Digital Storytelling – Representing Older People
Paper for MeCCSA 2015, Generations, Northumbria University, Newcastle
Thursday January 8th, 2015
Tricia Jenkins
Director, DigiTales Ltd.
PhD Candidate, Middlesex University
Good morning – I’m Tricia Jenkins. Great to be at a conference called
Generations……. I started out teaching media studies and video production
back in 1982, within the further education sector. Then my work was entirely
focused on youth and young people. Oh, and changing the world. More than
thirty years later, having been out of the formal education sector for some
time, I find myself returning to study, re-entering the world of academia from
the perspective of a digital storytelling practitioner … and focusing now on the
ageing agenda. Wonder why…
Slide 2
In this presentation, I’m not focusing on externally-generated representations
of older people, but on self-representation through the practice of Digital
Storytelling. I’ll go through some definitions of digital storytelling, its history
and its uses; ask some questions about what we mean by ‘older people’.
And hopefully we’ll have enough time to show a couple of stories.
Slide 3
The Digital Storytelling to which my research and practice refers, though, is as
defined by the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, California, the
founding body of what has come to be known to some as the Digital
Storytelling Movement, with over 500 practitioners working across the globe.
The ‘method’ emerged over twenty years ago, its roots in community activism,
its techniques evolving from media arts and radical theatre and its primary
driver a ‘response to the exclusion of ‘ordinary’ people’s stories in broadcast
media (Hartley and McWilliam, 2009).
Slide 4
In 2000 Daniel Meadows visited the Center for Digital Storytelling and brought
back the method to use in partnership with the BBC and the University of
Cardiff, creating a ‘new kind of television’, facilitating workshops all over
Wales between 2001 and 2008 through the Capture Wales initiative. This is
the one and only instance of digital storytelling claiming a space within
broadcasting and despite the fact that Capture Wales won the BBC awards, it
was not sustained.
Slide 5
The primary emphasis is on the ‘story’ rather than the digital and the
technique is firmly based in the facilitation of the ‘story circle’ – the workshop
practice that enables participants to find, tell and share usually personal
stories that will become what Lambert calls “little nuggets of media called
Digital Stories’. The Story Circle uses a range of activities and writing stimuli
to develop trust within the group, to build storytelling techniques and visual
literacy and, ultimately, to ‘find’ and craft that story.
Slide 6
Participants are taught how to record their voice-overs, capture their images,
still or moving, and edit their piece to run somewhere between two and three
minutes. Despite the plethora of personal narratives available through social
media platforms, the distinctive methodological approach captured in the story
circle brings a unique form to Digital Storytelling with its own capacity to
shape narrative, although each and every story is unique.
Slide 7
Digital Storytelling is now used around the world in a variety of contexts, from
community engagement programmes, to health and wellbeing projects, to
different education settings to name but a few. From the perspective of many
funders, it’s often sold on the skills that can be developed. From a
philosophical perspective – and the standpoint of most practitioners – it is a
powerful way to effect change both through the process of participation and
through the stories themselves.
If you’re familiar with the world of external funding, then you’ll know about
‘target groups’. Given the current panic about how to combat the ‘problems’
of an ageing society, it’s not surprising then that older people – or elders,
seniors, ‘third age’ and ‘fourth age’, old and ‘oldest old’ – are the ‘target
groups’ of a number of European and other funding programmes.
But let’s not be cynical here. The availability of funds for research and
projects is not the only reason that DigiTales is engaged in this work. And it is
certainly not the reason why I’m committing three years of my life – at this
stage of my life – to undertaking PhD research in this specific work.
Slide 8
If we look at the underlying narratives of current policy drivers, they are largely
concerned ‘dealing’ with the rapidly increasing older population. Certainly in
the rich, developed countries, attention seems to be focused on the practical
problems posed by ageing populations, such as health problems, pensions or
the organisation and costs of care.
Slide 9
Lynne Segal’s insightful book “Out of Time – The Pleasures and Perils of
Ageing” discusses other narratives, including ‘boomer bashing’ that has been
fashionable in the press, on and off, since around 2006, sparked by Neil
Boorman’s book It’s All Their Fault, blaming those who are 60+ for – well –
most of the world’s current crises!
Whilst traditional gerontology focuses largely on the physical states
associated with the chronology of ageing, humanist gerontologists have, over
the last twenty years or so, shifted the focus to exploring what it feels like to
grow old. At the Seventh International Symposium on Cultural Gerontology,
Baars speaks of ageing as being rooted in time, “yet time is usually reduced
to chronometric time; a mere measurement that has been emptied of the
narratives that were traditionally part of it”.
….emptied of the narratives that were traditionally part of it……
He argues that “micro-narratives are important for empirical studies of ageing
as they articulate human experiences….”.
So this is where I think digital storytelling – the self representations of older
people, created and shared in a digital environment - could have a huge
impact on, for instance, spending, service and policy decisions relating to
aging, as they could draw on the input and insight of those who have firsthand experience of what it is like to be old. And they could challenge
stereotypical attitudes and responses to age and ageing.
