Digital Storytelling:
Representing Older People
Tricia Jenkins
Director – DigiTales Ltd
PhD Candidate – Middlesex University
MeCCSA 2015: Generations
Northumbria University, 7-9 January 2015
Outline
1. What is Digital Storytelling?
2. Older People – what do we
mean?
3. Case Study: Extending
Creative Practice
4. Silver Stories – work in
progress
5. Miss Longlegs of Newburn.
Some Definitions
• A short, first person
video narrative created
by combining recorded
voice, still and moving
images and music or
other sounds.
Lambert (2006)
Some Definitions
“Digital Stories – when
properly done – can be
tight as sonnets:
multimedia sonnets
from the people.”
Daniel Meadows (2000)
Capture Wales
Source: Capture Wales BBC
Process: Story Circle
Getting Digital
What is Digital Storytelling For?
Philosophically….
Mission - Center for Digital Storytelling
To promote the value of story as a
means for compassionate community
action.
We partner with organisations around
the world to develop programmes
which support individuals in
rediscovering how to listen to each
other and share first person stories. Our
group process and the stories that
emerge serve as effective tools for
change amidst a world of technology
and media overload.
Funders’ perspective- outcomes
As the number of ageing persons grows, commercial and
political entities are increasingly urging them to adopt
certain lifestyles. If ageing persons don’t want to be
pressured into adopting such lifestyles, they need to raise
their voices in refusal. Jan Baars, Ageing and the Art of
Living, (2012).
Age Narratives
“We have been blamed for
every social and moral
blight, from housing and
fiscal crises to
environmental pollution,
while also being held
responsible for all the
insecurities, moral laxities
and any other imputed
fears, anxieties or vices of
the generation we reared”.
Segal (2013, p47).
•
Giving Voice and the Role of Story
“A system that provides
formal voice for its
citizens but fails so
markedly to listen
exhibits a crisis of
political voice”.
Nick Couldry (2010)
A research question… and some
practice
• What are the benefits of digital storytelling
with older people – both active older people
and those who are living with dementia or
other ‘age related’ conditions?
• Of what value are the stories?
We know this works……
Extending Creative Practice
2010 - 2012
Partners
• Digitales Ltd (UK)
• Progress Foundation
(Romania)
• Mitra (Slovenia)
• Laurea University of Applied
Science (Finland)
• Centre for Urban and
Community Research (CUCR)
(Goldsmiths, University of
London) – evaluators.
Marriage in the Middle of Ruins –
Storyteller: Anisora Stamante
Long-term investment in Digital
Storytelling
• 12 trainers in Romania
were trained.
• 41 librarian
trainers/digital
storytelling facilitators in
Romania’s County
libraries
• Over 400 trained in
Romania’s rural libraries
• In Finland, Laurea’s social
work students all take a
digital storytelling module
Silver Stories Partnership – 2013 - 2015
•University of Brighton UK (Lead)
•Digitales Ltd UK
•CUCR UK (Evaluation)
•Laurea University of Applied Science (Finland)
•Mitra (Slovakia)
•Digital Storylab (Denmark)
•Trapezio (Portugal)
•Instituto Polytéchnico de Leiria (Portugal)
‘Agora vou para o lar’ – ‘And now I go
to the nursing home’
Digital voice, digital identity, digital
presence?
“Does having an online
presence itself become
expected of wellfunctioning citizens?”
Couldry, (2010)
“..parallel acts of listening
…… need to occur if we
are to hear, value and
respond to people’s
self-documented lives
and experiences”.
Matthews and Sunderland (2013)
Miss Longlegs of Newburn
by Joan Philipson
Thank you for Listening!
www.digi-tales.org.uk
http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/silv
er-stories
Contact: tricia@digi-tales.org.uk
t.jenkins@mdx.ac.uk