StoryWorks has been established to support public service organisations interested in using people’s stories to improve what they do. It’s based at the University of Glamorgan’s Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care and led by Karen Lewis, former Capture Wales project producer, who says: “Stories offer huge potential to reveal what people really experience from service providers, and what they actually want. First hand accounts, in people’s own words, can be a uniquely powerful way of ‘hearing it like it is’.” Here are the details of the the workshop from the website: StoryWorks is running a three-day digital storytelling workshop in Cardiff, Wales, from 6-9 May 2009. This is…
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Aberystwyth DS4 Festival advance details
Here are the latest details about the fourth annual festival of digital storytelling in Aberystwyth, Wales, on Wednesday 17 June 2009, from a press release from Aberystwyth Arts Centre: Following on from the success of DS3 the fourth festival of Digital Storytelling DS4 aims to inspire and encourage and show the exciting possibilities of Digital Storytelling and brings you up to date with what is happening in the world of Digital Storytelling. Whether you work in education, the community or as an artist, it is your opportunity to share experiences, explore new creative ideas, see the latest technological developments, look at examples of best practice in the U.K. and worldwide…
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Papurau Bro: coming together to fold
Papurau Bro are Welsh-language local newspapers written by, edited by, folded & stapled and distributed by community members. They’ve thrived for three decades or more and I’d say that digital storytelling in Wales has drawn inspiration from the spirit of Papurau Bro. In my current (2009) role as executive producer of www.bbc.co.uk/cymru I was interviewed by Rhodri ap Dyfrig for his tech blog metastwnsh. I’ve long been a fan of Rhodri’s work in screening short films via Pictiwrs yn y Pyb. Before the interview began we discussed our shared admiration of the way Papurau Bro are made in concert by the people featured in the stories and wondered what might…
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Avoid fancy video effects – number 2 of 7 DS no-nos
Cuts or cross-fades are the video transitions I recommend, unless there’s a good story-related reason to use something else.
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From Copenhagen to Wrexham via Jamaica
Joe Lambert of the Center for Digital Storytelling has written with news of workshops he’s holding in Copenhagen this summer and of exciting plans to establish a European Center for Digital in conjunction with Copehagen Business School. Joe’s team will be joined for the workshops by guest trainers Lisa Heledd Jones (BBC Wales and George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling) and Barrie Stephenson of digistories.co.uk. There are details of the workshops here. Next: knife crime is a problem in some British cities. I think community leaders may take inspiration from Mervin Jarman’s story. He’s just been awarded the Stockholm Challenge Trophy. He’s set up a digilab where people can come…
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Match Game – the five steps
When you’re working on storytelling with a group of people in a situation like the Digital Storytelling Storycircle, there’s one game that often really helps people to come up with ‘their story’. It’s the Match Game and it’s Gilly Adams who pioneered its use in Digital Storytelling. Gilly wrote instructions for this game to be inserted into give-away boxes of the long-handled cooks matches you need to play this game when we went on the Digital Storytelling Gathering tour around Wales last month. In the interests of sharing these instructions with people I’ll meet in Japan, I’m reproducing Gilly’s instructions here: ————————————— Alan Thomas plays the match game at BBC…
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Download this new guide to digital storytelling
It’s by the BBC Capture Wales team and we wrote it to coincide with the Digital Storytelling Gathering tour around Wales last month. It’s on the BBC Wales Digital Storytelling website. Hope you find it useful. Here’s a link to the html menu page on the BBC website. And here’s a link to the pdf download which has a bonus section by Lisa Heledd outlining various new forms of digital storytelling, together with instructions – DS Recipe Cards, kind of. The pdf currently lacks Simon Turner’s fantastic article about recording people’s voices. Table of Contents: Introduction The ideal venue Briefing participants Find the story Getting the story down on paper…
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Curtains open, lights on
The Capture Wales team has been holding a series of five Digital Storytelling Gatherings around Wales. We’ve held them in Caernarfon, Aberystwyth, Swansea, Merthyr Tydfil and Cardiff. The final one – in Cardiff – was held today and it was fantastic! More than 100 individuals who are actively involved in or interested in facilitating digital storytelling activities in Wales have attended these days. Each day has been a chance for people who are involved in this work to meet others in their area, to enjoy watching stories together, learn a little about the history of digital storytelling, hear about recruiting participants (by Carwyn Evans), thinking about issues around ownership of…
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How to upgrade your home video so it can be broadcast on TV
Between Christmas and New Year, we stayed with my brother in law Dylan’s family. Dylan’s wife had given him a camcorder for Christmas and he’d filmed his family opening and playing with their presents on Christmas morning. He played the disk back and it was interesting to watch how people construct home videos. What Dylan had shot was a documentary-style piece showing other people – but not Dylan himself – opening their presents. We did hear Dylan’s disconnected voice from behind the lens, giving a running commentary and asking questions to his subjects. Watching this home video set me wondering about what Dylan might need to do to get what…
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Archive meets storytelling
I’m hoping this is useful to people working in museums or with film archives…. I’ve written about Rhondda Lives! here before. This is a Valleys Kids Project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, BBC Wales and the National Sound and Screen Archive of Wales. I led a workshop held at Valleys Kids’ Soar Chapel at the end of November. This was a novel kind of digital storytelling experience because it fits edited, considered but unscripted personal reminiscence with existing archive footage shot in the Rhondda Valley between 1926-1986 or so. I’ll post a link to the stories from Aberth when they’re live. Step 1 – attend public screening at Valley’s…