The urgency for narrative through digital storytelling
Digital stories are short personally narrated multimedia productions. The process of creating a digital story opens paths of dialog through varied avenues of creative response around issues that are often marginalized or concerns that often remain silent. The telling of stories is enriched through practices in critical reflection, creative self-expression and collaboration. The voice of the storyteller is central to the digital narrative yet utilizes still and moving images to add a visual accompaniment to the spoken word. 29 In her work with undocumented migrants in Ireland, Darcy Alexandra worked to open up personal narratives of people whose lived experience had been silenced through the condition of their political and economic status. Alexandra's goal was to explore within the cultural context of contemporary Ireland how migrants define, make meaning and represent their own stories of migration and how the visual arts might serve as a medium of inquiry and practice. 30
Alexandra makes reference to the idea of a free space as developed by Michelle Fine in her work with marginalized youth in the United States. Fine developed the notion of the free space as a space in which people educate themselves beyond the borders of schooling. They come together to "critique what is, shelter themselves from what has been, redesign what might be and/or imagine what could be". 31 Alexandra facilitated a free space as a community of practice to serve as an alternative site for migrant generated discourse in the format of a storytelling workshop. In association with the theme of this unit, the free space community was an 'invisible city'. There those alienated from public spaces "entered public spaces on their own terms to problematize experiences of workplace exploitation, race-based discrimination and intense feelings of fear, isolation and grief." The free space digital workshops followed a highly interactive process as participants reflected individually and collectively on their experiences of migration, engaging in dialog with each other about their words, images, narrative flow and filmic transitions. Ultimately they combined spoken word with creative writing, recorded voice and images in three-minute digital productions conceived, edited and screened that narrated and represented their diverse realities as migrants. 32 The author contends that a dialectic approach to storytelling is purposefully different than testimonial performances typical afforded migrants in response to public policy on migration issues. Activities of storytelling that engage processes of remembering, meaning making and the re-constituting of lived experiences through the creation of a digital story address the multi-layered phenomena of migration and respond to the urgency for narrative. Thus investigative methods to storytelling allow the intellectual freedom to creatively engage one's experiences on one's own terms. 33
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