Content, not mere form, is crucial — Tanya Notley

Tanya Notley <tanya@tacticaltech.org> is at the Skills Building Team at Tactical Technology Collective [http://www.tacticaltech.org]. This is an international NGO that supports human rights advocates use information, communications and digital technologies to maximise the impact of their advocacy work. They provide NGOS and rights advocates with free toolkits based on media production and digital security.

Tanya herself has more than 10 years of experience working with research institutes, international development agencies and community-based organisations in Australia, the UK, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. She has produced training manuals for radio production, digital story-telling and participatory research methods and has delivered many workshops in these areas.

In 2008, Tanya completed her PhD with the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (ici) at Queensland University of Technology. Her PhD thesis examines the different ways young people in Australia are using online networks to participate in society. An interview with ChilliMango’s MJR David.

MJR  DAVID: How  did you get involved in making DST [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_storytelling] in South Asia?

TANYA NOTLEY: In 2004 Daniel Meadows, a UK digital storytelling pioneer, came to Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Australia to train a small team of us to become digital storytelling trainers.

I had just started working at QUT on the ‘Youth Internet Radio Network Project’. As part of that project I then started traveling all over Queensland to deliver digital storytelling workshops to young people.

That experience led me to be involved in two projects in South Asia. In 2005, in Nepal, I trained a group of women working in community media in Nepal. I then trained community media producers from all over South Asia in 2006 at a workshop in India for UNESCO.

Right now I am looking at the way personal stories are being used as a tactic for info-activism in South Asia and elsewhere for Tactical Technology Collective [http://www.tacticaltech.org]. I hope to keep documenting the interesting work that is going on in digital storytelling and supporting it where possible as well.

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Training community media producers to be Digital Storytelling trainers in India
 
MJR  DAVID: For what purposes have communities  been using DST in South Asia? What have been your specific experiences?

TANYA NOTLEY: I am less interested in a really strict definition of digital storytelling — where it is understood to be a two-minute short film produced by one individual in a week long workshop or whatever — than I am in thinking about the process of personal storytelling using digital technologies.

There is a lot of digital media training going on in South Asia that is driven by community needs and that ultimately supports the amplification of local voices.

Some of these personal stories are made using audio, some use video, some are text based and online. So, I think it’s important not to get hooked on the form and the technology and to instead think about process and outcome for the people participating.

For that reason there are three digital storytelling efforts that I would like to mention from South Asia that I am great fan of. They are all people-centred, participatory and have been sustained over some time with the aim of having longer-term social change impacts. They all illustrate very different kinds of digital storytelling:

• Video Volunteers: I like the work this NGO in India because storytelling and video-making are used as tools within communities to collectively identify an injustice and to then to address it. [http://www.videovolunteers.org/]
• Blank Noise:  This Indian-based blog project was started by one young woman and now it allows people from across Asia to tell their personal stories of sexual harassment.  I like this blog because it uses personal stories in a way that is playful and creative and engaging — even though it is actually focused on the very serious topic of sexual harassment. [http://blog.blanknoise.org/]
• Chatting with My Best Friend (Saathi Sanga Man Ka Kura): is a national radio program in Nepal that is played on community and commercial radio stations throughout the country. It is probably less participatory that the prior examples in some ways but I had the pleasure of observing the team who make this program and engaging with its audience for over a period of a month for a research project I worked on. The team were getting hundreds of letters from young people every week that revealed their personal stories, which were often very heart-breaking. The team read and responded to each and every one of these letters and they artfully weave many of these stories into a weekly radio program that is deeply loved by young people all over Nepal.It’s like documentary making — done in particular ways it can be developed around personal stories in a way that is honest, meaningful, respectful and has impact. [http://www.ssmk.org/]

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SSMK (Chatting with my best friend) producer Kripa talks with young students from a blind school in Western Nepal during an SSMK regular field visit

MJR DAVID: Would you like to share a particular DST and the story behind it?

TANYA NOTLEY: The story that really shaped the way I think about digital storytelling training comes from a young woman I trained in Nepal.

During the workshop she decided she wanted to tell a story about what was happening to her: a few weeks earlier her family had told her she was to be married the following day to a boy she had never met. They told her it had all been arranged. She cried and shouted and said she refused. They locked her in the house and screamed at her, hit her and told her if she did not do it they would never speak to her again.

