Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community / Edition 4

by Joe Lambert

Overview

Listen deeply. Tell stories. This is the mantra of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) in Berkeley California, which, since 1998 has worked with nearly 1,000 organizations around the world and trained more than 15,000 people in the art of digital storytelling.

In this revised and updated edition of the CDS's popular guide to digital storytelling, co-founder Joe Lambert details the history and methods of digital storytelling practices. Using a "7 Steps" approach, Lambert helps storytellers identify the fundamentals of dynamic digital storytelling—from seeing the story, assembling it, and sharing it. As in the last edition, readers of the fourth edition will also find new explorations of the applications of digital storytelling and updated appendices that provide resources for budding digital storytellers, including information about past and present CDS-affiliated projects and place-based storytelling, a narrative-based approach to understanding experience and landscape. A companion website further brings the entire storytelling process to life.

Over the years, the CDS's work has transformed the way that community activists, educators, health and human services agencies, business professionals, and artists think about story, media, culture, and the power of personal voice in creating change. For those who yearn to tell multimedia stories, Digital Storytelling is the place to begin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415627030
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/12/2012
Series:	Digital Imaging and Computer Vision Series
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Joe founded the Center for Digital Storytelling (formerly the San Francisco Digital Media Center) in 1994, with wife Nina Mullen and colleague Dana Atchley. Together they developed a unique computer training and arts program that today is known as the Standard Digital Storytelling Workshop. This process grew out of Joe's long running collaboration with Dana on the solo theatrical multimedia work, Next Exit. Since then, Joe has traveled the world to spread the practice of digital storytelling and has authored and produced curricula in many contexts, including the Digital Storytelling Cookbook, the principle manual for the workshop process, and Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community.

Born and raised in Texas, Joe has been active in the Bay Area arts community for the last twenty-five years as an arts activist, producer, administrator, teacher, writer, and director. In 1986, he co-founded Life On The Water, a successful non-profit production company that offered a broad array of programs serving San Francisco's diverse communities. Joe has produced over 500 shows, ranging from theatrical runs, single performances, special events, citywide festivals, subscriptionseries, conferences, and digital story screenings. Prior to his career in the arts, Joe was trained as a community organizer and assisted in numerous local, statewide, and national public policy campaigns on issues of social justice and economic equity. He has a B.A. in Theater and Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The Work of Story 2. Stories in Our Lives Interlude 1: The Legacy of Tanya 3. A Road Traveled: The Evolution of the Digital Storytelling Process 4. The World of Digital Storytelling Interlude 2: Wynn's Story 5. The Seven Steps of Digital Storytelling 6. The Story Circle: Facilitating the Digital Storytelling Workshop Interlude 3: Elizabeth's Story 7. Approaches to Scripting Prompts and Processes 8. Storyboarding Interlude 4: Ray's Story 9. Designing in Digital: Working with Digital Imagin, Audio, and Video 10. Distribution, Ethics, and the Politics of Engagement Interlude 5: Zahid's Story 11. Applications of Digital Storytelling 12. When Silence Speaks – A Conversation with Amy Hill 13. Stories from Fishing Lake, Alberta – A Conversation with Yvonne Pratt 14. Humanizing Healthcare: A Conversation with Pip Hardy & Tony Sumner 15. Digital Storytelling in Higher Education – A Conversation with William Shewbridge, Liv Gjestvang, Walt Jacobs, and Cheryl Diermyer Addendum: Silence Speaks Digital Storytelling: Guidelines for Ethical Practice by Amy Hill and Lucy Harding Appendix: Digital Storyteller's Bill of Rights Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"Our innermost and deepest stories often lie buried inside of us. Digital Storytelling is an artistic and technical guide to learning how to find those stories and tell them in the digital age. Hundreds of my students have used this deeply beautiful book to guide their own search and then assist community storytellers in creating stories of their own." -Nina Shapiro-Perl, American University

"Digital Storytelling is not your typical text for writing courses—it is a truly engaging history about storytelling that helps students connect to why we even tell stories. Storytelling is an art, and Lambert’s text reflects this. I enjoy using Digital Storytelling to not only teach my students how to become comfortable with telling stories, but to also inspire me on how I approach my storytelling instruction.

The text covers the essential elements of storytelling via a storytelling circle that creates a safe environment for the most timid of students to participate in class. There are also plenty of astute examples and references for the students. For a book that averages about 200 pages, this is quite a feat. My students tell me this is a text they enjoy reading and applying the techniques the text offers them in order to help them craft stories with a enhanced sense of creativity and a can-do spirit. This is one of a small collection of texts that students typically do not sell back, instead they share and re-read their text when they need to rejuvenate future stories—some of which have gone on to win awards or shaped capstone texts and films at UHCL.

This text is a must for any storytelling course. Your students will thank you for making this their primary text for your course. This new edition updates some of the content to ensure the text remains contextually relevant to the field of storytelling and its related topics in the dynamic academic landscape of digital media communication.

Since 2002, Lambert has paid attention to our field and I now consider Lambert a formative researcher and instructor whose text is the go-to text to use when one wants to instruct an engaging course that promotes storytelling in a proactive and humanist manner. Additionally, students take note that the text has been in print since before the advent of digital media and has adapted to remain a text that stays true to the essential aspects of excellent storytelling instruction. Just read the interviews and examples and you will be hooked!" -Debra E. Menconi Clark, University of Houston Clear Lake

From the Publisher