A Public Voice – AHRC/BBC Knowledge Exchange Project
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A Public Voice: Access, Digital Story and Interactive Narrative University of Glamorgan Hamish Fyfe Mike Wilson Suzanne Pratt BBC Wales Partners Mandy Rose Karen Lewis This collaborative research project was funded through the AHRC/BBC Knowledge Exchange Programme’s pilot funding call. The aim of the Arts and Humanities Research Council/BBC KEP is to develop a long-term strategic partnership brining together the arts and humanities research communities with BBC staff to enable co- funded knowledge exchange and collaborative research and development. The benefits from the outcomes and outputs of these projects should be of equal significance to both partners. To find out more about the AHRC/BBC KEP please visit the AHRC’s website at: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk 1 Research Partners Professor Hamish Fyfe: [email protected] Professor Mike Wilson: [email protected] Susie Pratt; Academic Researcher: [email protected] 2 Mandy Rose; Creative Director Multi-Platform Mandy Rose: [email protected] Karen Lewis; Director, Storyworks, University of Glamorgan (formerly Partnerships Manager BBC Wales): [email protected] This research has been commissioned to enhance understanding of the methodology and social impact of digital storytelling. The work takes particular cognisance of the BBC’s ‘Capture Wales’ project and ways in which this project has engendered a wide range of community based media activity in Wales. The research has employed a triangulated methodology with survey, case study and focus group components. Considerable emphasis has been placed on deriving qualitative data directly from participants in the process, particularly those in lower socio- 3 economic groups, and to provide insight into mechanisms to develop engagement in issues linked to the ‘digital divide’. 4 A Public Voice - A Foreward In 2001, some years before You Tube was launched and the term user generated content was coined, BBC Wales set out to investigate what the public would make of the emerging tools of content creation through a digital storytelling initiative inspired by work that was going on in California. Since then hundreds of people, most not the ‘digital natives’ who have the confidence and competence to go it alone creatively, have made mini- documentaries about their own lives through the project which we called Capture Wales. This research by the University of Glamorgan provides an invaluable assessment of that undertaking – exploring the project from a number of perspectives. It situates digital stories in a tradition of capturing everyday reality that encompasses the BBC’s Access TV project Video Nation as well as its precursor Mass Observation. It looks at Capture Wales through the lens of the subsequent technological developments known as Web 2.0 and offers some practice-based insights into the ways that social networks might play a role in facilitating content creation. Alongside running workshops and publishing the digital stories made in them on BBC platforms, the Capture Wales team set out to share and foster digital storytelling practice in Wales. The research also assesses the impact of that activity – providing an audit of all the digital storytelling initiatives now happening in Wales and considering the types of value digital storytelling can provide in contexts from education to social regeneration. As the BBC steps up its commitment to sharing media innovation with partners this is a timely assessment. Building Public Value clearly stated the BBC’s commitment to act as a creative collaborator with the audience in the 21st century. Yet the rise of You Tube and Current TV have raised questions about what exactly the BBC’s role is in this area, beyond gathering user generated contributions for News. This report, made possible through an innovative collaboration between the AHRC and BBC’s Future Media & Technology Division, can assist us in thinking through those questions and will be of interest to anyone who is engaged in shaping the next generation of this work. Mandy Rose - Creative Director Multiplatform, BBC Wales 5 A Public Voice – AHRC/BBC Knowledge Exchange Programme Professor Michael Wilson, Co-Investigator Preface This report represents one of six outputs from the research carried out for A Public Voice, a project funded under the AHRC/BBC Knowledge Exchange Pilot Scheme as a collaboration between BBC Wales and The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan. Other outputs include a conference presentation and two journal articles. The work has also informed further conference papers made this year by the lead investigators in Grasmere and Krakow, Poland. What follows is a commentary documenting the findings from an enquiry into digital storytelling that reviews and analyses selected activity at local and national levels. In addition the study reviews and examines existing theory and records relating to the practice of digital storytelling. This survey will identify case studies relating to the practice and produce guidance for future cross-sector collaboration. All information included in this