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Queensland University of Technology
Creative Industries Faculty
School of Creative Writing
Sharing Stories: Problems and potentials of oral
history and digital storytelling and the
writer/producer’s role in constructing a public place
by
Helen Klaebe
BA Creative Writing Production
MA Research
Submitted in Fulfilment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
December 2006
Supervised by
Professor Philip Neilsen
Dr Sue Carson
Kris Olsson
ii
The Kelvin Grove Urban Village, Brisbane 2003
iii
Key words
Kelvin Grove Urban Village
Kelvin Grove
Gona Barracks
Australian history
Creative non fiction
Creative writing
Life writing
Non fiction
Digital storytelling
Oral history
Social history
Public history
Writing processes
iv
Key people
Linda Apelt
Minna Brennan
John Byrne
Peter Coaldrake
David Gardiner
Dennis Gibson
John Hartley
Graham Jenkinson
Tim Joyce
Ian Kaye
Peter Lavery
Paul Krautz
David Manzie
Kate Meyrick
Norma Mills
Audrey Murrell
Stephen Pincus
Robert Schwarten
Penny Somerville
Ann Staples
Christopher Wren
v
Abstract
The Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV) is a 16-hectare urban renewal
redevelopment project of the Queensland Department of Housing and the
Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Over the last century, the
land has housed military and educational institutions that have shaped
Brisbane and Queensland. These groups each have their own history.
Collectively their stories represented an opportunity to build a multi-art
form public history project, consisting of a creative non-fiction historical
manuscript and a collection of digital stories (employing oral history and
digital storytelling techniques in particular) to construct a personal sense of
place, identity and history. This exegesis examines the processes used and
difficulties faced by the writer/producer of the public history; including
consideration of the artistic selection involved, and consequent assembly of
the material. The research findings clearly show that: giving contributors
access to the technology required to produce their own digital stories in a
public history does not automatically equate to total participatory inclusion;
the writer/producer can work with the public as an active, collaborative
team to produce shared historically significant works for the public they
represent; and the role of the public historian is that of a valuable broker—
in actively seeking to maximize inclusiveness of vulnerable members of the
community and by producing a selection of multi-art form works with the
public that includes new media.
1
Table of Contents
Part One The Exegesis
Acknowledgements 3
Statement of Original Authorship 5
Chapter 1 Introduction and objectives of the research 6
1.1 The research question 9
Chapter 2 Conceptual and Contextual framework 12
2.1 Literature review 16
Chapter 3 Research methodology and design 62
Chapter 4 Collaboration, community, creativity and copyright 87
Chapter 5 Issues and concerns in writing Indigenous history, within a
public history project: critical reflection on selectivity and
ethics 98
Chapter 6 Finding their story: the process of making aesthetic and
selectivity choices in conducting digital storytelling
workshops as a public historian 109
Chapter 7 The challenges and possibilities of using digital storytelling
in public history projects 138
Chapter 8 Conclusions: where to from here? 146
Bibliography 155
References 162
2
Part Two The Creative Work
Introduction 178
Creative Work
A. Sharing Stories 1825-2005: A Social History of the Kelvin Grove
Urban Village 182
B. Sharing Stories: A Digital Storytelling Collection of the Kelvin
Grove Urban Village produced in 2004 and 2006 (DVD) 379
Appendices 380
1. List of interviewees for the oral history collection 381
2. List of initial interview questions 383
3. List of equipment 386
4. Timeline and Participants 392
5. Project information/ethical clearance/IP and copyright forms 395
6. Sharing Stories: An Oral History Collection of the Kelvin Grove
Urban Village (CD) 409
7. Sharing Stories: spreadsheet of image information 409
3
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank and acknowledge all those who provided information and
assistance for this project. A public historian, by definition, cannot work
alone. Collaboration with the public to explore is paramount and to this end,
the community of Kelvin Grove was a pleasure to investigate. Heartfelt
thanks go to everyone who returned phone calls, emails and made the time
for me to interview them. I want to express special thanks in particular to
those who participated in the field work activities—the oral history and
digital storytelling collection—almost all of whom were extremely
cooperative, enthusiastic about, and supportive of my research.
I gratefully acknowledge the help and support I received with this project
from Queensland University of Technology and the Queensland Department
of Housing, who are partners in the Kelvin Grove Urban Village. In
particular, the KGUV project team: Stephen Pincus, Penny Somerville,
Joanne Devine, Robyn Collingwood-White and Kaye Petherick.
I would also like to acknowledge my digital storytelling workshop
colleagues: Jean Burgess, Bryan Crawford, Sal Humpheys, Matt Kesting,
Jess Klaebe, Tom Medhurst, Tanya Notley. Special thanks also go to my
supervisors, Professor Philip Neilsen, Dr Susan Carson, Dr Stuart Glover
4
and Kris Olsson, and special colleagues Dr Lucy Montgomery, Dr Marcus
Foth and Fiona Crawford (you guys rock).
I am appreciative of anyone else who contributed to this project, but whom I
may have inadvertently omitted.
5
Statement of original authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a
degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of
my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material published or
written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signed:
Helen G Klaebe
10 December 2006
6
Chapter One
Introduction and Objectives of the Research
Kelvin Grove has always been a gathering point. While never densely
populated, the 16-hectares of land that is the Kelvin Grove Urban Village
(KGUV) was once a meeting place for Indigenous clans and in the last
century is remembered for the contribution of its military and educational
institutions. All three histories have helped shape Brisbane and Queensland.
Each of these groups has its own history and not all could be represented
equally in the outcomes of this project. For instance the Indigenous history
became tangential to this project and became an ‘absent presence’, due to
the Turrbal Association members non-involvement, a decision I respect.
However, developers, government and QUT stakeholders wanted their
version of ‘history in the making’ to be recorded and so not only offered
research funding but were also eager to tell me their stories. Furthermore,
often marginalised peoples, such as various local history groups, the elderly,
and disabled were willing to participate and proved to be particularly rich
sources of memories of the area. Collectively, the stories of these groups
compose a public history about Kelvin Grove as a place with an evolving
and complex identity. These digital stories differed from traditional digital
stories because they were constrained by their common focus upon one
specific place. All the stories needed to arise from a memory of, or a
relationship with, Kelvin Grove.
7
This multi-art form public history project offered various possibilities for
telling the history of Kelvin Grove. It also seemed to increase a sense of
community for individual participants, through the use of oral history and
digital storytelling (DST) in particular, by constructing a personal sense of
place, identity, and an awareness in individuals that they had been involved
in the formation of history.
Through my creative practice, I made selective and artistic choices. This
process of selection, inherent in the construction of any public history
project, was innovative in that I developed and used new techniques and
media. These processes are examined in the exegesis, which also identifies
the ethical issues I encountered during the process of ‘making’ this public
history.
I was able to produce research outcomes that may assist other
writer/producers undertaking public history projects. The techniques
included: trialling different representations of public history and a creative
non-fiction historical manuscript; oral history and DST interviewing
techniques in which participation from contributors played a central role; by
the collation of reflective data related to the practice of creating these art
forms; and the monitoring (through semi-structured interviews and a
reflective field work journal) of attitudes and values of the participants and
myself (as the writer/producer).
8
Richard Vella writes “…the task of the creative research candidate is to
formulate an exegetical perspective, a lens that provides discovery and
coherent understanding, yet at the same time embraces the creative work’s
contradictions, anomalies and ambiguities” (Vella, 2005, p. 2) and this has
been my approach. Recent work on the assessment of practice-led higher
degrees (Holbrook, St George, Ashburn, Graham, & Lawry, 2006) indicates
the need for the exegetical material to relate to the creative work. My
objective was to ensure that the exegetical component and the creative work
‘speak’ to each other in that the lessons learned in the research process are
reflected in the creative work.
