Lost in Nantyglo from Angharad Dalton on Vimeo.
GEECS have recently developed a new storytelling blog & blogging workshop for community groups. Building on the social media workshop that we already offer, we can now deliver tailored & creative sessions around blogging using the Tumblr platform. A very popular and extremely easy-to-use personal publishing tool, Tumblr, is one of the simplest ways to publish online.
The new story blog, Tumbled Tales (http://tumbledtales.tumblr.com), is a space for its authors, Angharad & Mog, to capture/showcase the ‘stories’ we see all around us which intrigue, enthral, inspire, touch and make us laugh. Our stories will be posted in any media format – showcasing digital stories in the broadest possible sense of the term.
We hope that Tumbled Tales will not only help generate interest in storytelling generally, but also foster a better understanding of the variety of digital storytelling-based training options that are available to community groups from GEECS, for free. We’d welcome your stories too - please feel free to submit your own via the submit section on the Tumblog.
Apart from developing this new workshop, Mog and I have been mulling over a number of ideas for new workshops recently, and we'd love to hear your opinion on them...
Having worked on the Our Bridgend project (see here for our post) we're very keen to use similar mapping technology in our storytelling workshops. We're currently looking into developing our own online GEECS map which will allow workshop participants to upload content, or stories, of all sorts to a specific place on the map...Watch this space!
We're also considering developing a workshop around E-readers / I-books. I-books are an interesting emerging field that uses new technology to deliver traditional & familiar content, often at a fraction of the cost of a printed book, and sometimes for free. Users can browse an unlimited library of publications and download them directly to their 'reader'. Given that we're from a Storytelling centre of excellence, I thought it would be remiss to not cover one of the most exciting developments in reading & story disemination in our suite of workshops!
I'd like to develop a workshop that looks at two or more sides of any given story, since there is always more than one side! We have also discussed a Picture-Poem workshop, and seperately I recently discovered www.nevver.com, all of which has got me thinking about associative storytelling techniques and ways to run workshops that generate associative content... Do let us know what you think.
Last week Mog and I delivered a 2 day Digital Storytelling session to a very interesting and wonderfully hospitable organisation in Bridgend called Ecodysgu.
Ecodysgu are an environmental education centre offering workshops in creative expression. A not for profit community, Ecodysgu operates as an holistic education centre. Set in 42 acres of beautiful countryside it delivers a model of education called ‘Learning to Heal – Healing to Learn’.
The group (which included our first canine beneficiary in the form of a dog named Mouse) accessed our training as part of a wider package of support from the Communities 2.0 project. The staff receiving the training were enthused by the workshop and are planning to train their own service users to create their own stories. The team also intend to work with the local community to capture stories about the historic site which has many dilapidated buildings, such as an old Pit Pony Hospital.
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The staff and volunteers at Ecodysgu created some brilliant stories, a few of which are available to watch below, plus more over on the STORIES page
THE DANCE OF LIFE from chris mog on Vimeo.
The Nuthouse from chris mog on Vimeo.
Hi,I thought I'd better write a quick post to introduce myself as the project's new Outreach Worker.
I'm really pleased to be working on the Digital Storytelling project, and am excited about the work that Mogs and I will be undertaking over the next 18 months or so to help communities benefit from the diversity of technology that is available to us these days. It's a great role for me as I am a techno-enthusiast, so as well as helping to share my enthusiasm and burgeoning IT know-how with others, I'll get to develop new skills at the same time.Over the past few days I've been working closely with Mogs learning the ropes - I hope it's not been too painful a process for him! As part of my 'learning by doing' regime I have made my first ever digital story. Had I realised it would be offered here for the world to see I might have chosen to focus a little less on dogs...!
I've also spent some time absorbing the project's background and structure and am looking forward to meeting the other field workers and project officers to further develop my understanding here. Now that I'm beginning to get up to speed with the way the project has been working, I'm keen to get out and about and run some training sessions. I'm also starting to form some ideas around how we can further develop the variety of training and services that we offer... Watch this space!
(image courtesy of Mei Lewis)
On the 28th July we were invited to a screening of some of the stories from the new Cardiff Story Museum opening in the Hayes in Cardiff in the Autumn. It's always great to go to a screening in a proper cinema and the Atrium provided a great setting.
There were lots of people there, many of whom had come along to see their own stories on the big screen.
The Cardiff Story is a living museum that explores people's relationships with the capital and so the ever hard working Mari has been all over collecting stories which are in turn funny, passionate, revealing and emotional.
GEECS have been involved in the project from the outset and Professor Fyfe's passion for the project was obvious through his introductory speech.
On a personal note, there was a story that really hit a chord with me and revolved around a man who worked on the last day of the last pit to be closed in the Rhondda. The story had a great deal of personal power in it's reflective tone which I'm sure could be echoed by any number of communities in Wales; the loss of industry and the subsequent social and economic implications were something that was happening around me as I was growing up and much more than a day off school because there was no coal to heat the boiler...
The Cardiff Story is opening in the Autumn and will provide facilities for visitors to search and link to the past as well as provide opportunities to watch and create their own stories that can be added to the collection - all in all a great resource and a fantastic way of utilising digital storytelling and personal narrative as a means to help people engage with and understand their history and heritage
There's a much more comprehensive post than I could manage on the link back from this post, but I do have to say that it was a really enjoyable day and great to see some of the work that's going on both here in Wales and further afield.
Some of the highlights for me included listening to the many projects that are going on aimed specifically at capturing personal memories and digitally archiving objects that have some of the most amazing stories to tell - like the series of photographs of a family inside a wallet that had been pierced with a single bullet during WW1.