report is, to the best of our knowledge, freely and publicly available. This report is in three sections. The first section, by Professor Hamish Fyfe, Co-Director of The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling and Principal Investigator on the project, provides the academic and theoretical framework for the research, placing digital storytelling firmly within a tradition of participatory media, oral history and a celebration of the quotidian experience. In doing so, he draws upon the work of Mass Observation in the 1930s, the film- 6 maker Humphrey Jennings and BBC initiatives, such as Video Nation, as well as his own previous research in the field. The second section is by Susie Pratt, Research Fellow on the project, who describes the processes involved in realizing the work, including engagements with existing digital storytelling practitioners through workshops, case studies, interviews and focus groups. This is framed within the context of the latest developments in digital technology and how users are engaging with it, as well as how it is changing behaviours and practices. She concludes with an investigation into how digital storytellers may make use of social networking technology to support their activities and develop the form. The final section represents a piece of commissioned data-gathering research by Dr Daniel Meadows of Cardiff University and former Creative Director of Capture Wales, who was asked to use his extensive knowledge and experience of digital storytelling to conduct an audit of activity and organizations across Wales. There are many people to whom a debt of gratitude is owed in respect of this research. They include colleagues at the University of Glamorgan and BBC Wales (in particular, Lisa Heledd Jones and Carwyn Evans), as well as the digital storytellers who have contributed to this project. In addition, thanks must go to colleagues at BBC Future Media and Technology and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their support, advice and interest in this work. Special mention, however, must go to Mandy Rose and Karen Lewis at BBC Wales, who have been immensely supportive of the ongoing collaboration between BBC Wales and The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling and have contributed a 7 professional rigour, alongside their considerable experience and expertise, to the work that has been of immeasurable value. 8 9 A Public Voice – AHRC/BBC Knowledge Exchange project Professor Hamish Fyfe, Principal Investigator Summary Introduction This research has been commissioned through collaboration between the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the BBC and the University of Glamorgan to enhance understanding of the methodology and social impact of digital storytelling. The work takes particular cognisance of the BBC’s Capture Wales project and ways in which this project has engendered a wide range of community based media activity in Wales. A mapping exercise has been undertaken by Dr. Daniel Meadows to indicate the breadth of the current practice of digital story within Wales and to discover patterns of funding and support. Detailed research has taken place in to the potential of social web-site making to create virtual communities of storytellers as well as the experimental application of innovative forms and technologies in support of digitial story making. This work has been undertaken by the Research Fellow on the project Susie Pratt. This research has undertaken a triangulated methodology with survey, case study and focus group components. Considerable emphasis has been placed on deriving qualitative data directly from process participants, particularly those in lower socio-economic groups, and to provide insight into mechanisms linked to reducing the ‘digital divide’. n.b. All of this work is contextualised by other recent or ongoing research by the University of Glamorgan in this area, in particular ‘Hand in Hand – Arts Based Activity and Social 10 Regeneration’ (Adamson, Fyfe et al 2007) a summary of which accompanies this document. Key Concepts The research, which is reported on here, has employed a number of key concepts to inform analysis of digital storytelling activity in Wales. Digital Story as participatory media – digital storytelling is an act of creativity by the participant, initially with the support of practicing media professionals. Digital story – questioning the ‘techno-fix’. As Postman (1992) contends, the overriding ‘message’ of new technology is that the most serious problems that confront society require technical solutions through fast access to information that is otherwise unavailable. Digital story and its attendant slough of ‘techno-social’ creative activity challenges this view and suggests that people often access technology when they have something to say through creative engagement with the media. Community building and Digital Storytelling - S.G Jones (1997:30) contends that ‘ the Internet allows us to shout more loudly, but whether our fellows listen is questionable and whether our words make a difference is even more in doubt.’ Digital Story is fostering a new relationship between physical and virtual communities.