This thesis is divided into two components: Part One, the exegesis and Part
Two, the creative work. In Part One chapters one to three set the contextual
framework in which the study was conducted, explore existing literature on
the topic and lay out the research methodology and design. Chapters four to
seven detail the processes employed by me as the writer/producer (of a
social history manuscript, a collection of digital stories) and evaluate the
effectiveness of their use as part of a multi art form public history project.
The problems and potential of a writer/producer in using oral history and
digital storytelling techniques to create material for a multi art form public
history are varied, so the themes of these chapters were selected to
illuminate areas of my research.
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The creative manuscript, Part Two, demonstrates in practical form the way
that oral history techniques can help a social and an archival history to blend
effectively together. The manuscript demonstrates how oral history can be
successfully utilized to capture a recent history when an archival history is
absent. It was not my intention to compile a publication-ready manuscript.
Although a version of this document has been published (Klaebe, 2006) as I
will discuss below, it was my intention to write a rich source document,
filled with extensive footnotes, so as to create a manuscript that can easily
be edited into multiple publishable forms and used as reference material by
future researchers.
1.1
The research question
What are the problems and potentials of using oral history and digital
storytelling techniques in a multi art form public history project,
particularly regarding processes of the writer/producer’s artistic/editorial
selectivity and assembly of material (manuscript and digital stories) and the
related ethical issues?
Research argument
My experience of the KGUV history project suggests a need to
reconceptualise the role of the public historian to incorporate the roles of
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facilitator, curator, writer/producer, editor and artistic director. Public
history can use new processes that allow contributors to become more
actively engaged in a project. I have termed this form of engagement
‘participatory public history’ because such nomenclature makes clear that
the history is not created solely for the public (with only passive
participation), but actively with the public. A multi-art form participatory
public history project requires the public historian to draw on diverse skills,
including academically-based historiographic and oral history skills and
methods, to creatively narrate and shape the material for popular
consumption, while still accommodating public participation. The particular
use of oral history techniques and their effectiveness in soliciting material
from the community, however, does raise problems relating to the reliability
of the material and its ownership.
Summary of outcomes1
This study produced:
1. A creative non-fiction historical manuscript
• An oral history collection (appendix 6).
• A historical book that has been created out of the manuscript and is
published by (Klaebe, 2006) which is appendix 7.
2. A DVD compilation of digital stories historically related to the
place, Kelvin Grove, produced during the fieldwork.
3. The accompanying exegesis.
1 Detail of outcomes is included in the methodology and design.
11
Content breakdown
Creative practice 70%
Exegetical component 30%
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Chapter Two
Conceptual and Contextual Framework
This contemporary, creative practice-based PhD project investigates the
processes of and issues relating to ‘community’ participation in public
history projects. In this project ‘community’ is defined as the collective
convergence of social networks that relate to an interest in place, focused
around history groups and interested individuals wanting to reproduce their
memories, be entertained and participate in creative practice at the KGUV.
The conceptual framework lies in the intersection of geography, studies of
‘place’ and ‘history from below’ viewed from the perspective of, and
interrogated by, public and oral history techniques. Whereas the nature of
public and oral accounts emanate from whom one might label ‘below’, this
study is also dependent on the inclusion of powerful institutional agencies: a
university and a state government department. The thesis therefore explores
the relationship of this above/below project, the KGUV, and offers the
concept of the ‘participatory public history’ as a model for future urban
development.
One of the primary goals of the overall KGUV Sharing Stories history
project was to engage the community through the sharing and recording of
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stories from within a new Brisbane urban development. In my role as
writer/producer, I have connected with individuals from within the
community. This has made it possible for me to produce, in collaboration
with that community, historical art forms that have creative and aesthetic
value. I have used both oral history and digital storytelling techniques to
encourage storytelling that focuses on a common sense of place.
Accordingly, the thesis is written in the context of a range of related
literatures that needed to encompass community development, memory
studies, related ethical issues, digital storytelling, historiographies with a
particular focus on public history and oral history techniques.
Many of these perspectives relate broadly to matters of cultural geography,
although this demand is not expressly addressed in the thesis. Suffice to say
that the thesis recognises that cultural geography has been an academic
concern since the 1930s when geographers began to consider the regional
perspective and ongoing scholarship between landscape and human
population as being as important as national identity (Berman, 2005). These
debates have gained momentum since this time. In a sense, this project can
be seen to be part of a discussion of what Jessica Berman calls
“cosmopolitan geography” (2005, pp. 295-296). This geography has its
location in the everyday myth and memory that historian Simon Schama
calls “the layers of the commonplace” (1995, p. 14). Schama points to the
importance of “a way of looking” at what we already have that often eludes
our recognition. Such ideas necessarily invoke statements about time and
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space, especially in relation to Australian culture. Lesley Hawkes’
investigation of the ways in which Australian literature has used the
railways as a site to explore spatial belonging offers helpful parallels for this
project. Hawkes says:
Spatial awareness has been a developing, shifting and changing
experience that directly influences the way stories will be produced,
and these stories will influence the way history will be told.
(Hawkes, 2005)
This focus on the commonplace, the everyday, dovetails with Leon
Hitchcock’s ideas about the value of ‘history from below’ (Hitchcock,
2004). Whereas Schama focuses on the longevity and the institutional
power of myth and memory, Hitchcock is interested in representing working
class interests. It is noteworthy that, in this thesis, this focus sits alongside
the interests and demanding of institutional bodies such as the Department
of Housing. Yet the fit is not entirely problematic; one of the actions of the
Department of Housing is to assist the underprivileged to gain access to
housing.
Relationship to QUT
The Creative Industries Faculty at QUT recognises and fosters a
combination of traditional occupations such as design, writing, and
production, together with new media, distribution techniques and new
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technology to produce creative content (Hartley, 2002). This innovative
hybridity encourages creative practitioners to incorporate traditional
epistemological and methodological approaches with new media creative
practice. Such an approach is demonstrated in this project, which combines
a written manuscript and digital stories as the creative practice component.
Practice-based PhD projects are still relatively new within Australian
universities. The knowledge value of the creative work gives rise to a new
epistemology, in this case, a research product (the manuscript and DVD)
while the exegesis also breaks new ground in its contribution to knowledge
through setting the creative work in a critical and theoretical context (Gray,
1996). The exegesis contributes to the processes and practices of
incorporating oral history techniques into a multi art form participatory
public history. This means the use of new media such as a website, narrative
photographic and visual art exhibitions and history trails and educational
aids.
The next chapter explores the rich and varied literatures and approaches to
public history, providing a context for both the creative and exegetical
components of this project. The background of the KGUV project is
provided. Memory studies, ethical issues, sense of self and digital
storytelling techniques are discussed.
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2.1
Literature Review
Haseman (2005) argues that the literature review is in some sense a
contextual review, which reviews the secondary literature, but also provides
an account of influential practitioners, periods and works, materials and
methods that are related to, or are likely to arise from the ‘techniques and
strategies of practice’, which will be used to document the research. This
approach structures the divisions of the literature review below.
Community development: the background to the KGUV
concept
In 1997 the UK Blair Government published the Creative Britain document
to enunciate a new vision for the arts. The arts were framed as part of the
national identity: available for the many, not just for the few and, somewhat
controversially, as a significant driver of the national economy. Many
Australians in government (Schwarten, 2005), academia (Coaldrake, 2005)
and industry (Copplin, 2005) were aware of this Creative Industries notion
and were closely watching British proceedings.
