelling Wizard of 2010
One of the things I enjoy about Twitter is that it enables people with shared interests to meet up. During 2010, I’ve met several people who are passionate about digital storytelling just because I talk about the subject on Twitter. One of the most inspiring people I met this year was Jordanian researcher Rami Malkawi @RamiDST. He’s studying for his PhD at University of Glamorgan, Wales, under the auspices of Phil Davies – @PhilWales – who’s probably already a familiar name if you’re interested in digital storytelling in education. When I met Rami in October at the BBC canteen in Cardiff, he talked me through his plans. He’s testing a…
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Fun end-of-term digital storytelling activity
If you’re a teacher looking for something fun for the end of school term, this may be of interest. It’s a hand-drawn, very basic animation, storytelling form I’ve been experimenting with since 2003. The first one I made was called Tickling in response to a call for stories by BBC One Minute Movies. If you’d like to make your own, here are my instructions. Let me know how you get along. Written and first published by Gareth Morlais on 8 December 2010.
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StoryBank, Cancer Genetics, StoryWorks and old friends
Thanksgiving Day (USA) was also the day of the launch of StoryBank Cancer Genetics digital stories at the University of Glamorgan’s Atrium building in Cardiff, Wales. It was a fantastic event. First Minister Carwyn Jones AM, who formally launched StoryBank, told a moving story about a serviceman posted home who discovered from military records that he’d been sent home because his mother had cancer and wasn’t expected to live very long. Carwyn said: “That man was my father”. What a way to discover such bad news.The health professionals who spoke from the stage said stories are a much better way than pamphlets to: persuade people with a significant history of…