There was also the chance for us geeky types to talk to Brian Teeman - I would definitely look him up...
All in all I had a great time and I would like to offer our thanks to Alun and Paul for inviting us along.
There is a recording of the presentation I gave somewhere which I'll post here along with the presentation I gave.
Meantime check the links back to the RunCoco site and enjoy some of the work that's going on.
Anyway, there was a post I did which was part of the breakout session we ran at DS5 where I generated a random scenario for people to write an SMS story about and then send them to the blog (thanks to Frankenstory for the inspiration). The results are on the right.
The festival itself was great and agin, now in it's 5th year, DS cymru continues to inspire. Here's some links to reports and pictures of the day:
Gareth Morlais' blog is a great DS resource in itself!
DigiStories are always doing great stuff, there's plenty of resources here, but I must personally thank Barrie for his kind words...
A great day was had by all and probably the highlight of the day for many was listening to Joe Lambert's keynote:
I've just been looking over a lot of the social media stuff I've been working on for the last few weeks and suddenly realised that I've been going against my own advice - the blog has indeed been quiet, eerily so for the last few weeks!
So, in an effort to put things right I've shifted my blogging activity over to posterous.com which should enable us to post quickly and efficiently via web mail, mobile phone and utilising their very cool bookmarking button. I reccomend checking it out.
Posterous is free (for the time being) and enables instant publishing to a variety of platforms including facebook, twitter etc as well as the blog over on blogger. I really like this idea of easy insatant publishing - very much the "one button" approach I've been looking for.
So what's been happening?
Well, quite a lot:
Our train the trainer digital storytelling sessions have been quite a success with around 25 people trained up and ready to go in digital storytelling, including some who have already organised some DS sessions. I think that with this approach we are able to build capacity on the ground and reach a wider audience in order to help them get the most out of digital technologies. I'd like to thank everyone involved over the last month or so for their enthusiasm and fabulous stories which you can see over on the storytelling space.
We've also been getting a great response from some of our quick introduction workshops aimed at getting potential participants to get what they want out of DI by using digital photography to help tell their stories about how they feel about technologies.
I'll post some of our presentations and other resources here very soon.
Leanne has been a great asset to the project during the last 8 months or so and brought a cheery enthusiasm and creative approach to all of our work. Plus of course she managed to put up with me for all that time.
I'm sure I echo the feeling of the stortelling centre and the wider partnership as well as all the community groups we've worked with over the months in wishing Leanne all the best with her new venture and we look forward to hearing the stories very soon. Thanks butt!!
On a related note we do have a new member of satff starting in August so I'm very much looking forward to working with Angharad and continuing to develop the creative and happy approach that Leanne has left behind.
Here's the PS Elements tutorial we used for a workshop demonstrating how we can use the concept of storytelling in still images. I made this presentation over on Prizi - a very neat site that allows some free hosting of presentattions that can then be embedded and shared. Very nice tool.
I'll post this tut over on the tools page too.
DS5 presents a jam packed day of inspirational speakers and practical sessions on every topic you can think of within the field of digital storytelling and some you hadn’t considered! All this plus a wide range of trade stands from the main funding organisations, community development schemes and many more and a unique opportunity to network with the digital storytelling community in Wales, the UK and beyond."
Tickets are now on sale: http://www.dscymru.org.uk/
Untitled from geecs storytelling on Vimeo.
I've been threatening this for a while now but I reckon it's about time to list the freeware options we've been experimenting with in the workshops and where you can get your hands on them.
Firstly, I think it's worth pointing out that we're concentrating on Windows based software as it seems more prevalent than Mac or Linux in the community. Although having said that if you do have a Mac I'd recommend a combination of iPhoto, Audacity and iDVD which are all pre-installed with your Mac OS.So, lets start with Audio:
Audacity: Latest releases available at this site.We know it's a little clunky and doesn't often lend itself to creative arrangement, but considering we're working from scratch it does the job nicely. Nearly all the films on our Stories section were produced using MM.
For our purpose we were quite desperate to get the pan and zoom working too and to this end we found a little package of effects called Dan's Pan and Zoom. Download and unzip the package and then put the 2 files danpan.xml and danpan.dll in Program FilesMovie Maker 2.6SharedAddOnTFX (you'll need admin priveleges for this. Also note that your Movie Maker folder may be called "Movie Maker 2.6"). Reboot MM and now you've got the pan files listed in the fx. I know it's not fully customisable but it does the job. Also be aware of issues with x-fades using these fx.
Also, be aware that you should have MM already installed on XP so just add the danpan files. If you're on Vista, there are pan and zoom fx bundled with the pre-installed version. You should only need to download MM 2.6 for Windows 7 as it's no longer pre-installed, also be aware of the new MM live! which doesn't have the flexibility we deemed necessary for DS: go for MM2.6.
PhotoStage Currently seems to stable on XP and Vista but not reliable on Win7. Fix may be coming soon! We're keeping an eye on this one as it's great for DS with a GUI very much like Photoshop elements slideshow producer. If it becomes stable on Win7, I think we'll be recommending this.
PHOTOSTORY3 This is a nice bit of software, again with the intuitive GUI I mentioned above, but no support for 48K audio, so a compromise on quality. Having said that, if you're using lower spec audio or happy with mp3, then I'd recommend it.
DVD Slideshow GUI: Integrated suite of tools for developing DS. Non-linear approach makes it a bit tricky to use but in development. Waiting for stable release at V 1.0.
It's been a busy month this month that's seen us working with a variety of different groups and setting up projects for the next couple of months.
