Digital Storytelling
FOMACS runs digital storytelling workshops, focusing on the making and telling of stories by migrants, asylum seekers and refugee constituencies. Through a collaborative and interactive process of creating a digital story, utilizing audiovisual media, participants individually and collectively reflect on their experiences of migration, engage in dialogue with others about stories that are often left untold, and develop a new and critical understanding of these life stories.
Inspired by the work of the Centre for Digital Storytelling, Berkeley, California, digital stories can be used as a means to communicate with family members across distances; analyse social issues; develop educational outreach; advocate for policy changes; build social networks and artistically express oneself in a way that underscores the vibrant and heterogeneous ways of living migration.
At the centre of digital storytelling is the workshop format, which is labour intensive, time-consuming and intimate. The most important aspect of a digital storytelling workshop is not just the training in computer use or editing but the ‘story circle’ - in which participants share their own and others’ stories and thus create a community of learners. This collaborative learning space is structured through the relationship between workshop facilitator and participants.
Please sample a selection of digital stories produced in collaboration with the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, titled Undocumented in Ireland: Our Stories.
A 6-month digital storytelling workshop ran in September 2008 in collaboration with The Refugee Information Service and Integrating Ireland. A selection of these stories, titled 'Living in Direct Provision', will be posted soon.
FOMACS' Digital Storytelling workshops are led by Darcy Alexandra, PhD Candidate, Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, DIT.