What is the purpose of your storytelling creation?
Like the Collection and Curation stages, it is important to understand the purpose of your project before embarking on creating an output from a story or collection of stories. This might differ or have changed from the Collection and Curation stages. For example, you may have originally collected stories to create a bank of stories for your local area (Collection + Creation). However, you have decided to use only three of these carefully curated stories to organise an exhibition in your community centre. The purpose of your storytelling creation may also be determined by a particular context, such as a theme or current issue. For instance, you may be celebrating local supernatural folklore as part of a Halloween event or sharing the life of a historic figure on an important anniversary.
You may also be driven to share stories in a different format to how they have been presented or celebrated previously. For instance, transforming written historical stories into artistic pieces to communicate and engage people in a different way.
Questions to answer
- What is the purpose of your storytelling creation?
- What are the influencers/ drivers for this creation?
- What format will your storytelling creation take?
Is your storytelling creation conscious of the people this story relates to?
As you start to consider the purpose of your storytelling creation, what drives it and what it may look like, it is helpful to reflect on how closely the creation will reflect the community of people it originates from or represents. Dependent on the creative output, this may be more or less obvious and considering how important people are to your end output can be helpful in evaluating its appeal and relevancy.
At this stage, you may want to explore the value of co-creation for your project to help you understand the perspectives of a local community, their values and culture.
Co-creation
A collaborative approach to creating knowledge, art, plans, solutions that is meaningful and useful to all the involved and affected by the process or the creation. It goes back to the principle of co-collection, explored at the Collection stage, where a partnership and mutual benefit approach is seen as necessary for just and ethical practice.
Read more about co-creation:
Questions to answer
- Does the story(ies) you have chosen relate to people
- Will your creation portray the people appropriately?
- Will it take into account any social sensitivities, applicable to the story (race, gender, class, historical role etc)?
- Can your creation provoke any controversy or challenge any societal norms? Should it? Is this an appropriate way of doing so?
Is your creation conscious of the place this story relates to?
Representing place through storytelling can emerge in a variety of ways and be determined by creative methodologies and approaches. While there is no rule on how to represent place it may be important to consider how your intended output relates to place, and whether it achieves the objectives of representing a place as the project intended.
Questions to answer
- Will place and the landscape play a key role in the creation? Is it important?
- Will the storytelling creation reflect or portray the landscape appropriately?
- Do the stories portray the landscape in a way that is aligned with the sense of place? (Unique, distinctive, mythical; empty space vs community)?
Sense of place
Sense of place is defined as the emotional connections and attachments individuals form with specific locations and environments, ranging from homes to nations:
Each person will have certain attributes of a place that shape their sense of place, which can be physical (landscapes, natural heritage, built environment) or social (sense of community, prosperity, safety), or anywhere in between. Read pages 14-16 in the report, for an example:
At this stage, you may want to explore the value of co-creation for your project to help you understand how people relate to place and its unique qualities.