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…
-
-
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…
-
Digital Stories Curator job
University of Glamorgan is hiring a Knowledge Catalyst Employee to help ‘create a raft of digital stories for use in the context of the new Museum of Cardiff the Cardiff Story’. Closing date 30 July 2009. Only people who graduated in the last four years are apparently elligible. Here’s the text of the job ad as sent in the email I just received: “Application details, can be found at: www.glam.ac.uk/jobs under ‘knowledge catalyst employee’ Knowledge Catalyst Employee Digital Stories Curator 1 year contract, c.£19,000 Deadline: 30 July 2009 Further details available from: http://www.glam.ac.uk/jobsThis post is required to fulfill the conditions of an award by AHRC to support a Knowledge Catalyst research…
-
Moving image archive meets personal story
Here’s more about how we worked with people who had stories to tell about what the heritage of the Rhondda Valleys in Wales means to them in Valleys Kids’ Rhondda Lives project. This post follows a question from Cheryl Colan: “…Did the individual storytellers work with and direct the video editor? If they spent only 2 hours doing so, I imagine the editor did a reasonable amount of preparatory work, getting clips to choose from lined up, prior to this work session?…” There were many days of preparatory work in researching, finding, selecting, rights-clearing, digitising, etc. the clips. Lona Wharton and Gareth Morris did this at the BBC and Dafydd…
-
New Rhondda Lives digital stories website
Katrina Kirkwood has just finished archiving the Rhondda Lives films on one fantastic new website: www.rhonddalives.org.uk. There are 80 stories to view. The rationale behind the project is explained and there’s a description of how the stories were made. I’m a member of the Museums 3.0 Ning group and I think that group’s members will really enjoy seeing such an innovative melding of existing public archive with personal storytelling by members of the communities depicted in the archive. I’m sure all the storytellers will be proud to have their stories displayed on Katrina’s new Rhondda Lives website. If you’d like a suggestion of one to watch first … how about…
-
The future of digital storytelling in public spaces
This post is a response to a question asked on Museum 3.0 group about: “the future of digital storytelling in regards to broader social networking tools” by Angelina Russo, an Associate Professor at Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia. As this question’s related to museum of the future, I’ll begin with an editorial approach to applications of digital storytelling in museums, libraries, galleries and other public spaces before addressing technical issues. The teaching of the activity of digital storytelling in public spaces can form part of a museum’s educational program where: people learn about history, area, objects, etc. the learning spans curriculum areas media literacy is improved citizens get their voice ‘exhibited’…
-
Three digital storytelling ideas for museums
If you work in a museum, library or archive and you’re looking for digital storytelling inspiration, here are links to three ideas in this blog: Archive Meets Storytelling – A step-by-step set of instructions on how to run a workshop which delivers short videos mixing considered but unscripted personal reminiscence with existing archive footage. What a Museum is – Pondering on museum paradigms: “Living-memory sections of museums are more to do with memories than artefacts. So museum managers can feel free to move away from traditional perceptions of what it is they’re doing. That’s when they’ll feel it’s OK to instruct their staff to spend less time on objects and…
-
Managable digital storytelling for museums
How can museums resource this: recording and sharing visitors’ interpretations and stories about its artefacts? One of the challenges around publishing personal stories made by lots of people is keeping on top of the ethical issues around the right to portray others in public. This will be especially true of teachers and also of public organisations like museums, libraries and educational courses. Recording, tracking and demonstrating that there’s proof that individuals are happy for you to show their work is one thing; getting second signoff by a parent/guardian in the case of stories by children, young people and vulnerable people is quite another. From my experience in BBC production, it’s…