The Storytagging project involved multiple organisations and individuals across the North, to collect, curate and celebrate northern cultural heritage. It included University, public sector organisations and creative practitioners from five different countries including Scottish Highlands and Islands, Northern Ireland, Russia, Sweden and Finland, and was funded by the Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme.  

There were three objectives to this project. To collect and curate stories from across all five countries, to bring these stories to life through creative practice and to create a digital platform to share the project outcomes and increase the market research of creative practitioners. The international focus of the project was a key benefit but also presented challenges in story curation – specifically, how to share stories from multiple regions, languages and dialects in one digital platform, in an accessible way that was sensitive to local communities.  

To address this, the team decided to retain the original language and dialect of all stories to be featured on the website. However, where appropriate stories were also translated into the different languages of the five countries represented. It was also decided that, where possible, stories would be audio recorded in the local dialect of the region they came from. For curatorial purposes resources were created to help with this. For written stories, a template form was created to guide each partner on the formatting requirements of the website. An additional guide was also created to help with the audio guide recording. This was particularly important as recording was taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic and meant that travel was not possible or limited. The guide helped people to record their story at a distance, considering issues like sound quality, speed and length.  

You can view the project website and how stories were curated and displayed on the project website.