Slide 10
But perhaps more importantly, in this digital age in which not only are public
services and information shifting to digital platforms, but also so are the fora in
which you can ‘have your say’ through, for instance, online political
campaigns, we have to ask – are the micro-narratives of older people able to
penetrate the plethora of personal narratives available through social media
platforms?
Many digital storytelling projects state that their aim is to ‘give voice’ to those
whose voices are normally not heard. I have certainly made that argument
myself when applying for funding to run digital storytelling projects. Tracey
Dreher’s article ‘A Partial Promise of Voice’ (2012) discusses ‘voice’ as a key
indicator in international debates around social inclusion. She applauds
participatory media – in particular digital storytelling – as an excellent way in
which to provide opportunities for marginalised communities to tell their
stories, however she goes on to argue for greater ‘political listening’ if the
promise of voice is to be even partially fulfilled. This echoes Nick Couldry’s
work on the value of voice, in which he argues that there are many
opportunities for voice, but not necessarily for listening.
Slide 11
I want to turn now to a couple of case studies and to put forward my overarching research question: What are the benefits of digital storytelling with
older people?
Slide 12 – anecdote/evidence/data
I am asking this question because every practitioner account of digital
storytelling will undoubtedly provide anecdotal evidence of – well – why this
works. However this evidence is usually linked to individual projects which
are measured against their success in delivering usually for the funder to their
specific criteria. What we don’t have is a more scientific framework for
assessing benefits of either a) participation in digital storytelling activity or b)
the stories themselves as rich qualitative data.
Slide 13: Case Study: Extending Creative Practice
Extending Creative Practice was a project funded through the European
Commission programme Grundtvig, which used digital storytelling with older
people with the primary aim of increasing their ICT skills to promote digital
inclusion.
In the evaluation, an overall observation was that the digital storytelling
methodology enables us to challenge attitudes: the power of combining
approaches to storytelling which draw on resources from the past (such as
memories, photographs, stories, films) together with digital technology has
provided opportunities for older people (in this project) to re-think how they
may wish to structure and communicate their narratives now and into the
future”.
Slide 14 – Marriage in the Middle of Ruins story (3 minutes)
Anisora’s story provides a moving personal account of the wider forces
shaping everyday life. In many ways it is an archetypal digital story – a
moving personal story yet somewhat rough round the edges without the
sheen of professionally made media. Perhaps an otherwise ‘lost’ story. Digital
Storytelling workshops provide a means for people to tell personal stories
which would otherwise remain untold. The selection and arrangement of the
material within the digital story is key. Facts do not, as EH Carr famously
pointed out, speak for themselves but, in the case of digital storytelling, it is
the storyteller rather than the historian who decides what to include and what
to give to the floor. Unlike historians, digital storytellers are telling a personal
story, which may be about the past and this may contribute to historical
discourse by simply increasing the quality, range and amount of material for
the historian to consider.
Slide 15
So did the project succeed?
Yes – from the perspective of the funders it certainly did and has led to our
current larger EU funded project Silver Stories.
For Anisora – she continues to meet others from the group, she has made a
digital story to give to her children as a wedding present. She’s using social
media and Skype to communicate with far-flung relatives. But that is because
in Romania, we have been able to ‘cascade’ the model by training librarians
as digital storytelling facilitators and they in turn have trained others. Digital
storytelling is not a ‘one-off’ funded project – it’s part of the overall digital
provision in the libraries in Romania.
Slide 16 – Silver Stories
The aims of Silver Stories are to extend digital storytelling with older people to
two new countries (Denmark and Portugal) and to work with those who are
undergoing training (students), or who are professionals, or volunteers
specialising in the care of older people, whether they are active and in
community settings, or in residential care homes. The project includes the
design of accreditable modules in digital storytelling and the piloting of those
modules through 40 workshops across the partnership. The project started in
October 2013 and completes in September 2015. We’re running an
international conference in Leiria in Portugal in May – watch out for the call for
papers.
Slide 17- Story – nursing home
Story made by healthcare professional – they had been asked in Story Circle
to focus on an older person who had an influence on them.
Slide 18
So a couple of questions about whether we need to have an online identity
and presence in order to be ‘functioning citizens’ – and so does creating
digital stories answer some of that. But on the other hand, how great is that
presence – who is the audience for the stories – something that is a frequent
criticism of digital storytelling as a practice – that it remains personal and
shared only with the immediate friends and family, perhaps the project
stakeholders.
Slide 19
I can’t possibly stand here in Newcastle and not mention Curiosity Creative,
the Digital Storytelling Centre in the North East, which is working on a range
of really exciting digital storytelling projects including one two year programme
with Grange Arts, which is based in Throckley not far from here. To finish off,
how about this local story made by Joan Philipson, supported by Alex Henry
who runs Curiosity Creative.