What is the purpose of your story collection?
If you completed the Collection stage of this toolkit, you would have considered the purpose of collecting stories. At this stage, we would encourage you to remind yourself of this purpose and to consider whether it is still the same or may have changed through the collection process. For instance, new stories or perspectives sometimes emerge through collection that can shape how you think about the overall narrative or impact of your collection, and future outputs.
If you have skipped ahead to this stage, and already have a collection of stories, we would encourage you to think about the purpose of your story collection. To help with this, you may want to consider what is driving the project, its intended output, audience and what the desired impact is likely to be.
Questions to answer
- What is the purpose of your story collection? (is it the same as when you first collected the stories, has it changed?)
Is the story of the right quality for the purpose?
There is no hard and fast rule to assess the quality of a story. However, it is worthwhile considering whether your story collection has the right attributes for your purpose.
This depends on the audience. For example, the way in which a story is told or used with school children will be different from an adult audience. Quality can presuppose accuracy and authenticity in many cases, and this is important in storytelling and curation in many contexts (particularly when the story is based in fact or reality, about real people who lived, or events that happened).
However, in other stories (such as a legends or folklore) the sources may not provide an accurate account, and the story can be particularly fascinating because of the gaps, the lack of evidence, or the modes by which the tale has been handed down through the generations (e.g. through oral history traditions). At this stage it is worth revisiting the questions asked in the Collection stage to determine whether the stories you have collected fit your desired purpose and output.
Questions to answer
- Is the story long or short?
- Is it dark, serious, funny, emotional etc?
- Is it fictional or factual?
- Is it contemporary or historic?
- Does it involve people, landscape, animals, mystical elements, children etc?
- Does it have a meaning?
- Does it address or highlight any important issues?
- Are these attributes appropriate for the purpose of your story collection?
- What changes might be needed to suit your purpose?
Is your story collection conscious of the people it relates to?
It is likely that your story collection represents, in some form, the lives, histories and heritage of people. Stories enable connections to be made both with place and viscerally through empathy or understanding of people at a certain point in time. Assessing how conscious your story collection is of the people it represents can help you to curate your collection in a way that fits your purpose and identifies the voices and perspectives that are at the heart of your project.
Questions to answer
- Who are the main characters of the collection?
- Are these characters representative of or relevant to the locality?
- If fictional, does the story allude to certain people or characters in real life (historical or current)?
- Is it binary (good vs bad, person/character/type is good or bad)? Is this appropriate?
- Will anyone be offended by this story?
- Does it relate to people who are still alive and potentially affected?
- Does it relate to people who are dead?
- Does the story ‘valorise’ a controversial character, who may have done harm to a certain group or population?
- Does the story emphasise the role of one group or population over another? Is this appropriate and accurate? (e.g. men and women; rich and poor).
- As a curator, are you the right person to answer these questions? Who needs to be involved in the decision-making?
Is the story conscious of the place it relates to?
While it may seem inevitable that stories from a place will represent a place, as you curate your story collection you may want to consider together with others what the important qualities of place are and how these are communicated.
Questions to answer
- Where is the story situated?
- Do the place and the landscape play a key role in the narrative?
- Does it reflect or portray the landscape appropriately? For example, if the story is about a neighbourhood that is being called ‘slums’, is this appropriate from the point of view of the people who still live there; or if a place is referred to as wilderness, empty, rugged – does it sit well with people who live there?
- Does the story 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:
Who is listening?
Before starting the process of curation, it is important to consider who your intended audience is likely to be. The type and scope of audience will have an impact on how you curate stories to appeal to different interests, levels of knowledge, learning styles and accessibility needs. For instance, stories may require additional context for visitors and tourists, or you may need to think about the length and presentation of stories for an adult or child audience.
Questions to answer
- Who is the intended audience for the story collection?
- Will the story collection be appropriate for the audience?
- Should the story collection be curated and stored in different versions for different audiences?
- Are there any accessibility needs or requirements that need to be taken into account?