• conference,  digital storytelling,  DS Cymru,  inclusion,  japan,  media literacy,  mobile,  people,  story,  technology,  Wales

    DS8 digital storytelling conference review 2013

    Digital storytellers from as far afield as Japan to Norway and from Egypt to Canton gathered together in Cardiff on 14 June 2013 for the DS8 digital storytelling conference. The host, Karen Lewis, co-director of the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling thanked the sponsors – the Arts Council of Wales – welcomed everyone on behalf of DS Cymru and introduced the first guest speaker. (All speakers’ biographies are on the DS8 site) Personal factual participation & collaboration are themes running through Mandy Rose‘s Video Nation, Capture Wales and academic career. Speaking of her time with BBC Video Nation, she said: “I think the veto we gave Video Nation diarists to opt out of…

  • digital storytelling,  instruction,  japan,  links,  media literacy,  timeless

    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…

  • digital storytelling,  empowerment,  japan,  timeless

    End of workshop photo

    You can tell how well a workshop went by looking at the end-of-workshop photo. This one was taken at the end of the first Media Conté Workshop where media exprimo and Aichi Shukutoku University worked with teenagers in Kani, Gifu Prefecture, in the centre of Japan’s largest island. Kani is well known for its car manufacturing. One of the leaders of Media Conté is Akiko Ogawa, who’s made two trips to Wales to study digital storytelling. She told me earlier this year there were many Japanese descendants from Brasil and other countries who had come to work in Kani’s factories. She told me she wanted to find a way of…

  • digital storytelling,  empowerment,  japan,  media literacy,  story

    Tribute forms

    “How can people participate without  necessarily having to be centre stage?” That’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since discussing digital storytelling with a colleague, Grahame Davies, last year. My experience of Digital Stories is that they’re usually personal. This aspect of ‘talking about myself’ raises a barrier in some people and cultures. This was an issue raised by some people I met in Japan earlier this year. Last night, on TV, I saw a piece of video that stands as a good example of a ‘tribute form’. Look at the first 55 seconds of the video clip on this page. It’s in Welsh. It features  people who live…

  • japan,  story

    Unknown Shonan

    I’ve observed that working on stories in a group usually helps individuals to improve their story and I love watching how stories are improved, thanks to the group dynamics. That’s one of the reasons digital storytelling works so well as a group workshop activity. One University of Tokyo project, called Unknown Shonan, is the first I’ve heard of that compares narratives arrived at individually with those arrived at by working in a group. Shonan is Japan’s Brighton. It’s a bohemian seaside city about an hour by train from Tokyo. Universtiy of Tokyo researchers worked with participants, mixing historic photos with participant-taken ones where individuals are asked to make five-photo captioned…

  • japan,  media literacy

    Tokyo Video Scrapbook

    Tokyo and Mell Expo 2008 were absolutely mindblowing. A more considered summary of Mell Expo 2008 will follow. For now, with music by B’z, is a montage of (Ricoh) images and (Nokia N93) video clips that capture the flavour of the event and the trip. Hope you enjoy it:    

  • digital storytelling,  japan,  media literacy,  timeless

    Tokyo Mell Expo 2008 presentation

    There’s an enigma around technology, isn’t there?  Take the mobile phone for example. We used to use just it to make phonecalls; now phones have near-broadcast-quality video cameras on board too. If only there was a way of releasing some more of the potential of technology for the benefit of society…  Let me start with some questions about this:  1. What motivation and opportunities could be given to people in Japan to make more use of the creative capacity of their mobile devices and computers? 2. Which ‘forms’ of Digital Storytelling would be most attractive in this country to both author & audience of the content?3. And how could this…

  • digital storytelling,  japan,  media literacy,  mobile,  timeless

    Media Exprimo, Japan

    Back in 2003, BBC Wales organised an International Digital Storytelling Conference. Two of the many attendees travelled to Cardiff all the way from Japan to be with us: 1. Akiko Ogawa, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Studies on Contemporary Society at Aichi Shukutoko University and 2. Aske Dam a Norwegian participatory media specialist who has worked extensively in the Far East on developments in mobile technology. This wasn’t the last time I met Akiko and Aske. They’ve both maintained a lively interest in Digital Storytelling developments in Wales. In fact, Akiko has returned to Wales twice: she came to a Digital Storytelling workshop we ran in Cardiff and she…