Commissioned Stories

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Creative Arts Wales is able to produce a commissioned piece of work where participants are interviewed, filmed and photographed by Creative Arts Wales, with the resultant footage edited into one single story.

There are many applications for this new and exciting branch of digital storytelling. A few examples are given below and include applications for businesses and community groups to connect with their customers, and cultural groups, historical societies and museums to widen their appeal.

Business

Digital Storytelling is an excellent instrument for facilitating team building and working to help businesses connect more fully with their staff and the people who use their services.

Traditionally, this is achieved through a series of information gathering initiatives, for example informal meetings, setting up committees or forums, using questionnaires and interview processes, and perhaps looking at other organisations to see what worked for them.  We know that good quality management lies at the heart of any successful project but that good management depends on making the right decisions at the beginning - and information gathering informs those decisions. However, statistics in the form of numerically based or opinion based data can only show the results of questionnaires or interviews which use the same specific questioning format, and answers are collated and awarded marks using a points or percentages system. What these systems are not able to do is to take into account the variables. I would suggest that this planning evaluation process would also benefit from the inclusion of narratives as a complimentary part of the evidence base.

Adding digital storytelling to a repertoire of evaluation tools ensures a healthy diversity of information, and comparing stories from the planning and evaluation stages would give a wider indication of all the changes that have occurred and serve as indicators as to whether participants points of view have changed in between.  Digital storytelling is an ideal vehicle for ‘fleshing out’ the statistics in a format which is direct and easy to digest because it demonstrates not only whether the organisation has achieved their objectives, but to what extent.

Community Groups

With the country in recession, the competition for funding sees communities vying for an ever declining share of the market so the need to back up funding bids with examples of good practice is imperative.  Digital storytelling lends itself perfectly to this especially by highlighting social injustice, raising awareness of a particular issue or need, or when used as a lobbying tool to elicit change.

Cultural Groups, Historical Societies and Museums

Other future objectives include working with cultural organisations, for example, historical and cultural societies and museums, because the advantages of the digital story telling medium is that it enables people  to engage more fully with the past. When older people tell their stories, these stories naturally highlight the historical and cultural changes which have taken place since they were children, and the differences in the way people lived then and now. Older people not only recall stories about their own past but also tell us about their parents and grandparents and the stories passed down through their families. This is a valuable resource, but it is a time limited resource.

Digital storytelling  can also be used in museums to add a new dimension to exhibits, bringing history to life with first person accounts of events that are far more engaging than a third person commentary.  In turn, the digital stories we produce now will provide future generations with a valuable insight into the everyday lives of ordinary people today.

 

Here are a few of my recent commissions, click them to learn more:

Sustrans Mentro Allan - 2011
Francis Thomas - Artist Extraordinaire
Sustrans Mentro Allan - 2009
Torfaen Mind