Digital Storytelling

History

Storytelling has long been used as a strategy for engaging, educating and entertaining. Cultures around the world use stories to preserve and share historical knowledge and transmit values. Storytelling also serves a spiritual and ceremonial function for many indigenous communities. All stories are told through a narrator, who describes the plot, context and characters. Some stories are ancient and are reworked with each telling. Others are newly birthed. Everyone has stories to share.

The Center for Digital Storytelling was born in the early 1990s out of a desire to help people tell and share personal stories with grace. Drawing on the legacies of participatory development, Freirian education models of critical consciousness-raising and the feminist motto that the personal is political, the centre believed in the transformative power of everyday narratives. Eschewing the notion that art ought to be created only by those with talent and professional training, Joe Lambert and his colleagues sought to codify a methodology that would allow ordinary people to develop their own compelling narratives. The centre developed a concise [Page 267]workshop format that blended ancient narrative techniques with modern audiovisual media, to help stories come alive and be more easily disseminated. Its work was steeped in the democratic ideals of developing critical multimedia literacy skills and helping people retain control over their own stories. The centre believes that bringing groups of people together to collectively work on individual stories is an important part of the process.

One of the features that make Digital Storytelling different from other traditional forms of story sharing is its potential reach. Digital Storytelling was born in the dawn of, and has evolved in tandem with, the Internet and social media era. Social networking platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, blogs, YouTube and countless others, have made sharing new media nearly effortless in areas where connectivity is easily available. As a result, the potential reach of compelling stories knows ever fewer bounds. Personal stories mingle with news and other forms of information to become powerful political symbols and codes for social struggles. In places where distribution via online or mobile tools is not possible, digital stories (or components of the original products) can be broadcast via traditional television and radio outlets.

What Is a Digital Story?

A digital story is typically a 2- to 5-minute short film that synthesizes some combination of voice recording, still images, video clips, music or audio and text. Stories produced by the Center for Digital Storytelling

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