17
Senior management in the Department of Housing and at QUT discussed the
conceptual influences of urban planners Charles Landry and Comedia in terms
of creating an urban village. This was defined as a development of mixed
housing, retail and a university that would share a site. The concept was to mix
low and high income housing that could stand side by side, as well as blend
with an existing neighbourhood where all buildings were orientated to the
street. It was to be an environmentally friendly locale which encouraged
pedestrian activity and showcased an array of architecture. The housing
officials were aware that Landry had written about the potential of ‘creative
communities’, and so found the possibility of engaging a new building
development and its inhabitants through the practices of oral and written
storytelling intriguing.
According to Landry, a 1997 UK survey revealed that 84% of respondents
had a desire to live in a small village, compared to the 4% who actually did.
Landry states:
We cannot create enough villages to meet this aspiration. Instead, we
must make cities desirable places to live and be in, partly by recreating
the values that people perceive to exist in a village—a sense of place and
belonging, continuity, safety and predictability—and partly by nurturing
distinctly urban possibilities—buzz interaction, trade, unexpected
delight, and much more (Landry, 2000, p. xiii)
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Since QUT’s Creative Industries Precinct opened in January 2004 much
research has been undertaken, in particular the work of Australian post
doctorate fellow, Marcus Foth, regarding connection within communities.
Foth’s work focuses on the ‘new’ community, in relation to the use of IT
and communication media networking (Foth, 2006). The point of difference
in my work is that Foth engages community using Information
Communication Technology (ICT) and I use the platform of public history.
Additionally, the work of CIF PhD candidate Jean Burgess in using DST in
what she terms acts of ‘vernacular creativity’(Burgess, 2004a) to engage
cultural citizenship offered helpful theoretical insights into the participatory
new media approach used in this project. By combining workshops to
facilitate vernacular creativity with a text-based approach to the history of
Kelvin Grove, this project actively engaged the community in the creation
of what could be quite appropriately termed a ‘public’ history.
Public history
An investigation into similarly large public history projects, both national
and international, was undertaken in the literature review. Projects that are
using DST and oral history techniques were my focus. Multi-art form public
history projects are targeted to investigate the role of the public historian in
those projects and to compare ethical, IP and copyright issues. While
researchers (including myself) lack legal training, the legal and ethical
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diligence required to make certain the participants’ rights are considered,
must be brokered. I have examined this dilemma from the point of view of
the public historian below.
Public history method is closely linked with oral history practice because it
often uses oral history as a research method. The term ‘public history’ was
first used in the United States in the 1970s to describe the employment
outside universities of trained historians (Liddington & Ditchfield, 2005).
During the 1970s, the journalist, Studs Terkel, interviewed those people he
called ‘ordinary’ Americans who had been caught in the grip of the
Depression, documenting in their own words their survival and struggle
during the Roosevelt era of the 1930s (Terkel, 1970). His artful and
selective combination and editing of oral history transcripts from
interviewees was said to have captured a collective American spirit
(Thompson, 2000). Alex Haley attempted a similar project for black
Americans through his life-writing works based on oral histories (Haley,
1974; , 1987). Though the accuracy of Haley’s scholarship came under
question in some quarters (Shaw, 1991) one could argue that he exposed a
hunger for the narrative of the family history that existed and has persisted
since.
In Australia, an increasing academic value was placed on the use of oral
history from the 1970s, but while the ‘oral history’ movement grew, ‘public
history’ did not gain momentum until around the Bicentenary in 1988.
20
Celebrations of the bicentenary continued to be supported and propelled by
numerous government-funded initiatives, which included the first Australian
postgraduate study opportunities in public history (Liddington & Ditchfield,
2005).
Nationally, a definition of public history often used is that devised by Paula
Hamilton and Paul Ashton, of the Australian Centre for Public History:
The practice of history by academically trained historians working
for public agencies or as freelancers outside the universities—
including work in heritage conservation, commissioned history,
museums, the media, education, radio, film interactive multimedia
and other areas. They are concerned with addressing the
relationship between audience, practice and social context.
(Hamilton, 2004)
Jennifer Evans (2003) goes further in her assessment by quoting Debra
DeRuyver, editor of the U.S. Public History Review Centre. This provides a
more helpful definition for my research:
Public history is a set of theories, methods, assumptions and
practices guiding the identification, preservation, interpretation and
presentation of historical artefacts, texts, structures and, landscapes
in conjunction with and for the public. Public history is the belief
that history and historical-cultural memory matter in the way people
go about their daily lives (Evans, 2003).
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Since the Australian Centre opened in 1998 projects have been diverse and
include elements such as oral history collections, photographic collections
and books (Hamilton, 2004). The Centre had also been linked to a
postgraduate public history program within the Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences at UTS for over fifteen years, under the leadership of
Hamilton and Ashton, but the program was suspended in 2006. Since then,
few projects have featured the simultaneous mix of art form elements as
produced in the Sharing Stories initiative. While I have reviewed projects
and practitioners working in public history nationally and internationally,
because I am from the discipline of creative writing, within the Creative
Industries Faculty, I have limited this analysis to academically-based multi-
art form history projects that employ oral history and DST techniques,
particularly as written texts. I have made the decision to focus my analysis
in this way because the project deployed my creative practice (in both
corporate and creative writing) as well as my experience as an oral
historian.
The work of Hamilton and Ashton at the Australian Centre for Public
History (Hamilton, 2004), as well as the work of BBC History Online
(BBC, 2004), the US Public History Resource Centre ("Public History
Resource Centre", 2005), and the Oral History, the Journal of the Oral
History Society, represent a large source of material on practical and
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theoretical issues that emerge in the practice and the study of public history,
which also informs my research.
In the United Kingdom, public history took some time to establish itself
within traditional academia, and primarily grew out of the oral history
movement in the 1990s with Alistair Thomson (1999), Joanna Bonat (1999),
and Robert Perks (Perks & Thomson, 2006b) as the major influences.
In the United States larger public history projects are increasingly
reconstructing community through oral history. Not all of these projects are
conducted by historians (some are anthropological, journalistic, educational
or social sciences based, for instance) but all of the practitioners examined
do use oral history as a part of their methodological ‘tool kit’, as I have.
Edige Giunta (2004) of New Jersey City University, conducts public history
research projects in relation to urban working class, often migrant,
communities. Giunta believes writers of memoir in the context of public
history can learn much from the structure of oral history, and says “both are
deeply rooted testimonial narratives that interweave both the personal and
collective” (Giunta, 2004). Thus public history projects can help enhance a
sense of community.
Mary Ann Villarreal (2004) found similar findings in a Texan community
she studied. However, Villarreal suggests that public historians need to also
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turn their attention to the parks, institutions and local halls where people
have gathered and which hold significance and embody a sense of
communal space. This can give new meaning to ‘place’ and allow the
community’s stories to create maps.
Many areas have changed due to urban development and
experiences not only fill in the gaps, but also flesh out the narrative.
Participants’ stories are attached to one another and open the door to
another world (Villarreal, 2004).