So the wedding went ahead. She told us she was refusing to speak to her new husband, wanted out of the marriage and she was living in complete misery.

Her friends, who were doing the workshop with her, were shocked. They had not known why she had seemed so depressed; it was only the digital storytelling process that had given her the courage to speak out to them.

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Talking with a student at digital storytelling workshop in Queensland

But the more she spoke, the more we listened, the angrier she got and the more determined she that she would have justice. She wanted to broadcast her digital story on the local cable TV station, which had agreed to play our stories.

It was a real conundrum for me because while I wanted to stand beside her, the fact was that I was that would be flying back to the safety of my own home in Australia a week later. And we had not really set up the structures for the workshop to make sure people would be supported and would have a process to go through where they could think about the risks involved in telling their story in a way that revealed their identities.

It was a big learning lesson for me.  I have since refused to be part of any storytelling projects that have not thought these things through carefully and sensitively or expressed the will to do so. I think this sort of thinking remains a big challenge for digital storytelling trainers everywhere.
 
MJR DAVID: Do you think that DST should be circulated free to all or certain restrictions need to be applied?

TANYA NOTLEY: I think what you do with digital stories should be very well thought out and specific to the situation and in the end be dictated by the person who created the story. I don’t think you should make that decision for people but I do think as a trainer you should alway err on the side of caution and make time to talk through risks and options and provide advice based on your knowledge and experience.

You need to develop a process whereby people think about the worst case scenario should their story fall into the wrong hands. And although I am an advocate of Creative Commons [http://www.creativecommons.org] licensing, that does not mean I always think you should use a license your content in a way that allows people to create new things out of what you have made.

It might be best that your content is not re-mixed and taken out of context. It depends.

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At a digital storytelling  workshop with Mrs Minna Brenna [http://www.kgurbanvillage.com.au/sharing/digital/minna.shtm]

I am making it sound complicated though — it’s not really!

You just need a good process to talk through people the risks and their choices in terms of how they may want to make their story to safeguard their privacy and what they want to happen to their story once they have created it.

MJR DAVID: Any practical steps to safeguard storey tellers privacy, and prevent inappropriate exposure ?

TANYA NOTLEY: As above. Have a good process. Think about different ways to tell the same story if it’s sensitive (don’t show the storytellers face, don’t use their voice, use illustrations etc).

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A digital storytelling workshop with women in Nepal.

Get the storyteller to choose a copyright license that is right for them using simple questions. Some useful guidelines for all these kinds of questions and processes can be found on the Witness website: [http://hub.witness.org/en/action/toolkit]

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Water! Water!

“There was water all around but the plantation workers, but they dont have a little clean water to drink.”

PrithiviRaj Pavithran, a community radio broadcaster from Kotmale, explains the story behind his digital story on how the plantation workers are affected by water scarcity and lack of sanitation facility. 

Lets listen to Pavi      

I was producing a programme ‘Open Your Eyes’.  

 As the estate workers were not participating actively myself and colleague Kosala decided to go to them with our tape recorders. 

As we were talking to them, their pressing problems emerged spontaneously. 

Clean drinking water was a luxury foe them.

They had only one toilet there and in the mornings there would be a queue of ten people  waiting to go to the toilet.

While I was recording Kosala took pictures.

Back at the radio station Kosala came up with a suggestion.

What good would that do to the estate workers who are struggleing for a living?

I did not have to remind Kosala that the estate workers did not have computers.  

“Lets handle that later” 

We assembled the still photographs interviews and narration into a digital story.

Digital Story Tellers meet in Bangalore

The Consultation on Digital Story Telling (DST) was organised by IT for Change (www.ITforChange.net) in collaboration with the IKM Emergent Research Programme (http://ikmemergent.wordpress.com/) in Bangalore, India on 5th June 2008. The Consultation was exploratory in nature, aiming to understand the DST space in India. It brought together Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) practitioners from around India along with researchers from India and other regions.

 The Consultation was an exploratory exercise in mapping the landscape of DST, while identifying some fundamental concepts for future research. Discussion also explored how digitally enabled communication processes can contribute to build a bottom-up development discourse for informing development policies and programmes. 

