Similar to the Collection stage, it is worth revisiting the following questions during the Curation process, to help decide which stories get stored and how, should they be edited and how, and subsequently should they be told.
Whose stories are these?
At the Curation stage, you likely have a collection of stories that may have been sourced from different places. These may include community voices, archive materials, digital resources and stories sourced from printed resources (such as books). It is likely that your collection of stories represents a range of voices and perspectives, and it is useful to consider who these stories belong to and how this may impact curation.
Questions to answer
- Who owns the story (it doesn’t have to be a named individual)?
- Who tells the story? Are they telling it on someone’s behalf? Does it mean they own it?
- Who is the subject of the story? Does it mean they own it?
- Do you need to seek permission from the owner to store and (re)tell the story?
Whose voice(s) does your story collection represent?
In addition to considering who owns stories, it is important to consider who is represented in your collection of stories. The Curation stage is an opportunity to explore how many voices are important for you to include and to make editorial decisions about whose voices are included and whose voices may be left out.
As discussed in the Collection stage, place-based stories are intrinsically connected to local people and communities. Representation of voices is often important, not only to ensure diversity and inclusion, but to also enable different stories and perspectives to be heard. From a curation perspective, the inclusion of different voices may also help you to appeal to a wider audience and develop a richer, unique narrative for your project.
Questions to answer
- Does the story represent a range of voices, or one voice in particular (gender, age, class etc)?
- Does it need to be edited to have wider representation? Is it appropriate?
- Are the selected stories still representative of the affected community or landscape?
- Is the selection appropriate and balanced? (E.g. positive stories and negative stories).
Are you changing the voice?
To meet the purpose of your project, you may decide to make edits to some, or all, of the stories that form your collection. This decision may be made to appeal to a certain audience (for instance, shortening stories for a younger audience) or to fit a particular format (for instance, you may develop written stories into an audio format). If you decide that editing the story is appropriate, it is advisable to check whether the edits affect the original voice and the implications of this.
Questions to answer
- Will the positionality of the story change?
- Will the meaning of the story change?
- Is it still clear whose voice is telling the story? (e.g. if the original story was told from a female position, is it still clear that a woman is telling this story?) Is this important?
- Should the edited story preserve the original dialect or language?
- Will it still be clear where the story takes place (landscape)?