How we see the ‘community’ is therefore important. Many of these ideas
speak to the relationship between oral and public history, which is complex
and continually evolving. Michel de Certeau (1988) famously argues for the
importance of the practices of “everyday life” as being integral to subject
formation. De Certeau suggests that it is possible to obtain a ‘spacial
narrative’ of a place that is informed by resistances to institutional and
ordered regulations. He defines a neighbourhood as:
…a dynamic notion requiring a progressive apprenticeship that
grows with the repetition of the dweller’s body’s engagement with
public space until it exercises a sort of appropriation of this space. It
is less an urban surface, transparent for everyone or statistically
measurable, than the possibility offered everyone to inscribe in the
city a multitude of trajectories whose hard core permanently remains
the private sphere. (de Certeau, Giard, & Pierre, 1998, p. 11)
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De Certeau, like Schama, points to the issue of recognition of the private in
the city space. Many of de Certeau’s “resistances” are apparent in the digital
stories created for this thesis. For instance the memories of place held very
private stories for the digital storytellers: Teresa saw her home as a safe
location where her son would not have to cross the road to get to school
saying, “ Roger, remember! Go always on the left. Never cross the road”.
Whereas as de Certeau focuses on a particular space, the U.S. ‘The
Wallpaper Project’ for instance, encompassed the entire state of Ohio. It
included public art, exhibits, books, and an oral history collection, which
were the basis of an historical play titled ‘From Here’, based on 800 oral
histories from state residents. The project travelled the state for five years,
facilitating and collecting local oral histories, which were in turn
categorized into larger themes such as daily life, hard times, war and fun.
These were then edited and condensed by professional scriptwriters into a
generic template for locals to produce and perform.
Barber (2004), a public historian on ‘The Wallpaper Project’ (Barber, 2004)
found local farmers, teachers, and general community members were drawn
together and she noted most participants gained self-confidence from the
experience. The participants were empowered to become the storytellers or
rather the ‘story sharers’, of their own communities. It was a mostly
successful experiment in collaboration that encouraged the widest diversity
from the community. Their stories were ‘donated’ to the project, and then
25
re-appropriated by the facilitators, making the characters anonymous and
fusing their stories to create one collective narrative. The fusion of multiple
stories to create a single collective narrative is an important point of
difference between ‘Project Wallpaper’ and my work. My research was
intent on keeping the authenticity of each individual participant’s character
in the creative piece and digital stories, as opposed to creating a generic ‘no
name’ narrative.
With regard to the city space, the ‘London's Voices’ project was a three-
year program (2001-2004) curated by the Museum of London (led by Dr
Rob Perks) that was designed to engage diverse audiences through
innovative oral history projects ("London Voices", 2004). This multi-art
form public (though not solely historical) project includes postcards,
photographs, audio and dance. In spite of its diverse forms and subjects, it
was predominately a project that used oral history. The collection of 800
interviews was gathered, similarly to ‘The Wallpaper Project’, by
encouraging community participation, with simple ‘how to’ manuals
provided online, and then linking extracts of the work onto a website ("A
Century of Voices from Ohio", 2003). Permission to edit and shape the
gathered material, however, was not negotiated with the participants.
Instead facilitators gained permission from the participants to use their
stories in the project in any manner they wished from the outset. This was
the point of difference for my research, as I continually informed and sought
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input from the participants about the processes and multiple end uses of
their material.
Oral history
While there are many definitions of oral history, the most concise is that of
Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson:
The interviewing of eye-witness participants in the events of the past
for the purposes of historical reconstruction (Perks & Thomson,
2006b p.xi).
Perks and Thomson concede, however, that oral history for some
practitioners is not just about making histories, but also empowering
individuals or social groups through the process of remembering and
reinterpreting the past, with emphasis on the value of the process itself, as
much as on the historical product it produces (2006b).
Perks and Thomson also differentiate between oral history and oral history
interviewing, as do Bryman (2001) and Burgess (Alan Bryman & Burgess,
1999) by describing the oral history interview as a qualitative research
method tool, thus providing a clearer definition for use in research practice.
Bryman’s definition is:
27
The oral history interview is largely an unstructured or semi-
structured interview in which the respondent is asked to recall events
from his or her past and to reflect on them (A Bryman, 2001, p. 505).
Bryman adds that oral history, as with life history interviews, is generally
associated with ‘life history method’, especially when combined with the
use of other personal documents, such as letters, photographs and diaries.
However, oral history interviews are “[s]omewhat more specific in tone, in
that the subject is asked to reflect upon specific events or periods in the past
(2001, p. 505).” He concedes that while there is always the possibility of
bias being introduced, because of inevitable memory lapses and distortions,
oral history interviews have nonetheless allowed the usually marginalised
voices of historical research to be heard. They can be regarded as
marginalised in the sense that they are perceived to lack power, or because
their stories are regarded individually as too banal or unexceptional to be
heard (2001).
Perks and Thomson suggest oral history can be a powerful tool for
discovering, exploring and evaluating the nature of the process of historical
memory; how people make sense of their past; how they connect individual
experience and its social context; how the past becomes the present; and
how people use it to interpret their lives and the world around them (Perks
& Thomson, 2006a, p. 2). My work includes extending the use of oral
28
history as a tool in this way, and was enabled by my having a highly
interactive relationship with the participants and their contributions.
This approach seems compatible with Bryman’s guidelines for qualitative
research strategies. I argue that a creative practitioner using oral history
methods should emphasize the use of particular words chosen by the
interviewer to engage the interviewee and be aware of the way in which
individuals interpret their social worlds. Therefore, oral history embodies a
view of social reality which is constantly shifting and is the emergent
property of each individual’s creation (A Bryman, 2001). In this context, the
oral history interview is particularly helpful to historians, writers,
sociologists, social scientists and social anthropologists who are functioning
within a qualitative research strategy (A Bryman, 2001).
Perks and Thomson identify four paradigmatic revolutions in oral history in
the revised Oral History Reader (Perks & Thomson, 2006b). These are the
postwar renaissance of memory as a source for ‘people’s’ history; the
development, from the late 1970s, of 'post-positivist' approaches to memory
and subjectivity; a transformation in perceptions about the role of the oral
historian as interviewer and analyst from the late 1980s; and the digital
revolution of the late 1990s and early 2000s (Perks & Thomson, 2006a).
Thomson suggests the oral historian has grappled with the “technical,
ethical and epistemological implications” in the last decade of this digital
revolution, but predicts their future, though perhaps uncomfortable for
29
some, has “never been so exciting or uncertain.” Thomson uses the work of
Frisch (also a founder of the oral history movement) an advocate of oral
history embracing new opportunities in recording and production and says,
“new digital tools and the rich landscape of practice they define may
become powerful resources in restoring one of the original appeals of oral
history - to open new dimensions of understanding and engagement through
the broadly inclusive sharing and interrogation of memory” (Thomson,
2006).
Oral history techniques
For the purpose of this research, the term ‘oral history techniques’ refers to
the use and practice of oral history interviewing.
In my literature review I concentrate on larger public historical projects that
primarily employ oral history techniques. An array of mechanical ‘How to
conduct an oral history interview’ guides exist, in part because of their
popularity with community projects and the ease in which one can be taught
to ‘follow the rules.’ Following this trend, Education Queensland has
introduced oral history tasks as part of their curriculum for ‘early years’ in
2005 (Education Queensland, 2005) after trialling its use by students in a
selection of schools across Queensland in 2004, one of which was Kelvin
Grove State College. In the United States ‘The Wallpaper Project’ similarly
30
designed a template for their oral history collection with available
information, which allowed school students to conduct the interviews and
helped foster intergenerational relations in a local community. ‘Kits’ with
set questions and work sheets were devised and made available on their web
home page as a resource to teachers involved with the project ("A Century
of Voices from Ohio", 2003). A scholarly approach requires, however, a
more sophisticated examination of technique. The Australian universities
that offer the study of oral history each have their own version of methods
in their course materials, but many also use Beth Robertson’s Oral History
Handbook (2000). Academics and private oral history practitioners use this
publication, now in its 5th edition, nationally (and increasingly
internationally) as a primary method guide to equipment use and procedure.