 The Consultation opened with participant introductions and brief descriptions of how DST has been incorporated into grassroots interventions. Participants also shared reasons for their participation, which included learning about DST as a medium, sharing experiences on DST, understanding its place in the development discourse, and exploring possibilities for collaboration amongst DST practitioners. 

The complete report of the DST is available for download from the links below:

DST Consultation Report as Word Document

DST Consultation Report as PDF

 

Who was there in Bangalore?

 

Participant	Organization
Stalin K	Drishti Media Collective, Ahmedabad      Drishti is a leading human rights and development organization that uses media, communications and the arts to strengthen India’s social movements and organizations. Stalin is one of the founders of the Drishti Media Collective. Drishti is a leading human rights and development organisation that uses media, communications and the arts to strengthen India’s social movements and organisations. Stalin is a founder member of the Community Radio Forum of India.  http://www.drishtimedia.org/ stalink123@gmail.com
Sajan Venniyoor	Prasar Bharati, Delhi and community media      Sajan was the Resource Person and Moderator for the ICT for Development Community of Solution Exchange, an UN initiative in India. He writes on broadcast issues, and is a founder-member of the Community Radio Forum, India. He is currently with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.  venniyoor@gmail.com
Deepu	Pedestrian Pictures, Bangalore      Media activist organization, based in Bangalore and working across Karnataka .It works with media to create an understanding of socio- political realities by using different forms of media – as organizing tools Deepu is a film-maker with Pedestrian Pictures, an activist organisation in Bangalore. They produce films and also hold regular screenings. Deepu wanted to explore the potential for collaboration through the Consultation.   pedestrianpictures.wordpress.com pedepics@yahoo.com
Ashish Sen	Voices, Bangalore      VOICES are a development communications NGO based in Bangalore,  concerned with democratisation of the media. Ashsish is the Director of Voices – a development communications NGO based in Bangalore. Voices is concerned with community media for social change, in urban and rural areas. Ashish is one of the founder members of the Community Radio Forum of India. Ashish was interested in pursuing the question – can digital spaces provide an equal opportunity for marginalised groups?  www.voicesindia.org voices@vsnl.com
Geetha Narayanan	Srishti, Bangalore      Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology  provides  art and design education in an environment of creativity and maximizing individual potential srishti.ac.in g_narayanan@srishtiblr.org
Vinod Pavarala	Professor of Communication, University of Hyderabad      Vinod Pavarala is Professor of Communication and Dean, Sarojini Naidu School of Communication, Hyderabad. www.uohyd.ernet.in vpavarala@gmail.com
Shveta Sarada	Sarai, Delhi      Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, (CSDS) a research institute that focus on critically expanding the horizons of the discourse on development, particularly with reference to South Asia. www.sarai.net shveta@sarai.net
Nishant Shah	PhD student, Bangalore      itsnishant@gmail.com
Madhu Bhushan	Vimochana, Bangalore        Madhu is a widely respected womens rights activist. She works with Vimochana, Bangalore. Vimochana is an organization working in the northern area of Karnataka. They work with women and children of scheduled caste community children in the area. Vimochana was started as a response group to violence against women. At the Consultation, Madhu was keen to explore how to use DST and perhaps CR in their work.     vimochana79@gmail.com
Nagina V	Vanangana, Chitrakoot(U.P)      Nagina works with Vanangana, a grassroots development organisation from Uttar Pradesh, India.Vanangana works largely with women and also with  dalits and minorities. Vanangana has been working with the medium of video for years, using it to share the struggles of women from their area.. Vanagana is committed to ensuring the access and exercise of all human rights to grass root women. vanangana@rediffmail.com
Ramesh Kumar Madasu	WASSAN, Secundrabad      Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN) started  as an informal network and works with  women and marginalized sections of the rural India. rkmadas@gmail.com
Anita Gurumurthy	Executive Director of IT for change, that hosted the consultation in partnership with IKM.  Anita Gurumurthy is the founding member and executive director of IT for Change, an NGO located in Bangalore, India. At IT for Change, Anita is currently co-coordinator of a research and advocacy project (Information Society for the South) that looks at imperatives for a South-based information society discourse. She is also co-coordinator of IT for Change’s UNDP and Government of India supported grassroots project, Mahiti Manthana, which uses ICTs to empower women’s collectives.
