Context for Digital Storytelling Project
The Digital Storytelling project is called ‘Telling Queer Stories: A life of many colours’. The stories will be created and told through Canva. Canva allows users to create a range of digital multimedia projects. I have created my digital story using the video presentation feature. I have used slides with embedded content such as gifs, graphics, audio, and video links as well as images, photos, and text.
The project will focus on telling LGBTQIA+ experiences. The aim is for this diverse community group to feel connection, representation, and visibility through the storytelling project. This is not a unique idea; the ‘It Gets Better’ project launched in the US in 2010. David Savage and his partner Terry Miller created a social media video aiming to prevent queer youth suicides due to bullying. Since the onset of that project, over 70 000 videos have been shared globally, encouraging, and giving hope to young LGBTQIA+ people (It Gets Better, n.d., About section). However, this digital storytelling project expands on the idea created by Savage and Miller as this project utilises transmedia storytelling thereby “coming at the same subject matter in somewhat different but complementary ways” (Miller, 2019, p. 343).
This project is unique as it would concentrate on queer Christian stories. Queer Christians, like queer people of other religions, are a marginalised community within a marginalised community. Often these young people find themselves suspended within homogenous societies with no queer role-models with the rhetoric being to “hate the sin, love the sinner” and to ‘overcome’ the ‘gay lifestyle’ (Merritt, 2017, Hate the sin, love the sinner section, para. 2). This project therefore aims to create new channels for communication where marginalised individuals can produce sophisticated multimodal messages without censure from religious groups, politicians, or the media (Jones, 2015). The digital online nature of the project is advantageous in enabling these stories to reach large numbers of people, who might otherwise not have access to such content.
The digital storytelling project will be facilitated through a public library. It would take place as a traditional storytelling session as a face-to-face meeting, or it could take place through an online social-media platform. The latter would allow for a wider audience to view or participate in the project. Online delivery of the program is also beneficial as many libraries are physically closed due to the pandemic. Furthermore, online delivery suits the digital nature of the project and allows for privacy and safety of participants to be considered.
The project also draws its roots from The Human Library Organisation (HLO), which is a worldwide organisation originating in Copenhagen in 2000 (The Human Library, n.d., About page). The HLO aims to improve diversity and inclusion within communities by allowing library users to ‘rent people’. In this way community members can share stories, ask questions, and facilitate dialogue between people who would generally not have the opportunity to meet and discuss viewpoints (Human Library Australia, n.d., About page).
Canva allows institutions to buy bulk licences which may be suitable for a public library, particularly with the increased demand placed on online and digital services due to Covid 19. Alternatively, individuals can create free accounts and access most Canva content to create their stories. Community members can take part by ‘viewing’ or ‘reading’ the stories or by also creating and sharing their own through the Canva program. Canva allows for ‘classes’ to be made which could help keep a level of privacy for this kind of project. Canva also hosts a blog and design school with a large variety of online courses, tutorials, and events for users to peruse to help improve their ability to use the software (Canva, n.d., Learn page).
Due to the multiple modes presented within the project including text, images, audio, gifs and links, the audience can have increased accessibility and a deeper engagement than would be garnered from mere print alone (Felvégi & Matthew, 2012). The transmedia nature of digital stories combined with the mixing of genres and the mixing and the participation frameworks of social media allow authors different kinds of authority, participation, and responses from various audiences (Jones, 2015, p. 336). Church groups, parents and family of queer people may be positioned to sympathise and learn from these stories, young queer Christians and non-Christians alike may empathise, find a sense of comfort, or become motivated to share this story or contribute to the project with the addition of their own stories.
References
Canva. (n.d.) Design School. https://designschool.canva.com/
Felvégi, E. & Matthew, K.I. (2012). eBooks and literacy in K-12 schools. Computers in the Schools, 29(1-2), 40-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/07380569.2012.651421
Human Library Australia. (n.d.). About. https://www.humanlibraryaus.org/about
It Gets Better. (n.d.). About. https://itgetsbetter.org/about/
Jones, R. H. (2015). Generic intertextuality in online social activism: The case of the It Gets Better project. Language in Society, 44(3), 317-399. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404515000214
Merritt, J. (2017, January 4). One problem with Kim Burrell’s ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ argument. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/04/kim-burrell-hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner/96158416/
Miller, C. H. (2019). Digital storytelling 4e: A creator’s guide to interactive entertainment. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
The Human Library. (n.d.). About. https://humanlibrary.org/about/