It outlines the procedure set by curators of all state libraries and the National
Library of Australia and was utilised as a starting point for this project.
Within the boundaries of qualitative research methodology, Bryman
suggests semi-structured interviews, such as the oral history technique, may
be used as the sole method in an investigation, or as part of a larger
ethnographic study2 and should be flexible in order to seek out world views
of the research participants (2001, p. 503). They should not be overly
structured and should allow for flexibility in the questions, while interviews
2 While the term ethnographer has traditionally referred to the research method in which a researcher immerses themselves into and social setting for a extended period of time, the term has a more inclusive sense than participant observation, which seems to emphasize the observational component, according to Bryman, and is now frequently used to refer to the written output of ethnographic research.
31
should also be recorded and transcribed. Bryman adds that it is also not the
norm to employ random sampling to select participants (2001, p. 331).
The American movement of oral history at present includes community
(Barber, 2004), academic (Schneider, 2004), and government practitioners
(Ritchie, 2004). Gluck (2004b), Frisch (2004), and Benmayor (2004)—all
pioneer academic commentators of oral history, who have devoted decades
to legitimising the use of oral history as a methodology in the face of
criticism from traditional historians and scepticism about its applied use by
academics such as Ronald Grele (1999). They have done this by teaching
and practising qualitative measures that strengthen an oral history’s
accuracy. Their current academic passion for robust oral history practices
has led them, via varied paths, to their current areas of research: presenting
audio effectively online, that is, getting the ‘oral’ back into oral history
(Gluck, 2004a); devising software and databases to store, retrieve and
‘break’ the oral history interview into key phrases (Donavan, 2005); and
developing undergraduate courses in digital storytelling, which encompass
the skills of this new storytelling medium, together with an understanding
about life-writing and the traditional methodologies of oral history.3
Grele’s criticism concerns the lack of academic rigour employed by
untrained users of oral history techniques, who are “ill prepared” and use
“badly formulated” questions and interviewing methodology, and are
3 Benmayer’s undergraduate home page: http://hcom.csumb.edu/oralhistory/
32
“willing to settle for journalistic standards of usefulness (Grele, 1999, pp.
179-180).” Instead, he recommends the interviewer needs to be devoted to
the research necessary to prepare for interviewing, so as to remain in control
of the required interviewing techniques. He suggests the interviewee should
be selected because they typify a historiography process and that questions
need to be asked about the accuracy of the participant’s memory or “the
intrusion of subjective or social biases” (1999, p. 180). Grele argues the oral
history interview is therefore better defined as “a conversational narrative:
conversational because of the relationship of interviewer and interviewee,
and narrative because of the form of exposition—the telling of the tale
(1999, p. 184).” Accordingly, he suggests effective oral history techniques
might also examine the transcript in relation to the linguistic, grammatical
and literary structure of the interview, the relationship between interviewer
and interviewee, and the relationship between the participant and the
appropriateness to the historical occasion in which it will be used (1999).
Grele concludes by suggesting oral historians need to:
Realize the potential of their work, and take it seriously enough to
become even more rigorous in their use of materials. Both theory and
rigorous practice are necessary if oral history is, in the words of Henry
Glassie, to contribute to ‘a revolution in diachronic theorizing and the
development of an understanding of what people really did in the
past.’
33
Grele spoke at the International Oral history conference (2006) and it was
clear that he is still as passionate about what he sees as the importance of
the practitioner having a thorough scholarly approach and understanding of
the complex processes and responsibilities in conducting any oral history
interview. He believes that oral history techniques can cross many
disciplines and he does not want to see the tool devalued by practitioners,
who do not apply appropriate rigour.
I paid attention to both Grele and Bryman’s suggestions while conducting
my research and observed and noted the relationship between the
interviewer/interviewee. Despite the validity of Grele’s concerns that oral
history be seen as academically rigorous, oral history does draw also on the
interpersonal skills and ability to establish rapport with the interviewee
when asking people to recall and reconstruct information. I believed a
participatory project could use oral history as a plausible method for
bridging the gap between individual and collective memory, but the
interviewer also should employ communicative skills and attempt to ‘read’ a
person’s responses and emotions. As Michael Frisch says oral history is:
…a powerful tool for discovering, exploring and evaluating the nature
of the process of historical memory—how people make sense of their
past, how they connect individual experience and in its social context,
how the past becomes part of the present, and how people use it to
interpret their lives and the world around them (Bornat, 1999, pp. 193-
205).
34
Helga Amesberger of the Institute of Conflict Research in Vienna, Austria,
wrote in a recent research paper relating to The Mauthausen Survivors
Documentation Project, an international oral history project, about the
importance of the interviewing methodology. She argues that as a
researcher, by discussing project design, difficulties and frictions, similar
large projects could then benefit from the findings (Amesberger &
Halbmayr, 2004). She finds it important to specify the sample of the
interviewees required in terms of age and gender, and in her work in
particular, in terms of nationality. Before interviewing began, workshops
were conducted with regional coordinators, which covered topics such as
the method of interviewing, access to interviewees, and ways of recording
and indexing interviews. From this a project manual was created. They were
also able to create a semi-structured list of questions for interviewers to use
as a basis and developed a questionnaire to record details of the participants.
Information about technical equipment was included in the manual.
Amesberger’s critical assessment of the project highlighted the importance
of the relationship between interviewer and interviewee and the importance
of trying to avoid secondary trauma for the interviewee. This was attempted
by providing historical background to the interviewer, considering different
traditions and ensuring the research took into account each geographical
region.
35
More relevant to my own project, all interviewers kept field diaries, where
they could record personal observations about atmosphere, interruptions and
their personal perceptions. Amesberger calls this oral history interviewing
technique “biographical narrative/life story interviews that have been
backed up with questionnaires (2004).” For Amesberger, the main problems
encountered were: the short time frame available across too many
continents/countries; differences between cultures between the interviewer
and interviewee, and the potential cultural biases in the life story as both the
interviewee and interviewer have been socialised in their own way. This has
not been a particular problem in my own work, given the more homogenous
nature of the participants – though age and gender were certainly variables
that required attention – for example in the degree of unfamiliarity of older
people with computers.
Bryman also emphasizes the importance of keeping field notes after the
interview; recording how the interview went (physical description of the
interviewee and gestures or body language); where it took place; the setting;
and any other perceptions, such as whether it opened up new leads (2001, p.
318).
Mary Ann Villarreal researched Texan migrant communities using oral
history technique as her research strategy. She points out that “like many
scholars who rely on oral histories, I had to go through the process of being
interviewed by my narrators (Villarreal, 2004).” She found that in the
36
process of the oral history interview, she could not separate herself from the
communities as they “gave me their stories, what remains in their
memories.” She argues in her research of inner city commercial
redevelopment that oral histories not only give new meaning to places, but
also play a significant role in locating sites that are important to a
development, which truncates the residential balance of a district.
Thus issues including the appropriateness and validity of chosen
interviewees, the psychological pitfalls and opportunities of imperfect
memory or recollection, editorial intervention and selectivity regarding the
interviewer’s role in reshaping history, the philosophical hermeneutics
regarding ethical dilemmas and truthfulness, and the ‘authenticity’ and
effectiveness of attempting to engage community inform my creative
practice. A combination of an academic approach and rigor, combined with
a more intuitive or interpersonal understanding of the interviewee (aided by
my reflective journal notes) is therefore employed. These processes are the
underpinning of the methodology.
