Digital Storytelling
In Lanarkshire, we've recently built upon our successful patient narrative work by turning our attention to Digital Storytelling.
The term ‘Digital Storytelling’ has come to mean a number of different things. The approach that we've taken follows thay of its founders, the Digital Storytelling Center. Here Digital Storytelling is defined as:
“A workshop process in which small groups come together to share stories and develop them into short multimedia presentations comprising any combination of still images, drawings, short video clips, music and voice.”
Why Make Digital Stories?
We live in an age shaped by new media and technologies. More and more, people want messages to be:
- Appealing
- Simple
- Authentic
- To the point
- Presented quickly
- In a format that's easy to understand.
Digital stories meet these demands.
The Story Circle
After receiving an Information Sheet describing the digital storytelling process and the intended uses of the stories, seven members of the NHS Lanarkshire Stroke Managed Clinical Network Patient and Carer group agreed to take part.
Sitting in a story circle, the facilitators and small group of storytellers worked together. The workshop was lively and highly interactive, with everyone contributing. The dialogue between group members was an important part of the storytelling process, with connections being made between members that hadn't previously been realised.
Storytelling within the group also created a strong sense of community, with some participants remarking that knowing that another person identified with their own experiences had therapeutic value.
Participatory Production Approach
The story circle was followed by a series of individual sessions to help each storyteller to shape the story. However, ultimately each storyteller decided what to say and what to omit.
Another important aspect was the 'participatory production' approach. Unlike traditional film-making, this allows each storyteller to have control not only over the story script, but also over all editing decisions.
Working with storyboards, storytellers were encouraged to select still images that extended the meaning of the story, rather than simply decorating it with distracting bells and whistles.
Digital Stories In Health Care
The digital story work has being taken forward with advice and support from Patient Voices. This programme has led the way in introducing healthcare to the power of digital stories.
NHS Lanarkshire is one of the first Scottish healthcare communities to implement digital storytelling. The lessons learned from our experience will be widely shared in the hope that the digital storytelling process becomes integrated in ongoing efforts to improve individual and community health and wellbeing.