Ankita Handoo	WSP, Delhi      WSP is associated with IFAD’s strategy in India on improving rural poor people’s access to economic and social resources. Ankita is a knowledge management specialist. She works with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), India. IFAD in India focuses on improving rural poor people’s access to economic and social resources. Ankita was interested in learning how DST can be used in their Knowledge management projects.  www.enrap.org.in Ankita.Handoo@wfp.org
Seema Nair	HIVOS, Bangalore      Hivos is a Dutch non-governmental organisation inspired by humanist values. Seema is the Programme Officer of ICT /Media as well as Gender, Women and Development in HIVOS, India. She has worked in areas of journalism, communication development and action research.  Previously she worked at UNESCO coordinating Community Media and ICT projects in Asia. Seema wanted to see the current benefits of this format, and how it can be effectively used for distribution.   www.hivos.nl seema.n@hivos-india.org
Kailash Baariya	Anandi, Dahod (Gujarat)      Anandi’s endeavours in rural Gujarat have given voice to marginalised women, helping them demolish gender barriers and build more meaningful lives. Kailash is with Anandi. Kailash has been using developmental videos as part of her work with Anandi.   anandi20@hotmail.com
Abdul Rehman Pasha	Independent film maker, Bangalore     Mr. Pasha is an independent film maker who has directed numerous developmental films. He is also a community radio consultant who has has been NGOs set-up community radio programmes. He is a practioner and a trainer.    pasha1950@gmail.com
Chandita Mukherjee	Comet Media, Mumbai      Chandita is a documentary filmmaker working with the Comet Media Foundation. Comet Media works with FOSS, digital media, community representation. Its activities involve creating knowledge artefacts in film and print, distributing knowledge materials, organising workshops and resource festivals.     cometmediafdn@gmail.com
Veena Yamini	Byrraju foundation Veena is a Project Co-ordinator with the Byrraju foundation. The Foundation seeks to build progressive self-reliant rural communities – adopting a holistic approach – by providing services in healthcare, environment, sanitation, primary education, adult literacy and skills development. The Foundation currently works in 200 villages in 6 districts of Andhra Pradesh. yaminiv@byrrajufoundation.org
Radha Ganeshan	QUEST, Bangalore      Quest works with The Education and Employment Alliance (EEA) a initiative spearheaded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Asia and Near East Bureau (USAID/ANE) and the International Youth Foundation (IYF). Radha is a Technical Advisor for Quest Alliance. She has worked on several educational projects using ICT interventions. She has successfully designed and implemented evaluation plans for several educational programmes in the New York state area. She has experience in designing education/training programmes and courses as well as training curriculum using ICT and blended interventions.  radha.ganesan@gmail.com
Smriti Mehra	Srishti, Bangalore  Smriti is a media artist and faculty with the Srishti School of Art and Design. She works with the marginalised in labour and in urban spaces.
GuruMurthy K	ITfC  Gurumurthy is a founding member of ITfC. He is closely associated with the research, advocacy and field projects of the organisation. Guru also works with the Education Management function at the Azim Premji Foundation. Guru has over 15 years experience in management consulting, and information technology.
Roshni Nugehalli	ITfC  Roshni is a research associate with IT for Change. At IT for Change, she is working on research frameworks within the Mahiti Manthana project. She is also involved in a study on telecentre initiatives and their corresponding development models from around the country.
Vinay Sreenivasa	ITfC
Parminder Jeetsingh	ITfC  Parminder worked for nearly a decade in the government, where he initiated innovative e-governance projects. At ITfC, Parminder is the coordinator of a UNDP-funded field project, which aims to bring new ICTs to disadvantaged rural women, and is co-coordinator of ITfC’s research and advocacy project ‘Information Society for the South’. Parminder is a member of the Strategy Council of the UN’s Global Alliance on ICTs and Development, and a Special Advisor to the Chair of the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group of the UN’s Internet Governance Forum.
Danielle Martin	MIT  Danielle is a graduate student in urban planning at MIT, pursuing an internship with Srishti School of Art and Design. She has done DST facilitation in South America, working mostly with youth.
Chinmayi Arakali	ITfC  Chinmayi has been with the Mahiti Manthana project of IT for Change since its start in 2005, working mostly with the video component. In the past three years, she has guided and been part of the video team in Mysore that has produced eleven videos for the rural self-help group women that the project works with.
Aparna Kalley	ITfC  Aparna is a Project Coordinator for the Mahiti Manthana project, IT for Change, working with the radio and video components on the project. As part of her work in Mahiti Manthana, she scripts radio programs, directs and edits films. She has four years of experience in the development sector. Organisations like Samuha and Hengasara Hakkina Sangha in Karnataka, and Timbaktu Collective in Andhra Pradesh have contributed to Aparna’s experience.