Memory studies
While I do not have a social science background, it was important I
understood the fallibility and subjectivity that the process of recalling
memory can bring to an oral history interview. Accordingly, I examined the
works of a number of researchers that relate to oral history as a qualitative
37
research method.
Verena Alberti’s work with oral history consists of recording interviews
(which have historical and documental proprieties) with the witnesses of
events, conjunctures, movements, institutions and ways of living. Similarly
to many other practitioners who believe the foundation of any project using
oral history techniques is in the narrative constructed, she argues: “An event
or a situation lived by the interviewee cannot be transmitted to any other
person without being narrated (2004)”. From her own fieldwork, Dianna
Allan of Harvard University believes the emphasis on place in historical
narratives in relation to identity, authenticity and belonging, investigates the
restoration of community through local narratives; the merging of personal
memory with pedagogical commemoration to the point where past
experiences permeate the fabric of everyday contemporary life (2004).
The use of the participant’s own voice, and the telling of ‘their’ story is
primary in oral history techniques. Bryman, Burgess (1999) and Bornat
(1999, pp. 193-204) argue that the assistance of the facilitator is crucial in
encouraging the participant to accept that their story is worth telling and in
providing an enabling space for the telling.
My research initially focused on trends and attitudes toward community
storytelling and the associated methodologies that specifically dealt with the
magnitude of managing the processes of memory recall for large projects.
38
Donald Ritchie critically discusses ways of minimising problems associated
with memory recall on large historical projects, such as highlighting the
need to check interviews with traditional historical evidence and to
understand that people will often ‘shape’ (that is, reshape) stories over time
(2004). In his years working as a historian for the United States Senate,
Ritchie has come to expect stories to alter, as the years pass, but does not
see this as a problem as long as it is anticipated. He says, “like historians,
individuals reinterpret their historical memories and recast earlier
judgements. Memories can mellow over time.” (1994)
Jan Vansina reiterates Ritchie’s thoughts by suggesting that historians
creating collective histories must understand the importance of reflecting
the traditions of both past and present, “…in the same breath” (1985).
Oral traditions are documents of the present, because they are told in
the present. Yet they embody a message of the past, so they are
expressions of the past at the same time. They are a representation of
the past in the present (Vansina, 1985).
An oral history, which is credibly collected as accurately as possible, and
which allows for development by intercession and shaping by the
interviewer, as well as continuity, by helping to convey a tale worth telling,
still depends largely on unverifiable aspects of the intrinsically unreliable
memory of the ‘historical witness’, and therefore must be carefully
considered. This scrutiny is aided by a comprehensive examination of the
39
project’s implications through the work of Lewis Barker (1994), Frank
Ankersmit (2001) and Vansina (1985) who all examine the workings of
memory and history. They agree that the importance of understanding and
recognizing the “cultural milieu at the time the memory was formed
(Barker, 1994)” is crucial in being able to judge whether a memory is valid.
This principle applied to my project. Similarly, Sally Chandler’s work
involving generational analysis alerted me to identity questions. She says,
“[b]oth cultural myths and autobiographical memory provide a base for
constructing coherent stories for who we are, both as individuals and within
a community (2004).” I extend my critique of this theory further in the
exegesis, reflecting on the data from the interviewees’ transcripts, using a
definition of memory as the knowledge or impression that somebody retains
of a particular person, event, period or subject.
The research of oral history methods usefully informed my creative
practice. It also assisted my reflection process upon the storytelling and my
role as the editor/writer of other peoples’ stories. Reinforcing Grele’s
suggestion of examining the transcript in relation to the three relationships
that shape it (1999), Portelli argues:
The control of the historical discourse lies firmly in the hands of the
historian. The historian selects the people who will be interviewed;
who contributed to the shaping of the testimony by asking the
questions and reacting to the answers; and who gives testimony its
final published shape and context (if only in terms of montage and
40
transcription). It is clear that the class does not speak in the abstract,
but speaks 'to' the historian 'with' the historian and insomuch as the
material is published ‘through’ the historian (Portelli, 2000).
Allan points out that “it is now widely acknowledged that memory, like
identity, is not immutable and continuously adapts to the needs of the
community, engaged as much with present as with past interests of the
group ” (2004). She suggests the oral history transcripts be used in a partial
form, taking the shape of anecdotal reminiscences that are subtle,
associative and often more deeply concerned with commenting on the
present than memorializing the past. I found this approach to be relevant to
the ways I wanted to use the narratives from my transcripts in the
manuscript.
David Forgacs and David Foot (2004) of the University College of London
were supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board in
the UK to use oral history, among other sources, to examine the ways in
which residents' memories are 'located' in particular urban areas which have
undergone long-term changes (demographic, changes to the built fabric,
changes of political and other subcultures and, in some cases, sudden
changes, such as those produced by war or natural disaster). The research
aimed, through a combination of empirical city studies and theoretical
reflections, to develop an innovative account of the relations between place
and memory. They found ‘habit memory' or semi conscious recalling
41
evolved as a result of repeated movements, of routes and past landmarks or
familiar buildings, which they describe as 'secular pilgrimages'. They
suggest filming can create a richer document, as it allows us to study the
gestures, movements, and ways in which words are framed, both physically
and visually, but while it can produce a desired 'sound bite', these cut pieces
can diminish the narrative qualities that are so important in oral history.
In this discussion I am aware of the complexities of the term ‘place’. Place
is often interpreted as a means of story, enabling, or taboo, or an ambiguous
position, Place can also be defined by boundaries that have symbolic
meaning for people in both urban and rural environments. Creative writers
such as David Malouf have carefully documented the darker ‘space’ under
old Brisbane houses set high on stumps as constituting a taboo area that is
still enticing for children (1985).
Foot and Forgacs’ examination of urban areas that have undergone long-
term change discusses accounts of the relations between place and memory.
They record ‘habit memory’ or semi-conscious recalling as a result of
repeated movements, of routes and landmarks, familiar buildings, such as
'secular pilgrimages'. Their work found place and event memories often
serve as aids or triggers of memory, and that memories of a single event
interconnect with individual and collective accounts about neighbourhoods
over a more extended period of time. Interestingly, from my point of view,
they found memories about transformations in these areas tend to be linked
42
more to specific historical events (for example WWII) than to the physical
signs such as the closing of factories (Forgacs & Foot, 2004). Foot and
Forgacs believe that filming interviews can create a richer document, rather
than oral history transcripts alone, as this allows the study of gestures,
movements, and ways in which words are framed physically and visually.
But their research findings warn that filming can also affect the interviewee,
by producing a more performance-type interview (2004). Filming can
satisfy the desire for a 'sound bite' which may, however, diminish the
narrative qualities that are important for oral history. By using digital
storytelling, I was able to achieve a mix of both, which suited the outcomes
of this work. Instead of a sound bite being edited and perhaps used out of
context, the digital story, though edited, became a stand-alone narrated
product that was produced in partnership with the participant.
Sally Chandler’s research into generational characteristics of different time
periods found generational cohorts share assumptions, values and patterns
of speech. She believes subjectivity is as much the business of oral history
as the more visible 'facts'; it is the ‘autobiographical memory’. Since oral
history has connections to history, sociology and folklore, it is a form of
'reminiscence research' and therefore has deep roots in psychology and may
include fictional elements. She argues there are age-related changes in
memory, as experiences are gathered across a lifetime: "[p]ersonal
autobiographical memory is functionally and structurally related to cultural
myths and social narratives (Chandler, 2004)."
