Why do people choose to tell specific stories? Understanding the narrative impulse in digital storytelling workshops with elderly

people across Romania

Camelia Crisan and Mark Dunford

About Digital Storytelling• Telling personal stories

through story circles, and an inter-disciplinary approach, using drama, photography, drawing, music, video clips.

• During an intensive workshop people learn to: write a script edit pictures,

drawings, photos record a voice over

and sound-track

Communications Programme including conferences, websites

and publications

On going evaluation by CUCR

Locally based workshops in all the

participating countries

A Train the Trainer Workshop programme

Adapting the approach

• Links to local elderly people established through the Library system.

• IREX and the Progress Foundation adapted the method and combined it with introductory work on computers such as basic keyboard skills, image use, file saving etc

• Created over 200 digital stories across Romania in a four year period

• A means to overcome social isolation within communities and build ICT literacy amongst older Romanians

• A means to establish connections within Romania and to link people to relatives living abroad

Romania – June 2011 Fieldwork across Romania

Sample Story

Developing our Understanding

Revisit the storytellers Focus on specific stories

Understanding the Participants

40-50 51-60 61-70 71-800

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

1816

36

6

Seco

ndary sc

hool

Highsch

ool

Vocational

school

College MA

PhD0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

1

18

10

37

8

2

Age Terminal age of Education

Understanding BenefitsRank First Second Third Fourth Average

Being Part of a Community

4 16 16 46 1.79

Express Myself

8 19 36 13 2.29

Doing Something Creative

41 19 12 4 3.28

Learning IT 23 22 12 19 2.64

Moving On

Plummer (documents of life 2) suggests a life narrative possesses: A sense of ordering – usually linear – of events A sense of the person behind the text A sense of the voice and the perspective belonging to the

narrator A sense of causality

Digital Storytelling as Mediation

Couldry (2008) proposes three main angles to explore digital storytelling by studying

• How digital storytelling’s context and processes of production are becoming associated with certain practices and styles of interpretation

• How the outputs of digital storytelling practices are themselves circulated and recirculated between various sites and, and exchanged between various practitioners

• The long term consequences of digital storytelling as a practice for particular types of people in particular types of location, and its consequences for wider social and cultural formation, even for democracy itself

Digital Storytelling as a form of life narrative

Understanding the Stories

• Reasons for telling a particular story in the digital storytelling format

• The significance of saying something, of being seen and heard

• How the digital storytelling format shaped story choice

• Personal and professional experiences after the course

Reasons for Stories

“I chose the story because it was about me, about my whole life and it felt interesting that my children and grandchildren hear who I was and how I lived”

“I wanted to keep the memory of my parents alive”

Significance of saying something, of being seen and heard

“I wanted it to be public, not solely for myself”“The fact that my story will be published has not influenced me”“I approached the subject from a real perspective, ups and downs, the life with good and bad because they are all part of life and I realised that the negative can be presented in a positive way”

How the Form shaped the Story

“Only the photographs that I had or didn’t have for my story”

“I could use pictures of the old Focsani. It aroused so many beautiful and sad memories. To hear my voice recorded has been super”

Personal and Professional Development

“I posted my movie on Facebook and I have sent it on to my family by email. I have done a movie for my friend on her birthday”

“I can teach my friends a thing or two about the computer, now I am their teacher.”

Conclusions

• Narrative emphasis on closure, affect and universality

• Thanks for Listening