Digital Story telling on the hills of Kothmale, Sri Lanka

watching digital stories on the workshop

There were two groups, a bunch of lively boys and girls and seasoned social activist.

They were all gathered at Kotmale Community Radio in the central hills of Sri Lanka to explore digital story telling.

The boys and girls wanted to find out how to make digital stories and the social activist wanted to find out how to use them.

The trainers were the youthful volunteers of Kotmale community radio who had been initially trained by UNESCO and later mastered the technique themselves.

Kotmale's lush green landscape

The Beggin social fund, a village welfare association in a little hamlet of Leeds UK had provided had provided the funds to run a work shop on digital story telling to the Lanka community information initiative and the IKM made use of the opportunity to weave around a discussion on how to use digital story telling as a tool of social communication

The young group came up with three digital stories.

Living with a hole in the heart : A personal experience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duvScIo9RJ4

Jumping over the hurdle: The experience of passing exams http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTToD-u9e5Q

The disadvantages of being a girl – http://www.youtube.com/user/ictlanka

The young ones also decided to form a digital story tellers club. They will be meeting once a week.

The parishioners and activist came up with a plan of action.

A village knowledge bank, a digital story wall for the social sector, a competition for digital story tellers are some of the proposals that came out .

what is on the story board

The Director of the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute came up with a plan for training of trainers to expand the use of video story telling as a means of social expression and adult training.

The two days came to an end with a new understanding on what could be done with this tool ‘Digital Story telling when its trated with sympathy and care with relavence to the context.

Prabath scores the first run

Prabath has been able to come up with a blog that catalogues all his work as well as what others have been doing at Kotmale.

This is the first out come of the IKM workshop held in Kotmale.

Here is the  Digital story collection http://dst.kothmale.org

Its search-able facility and it will be growing in the near future as he and the others at kotmale are planning to hold a series of workshops in the coming months.

“Its not only a archive .it will be a place where digital story tellers will be interacting with each other.

Prabath Neranjana is a innovative young man from the village of Kothmale, He has recently been trained in Nepal and Singapore on Internet radio and Digital story telling.

He is actively involved in farming and spends his spare time in training others at the local Inforamtion technology centre.

Ram wants to continue story banking

Maraa, means Tree, in Kannada, local language of Karnataka, India. that’s the new community media organization that emerged in Bangalore.

Ram Bhat , a young man bulling with ideas and full of energy reflects on the Banglore consultation.

As Ram who participated in the Bangalore consultation says ‘Our main objectives are to reclaim the media scape for community media.’

Reflecting on the Bangalore consultation Ram says that he is interested in the continuation of the ‘Digital story bank project ‘that Ram was involve with the community of Buddhikotte

“Although it was interesting in terms of theoretical explorations, I wasn’t too sure about what the practical outputs were” says Ram.

The impatience of this energetic young man is understandable.

Outlining his plans ram says that Marra has done some research in Hampi, to set up a Community Multimedia Centre, and that they are planning to use Digital Storytelling within the initial phase.

“We plan to use the learning’s from the Story telling project we did with the University of Surrey and use similar formats, i.e. photographs with sync sound” explains Ram.

Who knows Ram and others of Marra could be the biggest Bank (story) in India?

What’s IKM?

Whose Knowledge is Knowledge?

Its an interesting question but the IKM members are not interested in exploring knowledge on these lines as they believe In the multiplicity of knowledge.

The programme is based on the premise that the development sector has not fully appreciated the strategic importance of knowledge to its work.

http://ikmemergent.wordpress.com

The IKM has members all-around the globe and have been drawn from a number of disciplines and backgrounds.

Mike Powell is the Director of the project m.powell@pop3.poptel.org.uk.

The latest updates on the project are available at http://feeds.feedburner.com/euforicikmemergent

Mango is the South Asian Digital Story teller’s corner.