43
Chandler suggests that both cultural myths and autobiographical memory
provide a base for “constructing coherent stories of who we are, both as
individuals and within a community.” She found in her research that
children from the first half of the 20th century formed their identity through
participation in collective narratives (from school, church, community). But
because of a post WWII shift from communally transferred to individually
constructed narratives for identity stories, “autobiographical memories in
21st century United States serve functions previously performed by larger
cultural narratives (2004).” Her conclusion that older cohorts collectively
agree upon social identities proved pertinent to the people I interviewed and
the timeframe discussed. In early interviews with elderly members of the
community, their memory clearly derives both an individual and
generational identity from their experience of the Second World War.
Mary Ann Villarreal’s research regarding memory found that the applied
meaning of places becomes clear in a map of the social, political and
physical terrain. These places were etched into people's memories—
memories not in the historical narrative or in the county or state museum,
but oral history memories that shaped the community's identity (Villarreal,
2004). Thus the scope of my project as focused on the Kelvin Grove area
proved valuable in achieving or attaining coherent narratives. Again
‘community’ is an awkward term and so I have also researched the work of
Randy Stoecker, an academic in community-based participatory research
44
projects (although not historically based work). Stoecker believes a category
of people who share a characteristic (for example, a disability) does not
define community. Instead he sees community as “…a face to face group of
people who share cultural characteristics, share resources, share space and
interact with each other on a regular basis” (2005). This face-to-face
element of his definition is also quite different from the ‘online’
communities discussed by Foth. If community is only about face-to-face,
then examining the role digital play has in building a sense of community
would be worth researching as an extension of this study. I would critically
argue however that to incorporate this participatory research methodology
with a new media approach to cultural citizenship (Burgess, Foth, & Klaebe,
2006) is a beneficial mix for a public history project based on a location.
Alistair Thomson, whose oral history research produced Anzac Memories:
Living with the Legend (1994) insists military historians rightly argue that
personal narratives illuminate experiences which might otherwise be
undocumented, particularly those of 'ordinary' men and women in the ranks,
and offer insights into the meanings of events for participants. But he
believes historians often limit themselves to life stories from sources such as
diaries, letters, written memoirs and recorded memories inter-changeably
and uncritically, as if each variety of personal testimony can be used in
exactly the same way and offers the same type of corroborating evidence
about the course of events and the participant's motivations, thoughts and
feelings. He found that oral history was useful in conveying atmosphere, but
45
concedes it can be highly unreliable and that “research should scrape away
the contaminants of memory to reveal the kernel of original experience”
(Thomson, 2002). He adds:
…the reasons why people relate and record their life stories—the
'autobiographical imperative'—have a significant impact upon what
they choose to say about their lives. The 'psychic underlay' of personal
testimony, the deep-rooted psychological forces that shape our
experience and which inform the struggle to make sense, and to create
a story that works for us and a past we can live with (2002, pp. 52-59).
He believes that by asking questions about where and when a personal
account was produced, the interviewer can begin to explore the personal and
cultural meanings that inform narratives from different times and places.
Stories produced for this project may be tempered by the fact that it is a
history of place and my role in this participatory public history is to mediate
these experiences and to stay focused on this foundation.
Associated ethical issues
Howard Becker, in Denzin and Lincoln (1999) provides a useful
examination of ethical issues within qualitative methodologies, as does
Bryman (2001) whose work includes related social research strategies, such
as the structuring of questions for semi-structured interviews and reflective
journal usage. Howard Becker argues that when one does research by
46
interview it is not possible to be totally objective about the data and that we
must limit our conclusions carefully—and recognise the hierarchy of
credibility for what it is, and field as best we can, the accusations and doubts
we may have (Becker, 1999).
Both of these approaches are implemented in my research practices. More
specific argument about the use of ethnography comes from Rosaldo, who
examines the position of the researcher and the power relations involved in
ethnographic research and considers the central question of who speaks for
whom and on what authority (1989). Rosaldo discusses how linkages
between academic training and personal experience can drive a
reassessment of the notion of ‘truth’, which I found important to consider as
my project progressed and as I employed new processes. These processes
allowed the interviewee to critically examine how I had shaped their stories
and gave them the right and opportunity to change the content I had
produced about them if they so desired.
Verena Alberti, for the Centre for Contemporary Histories in Brazil,
believes oral history techniques consist of recording interviews, which have
historical and documental proprieties, with actors or witnesses of events,
conjunctures, movements, institutions and ways of living, and that one of its
basic foundations is the narrative. An event or a situation lived by the
interviewee cannot be transmitted to any other person without being
narrated to the interviewer; the narrative ‘frames itself (2004)’. That is, the
47
narrative transforms what has been lived into language, by selecting and
organising facts and the work of language that is common in all narratives:
“interviews are trails for one to know the past—narrative in oral history
frames the past (2004).” I attempted to be conscious of this sensitivity in the
way I helped to shape the narrative of recalled events, especially in the
crafted text-based digital story narratives, by not imposing my aesthetic
choices except in ways that generally were needed to make the story more
coherent or personal.
Alberti concedes that one or more versions of the interviewee’s life story
may exist. While the interviewer may gather a lot of information, it may or
may not be factual. However, every interview may hold a story and great
treasures are to be found in oral history as they are, “melded aesthetically
objective and meaningful statements (events) presented to the public
together with proposals of historical interpretation. They enable an
enlargement of knowledge (2004).”
But given this, ethical ramifications were considered seriously with regard
to the oral histories. I found the stories shared by the KGUV team
stakeholders seemed to gain credibility when dedicated to the public sphere.
Events were afforded the status of ‘official’ once committed to text. For
instance, I have heard many versions of how the KGUV development came
about, but the version I hear the Minister repeat now is a practised recital of
the version I created for the publication—a blended narrative formed from
48
all the interviewees’ perspectives. His practised version, I would argue, is a
more authentic inclusive reading than the version he told me in our initial
interview, where he had no other person’s perspectives to align his
memories with. From an academic historical perspective this outcome
remains of course uncontested, yet as a writer and producer of public history
works, this attempt to moderate each institution’s viewpoint about their own
success by combining a cross section of individual accounts—or providing a
‘helicopter’ view—seemed an appropriate approach for the purpose of this
research.
Ursula Murray, of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, has used oral
history for her research work into the public service, which was of interest
to me because of the number of government officials I interviewed, each
with their own narrative of the Kelvin Grove Urban Village. Murray
describes her work as that of a ‘reflexive participant, contributing as well as
observing and enquiring’(Murray, Noble, & Grey, 2004). In the stories that
arose from her work she found both an expression of the impact of
privatization but also the useful role of preserving individual and collective
memory of states of mind and intensity of feelings being experienced during
the interview process.
We adjusted to working in this evolving context; a conflict of
ideologies and ethical choices faces all of us on a daily basis. We
become 'practical ethical authors' actually involved in shaping a
history in the moment. This narrative research into the 'meaning' of
49
public services has an oral history dimension in that it captures these
passing forms of relatedness being replaced by new ways of thinking
and being (Murray, Noble, & Grey, 2004).
Murray drew on the ‘biographical investigative’ narrative method in her oral
history interviews with current and former senior managers in local
government, primarily in the hope that this may have evolved into a 'group
autobiography' (2004). The process of engagement created various settings
for meaningful participation with contested voices and narratives—as users
of services, voluntary sector groups, and as adult educators.
Murray is convinced that 'public conversations' are a developing narrative
for public services. But she believes her role ethically changed to that of a
‘storyteller’, not interviewer, as the interview was a shared experience; in
this context individuals and collective identities are inseparable: “a
researcher's own interaction is involved and the co-creation of events must
of necessity be the starting point.” But she warns:
… the less the historian reveals about their identity and thoughts, the
more likely informants are to couch their testimony in the broadest
and safest terms, and to stick to the more superficial layers of their
conscience and the more public and official aspects of their culture
(2004).
50
She states that relations between the interviewer and the interviewee shape
how, where, and to whom stories are told and retold and that understandably
people fall silent if words are too dangerous politically (perhaps threatening
their work place position). Murray says that personal reflection is not the
task of the subject alone, it comes as the shared price of self-analysis and
the consciousness-raising of the interviewer. Her advice is to “be open and
free of preconceptions to gestures or silences (2004)” again reiterating
Bryman’s and Becker’s recommendation to value the reflective journal of
the interviewer that records the details of the interview situation itself
(1999; A Bryman, 2001). Murray concludes: “And what of my own self?
Each story reflects in some way a resonance within me. I have been changed
by my research process and my separate worlds pulled into closer
connection (2004).” I also found myself very much a part of the process in
my own research and the ongoing effect is still resonating with the
community and with me.
Tim Bowden, an Australian broadcaster and oral historian, finds the spoken
interview material to be an indispensable tool to an author of non-fiction
biography, history and travel books. He regards the manipulation of the oral
history transcript as an important ethical dilemma: “[S]killfully handled
quotations can reflect the class and educational background of contributors,
without giving offence (Bowden, 2005).”
51
Bowden warns against the writer becoming overly interventionist about the
‘art’ or oral history in print and believes there is a danger of losing the
impact of what “makes oral history such a powerful instrument of personal
testimony—the ‘real’ voices of the people (2005).” I am assuming here that
Bowden is defining ‘real’ as genuine and authentic, and so not artificial in
the aural delivery or in the construction of the narrative. There is however,
no scrutineering as to whether what the voices say is in fact ‘truth’, and as
previously stated, this was not a focus of the research. While I can
understand Bowden’s pursuit for ‘authentic’, I do see DST as offering an
opportunity for a participant to still deliver a ‘real’ testimony bearing in
mind the dilemmas of authenticity. DST is simply an extension of Bowden’s
oral history approach, using a process that embraces new media.
Other Australian scholars, including Rebecca Jones of Monash University,
believe the relationship between the narrator and the writer is influenced by
the power relationships inherent in oral history. As such, it is governed by
ethical responsibilities: “[W]e, as authors, have to balance responsibilities to
the narrator, to the audience and the content of the stories, and the decisions
we make in balancing these responsibilities are dependent on the purpose of
the project (Jones, 2004).”
While conceding there is a dilemma for the writer of the published text, as
to what degree it is appropriate to edit the words of the narrator, Jones
believes that when publishing for a general audience, extensive editing can
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be necessary to create a document that is readily readable and accessible,
but still conveys the ‘flavour’ of the experiences (2004).
Bowden argues that this approach produces work that is banal, generic and
demeaning to the interviewee, as it strips the interviewee of their personality
and does so:
… at the expense of the smell, feel, flavour and character of the
interviewee. To say the reader will fall over at the first hurdle of
idiomatic or colloquial speech is to denigrate the reader’s
intelligence and homogenise the entire product in a way that makes
me wonder: ‘Why do oral history in the first place (2005)?’”
I found a compromise between these positions was most viable for my own
work. I limited the editing to what was necessary to create a coherent
narrative, while striving to retain the authentic voice of the participants.
Everyone may have a story, but during the project I often used the analogy
that each was like a new found gem—while all were precious, some needed
me to clean, cut and polish them a little more than others, which may have
required no work at all. They all, however, needed to be held up to the light
(published or produced) to be seen and shared. I wanted them to be
illuminated in the most favourable light to satisfy the participant’s own
sense of self and make some of the invisible partakers in history visible.
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Sense of self
While this was not a focus of my research, it is important to have a sense of
what the academic literature in this area states, especially as it seems to have
a direct bearing on each interviewee who participated in this project.
Personal
According to Richard Freadman, the preoccupation with all things
auto/biographical has come to define a contemporary cultural moment. With
more and more people telling their own story, to an ever-widening and
increasingly eager audience (Rusk, 2002) the reading and writing of creative
historical storytelling, and the capturing of the ‘collective life’ of a
community, are trends worth further investigation in a subsequent study. As
my project used oral history interviewing techniques to add personal
accounts to the history of Kelvin Grove, many of the interviews were long
and covered an extended period of people’s lives. Consequently I felt that
this area was worth critiquing to further inform my creative practice.
Community
It is not yet clear what impact the social engagement and its relationship
with urban development will have in generating monetary benefits in terms
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of flow-on stimulation of the social economy ("Communities need power
and influence ", 2004). Again, this was not a primary concern of this
research. However, outcomes do relate directly to funding opportunities
within urban developments, and so require some degree of attention in this
review.
As this is an emerging research area, relevant literature in this field is
available predominantly through electronic resources. Of particular interest
is emancipatory research as a medium for social conversion (Oliver, 2004)
and the research of Gill and Howard into cultivating a logic of place and
identity in a globalised world (2001). Their work in relation to the Sydney
Olympics in 2000 examined the issue of national identity in terms of a ‘felt’
recognition of belonging and of the desire to identify with a place. I found
this of interest in relation to Kelvin Grove the ‘place’, where many people
seemed to feel a sense of belonging and identity, because of their
institutional associations with the physical location. This may have
accounted for the absence of negative stories in the interviews. Because no
families (in recent history) were displaced by the KGUV development, as
the developed area was not previously residential, and the residential area is
these days an essentially middle class suburb that has benefited from
proximity to the CBD and Brisbane’s rising property values, memories
seemed more nostalgic and related to pleasant recollection of events that
occurred here. I had the sense of the proud territoriality of the people, and
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the absorption of their domain into their sense of belonging in a positive
way.
Ross Gibson suggests we all “take our shape from the shards of the past”
and that “a pristine past is not real and not worth recapturing (2005a) .” He
is concerned that if the ‘ordinariness’ of everyday life is not thought of as
important, then people move on and there is no one left to take ownership of
the memories. He believes we need to respond to the ‘historical fragments’
we find in our research and that a good scholar applies imagination to
evidence in order to be a good historian as well. He says: “we must sit
between the creative writer, the historian and the fiction writer, because
conventional historiographical technique alone will come up short (2005a).”
One of the most sensitive issues in regard to the discussion of KGUV
involved the Indigenous community, the Turrbal people. If de Certeau’s
comment that “places people live in are like the presences of diverse
absences” (de Certeau, 1988, p. 108) is valid, then the ‘presence of absence’
of the Turrbal clan haunts the site of KGUV. One of the positive aspects of
this investigation is that my research did not only help people gain a sense
of belonging in the present, but gave them a keener sense of ownership of
the past and allowed them to feel, if only vaguely, a continuum of past and
present. Pertinent to this, my aim has been to indeed ‘sit in between’
disciplines and attempt to understand the multi-layering and fluidity of the
site’s memory.
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Dianna Allan’s research in Lebanon suggests that it is possible to help
restore community through local narratives (oral history interviews) and she
found that, “[p]ersonal memory merged with pedagogical commemoration
to the point where the past so thoroughly permeates inter-subjective
relations that even generations who did not experience events are, in some
sense, expected to claim them as their own (Allan, 2004).”
Digital storytelling techniques
First, I will again define digital storytelling, in the context of this project.
Generally, digital stories are produced in intensive workshops. The outcome
is a combination of a personally narrated piece of writing (audio track),
photographic images and sometimes music or other aural ambience is
added. These components amalgamate to produce a 2-3 minute film.