Storying community: Re-imagining regional identities through public cultural activity

Abstract

This article is designed to stimulate discussion around a number of related topics. Sceptical that governments, regional or otherwise, are capable of producing regional identities in any other but rhetorical or formulaic terms, it is argued that, in the past decade or so, a number of potentially popular and democratizing tendencies have developed in the wake of new media technologies, but also in different forms of public, community-based cultural activity. Drawing upon models of such activity like the 1993 Chicago Culture in Action project and other examples of a new genre of public art in Manchester and London, together with television-based initiatives, it will be shown how active communities, however tentative and provisional, can be brought into being through interests held in common. On the other hand, new social media are explored for their potential for producing ‘network communities’ in online and offline modes. One prominent and widespread example is digital storytelling, which, at local, regional, national and international levels, has recognized the power of the complex and multiple narratives that shape people’s lives and has harnessed these in ways that bring together narrative, technology and community-building as part of a development strategy, particularly for those alienated or otherwise excluded from access to media. Linked to the focus on digital storytelling will be a brief consideration of citizen media sites and initiatives as a means of possibly helping to open up, legitimate and construct regional identity in a multilayered fashion.

When News Hurts

“…Sharing the stories among a wider audience would foster individual empowerment and stimulate community participation. The empowering potential of digital storytelling as part of a community-building strategy was also recognized by Lambert (2006Lambert ( [2002), the Council of Europe (Lewis, 2008) and Bromley (2010), particularly for those alienated or otherwise excluded from access to media. On his website, project leader Daniel Meadows (2003), described the digital storytelling project Capture Wales at BBC Wales as ''remarkably empowering and, when imagined as a tool of democratized media, it has I think the potential to change the way we engage in our communities.'…”

Seeing and envisioning: camera-based practice, democratic praxis, and socially engaged arts in Toronto

“…As I will discuss in the next chapter, I am principally concerned with three historical moments where questions of labour, popular culture, and political activism meet. Namely: first, the worker film and photography movements that emerged mainly in Europe and North America during the interwar years (the 1920s and 1930s); secondly, the UK community arts movement that developed out of a variety of concerns (though principally feminist and working-class) associated with cultural democracy in the postwar social welfare state; and, finally, the present and recent past where the ubiquity of digital camera technologies has spawned less a movement than a cluster of socially engaged artistic methodologies (such as digital storytelling and photovoice, among other collaborative and participatory methods; for example, see Bromley 2010;Lambert 2009;Wang 1999;Wang and Burris 1997;Ewald 2002).…”

“…For example, while digital story often works with long-standing community or neighbourhood groups, at other times it draws together participants based on other affinities, helping to construct communities in novel ways. The method Emmy briefly described above can and has been deployed with relative uniformity across a number of different sites, both locally in the Greater Toronto Area, as well as at sites across the province and with groups around the country, though other distinct variations are also in use (see Bromley 2010).…”

Interkonnektivitás, új média és digitális identitás a regionális kutatásban. Koncepcionális megközelítés ajánlásokkal

“…IBM 2012). A digitális tör-ténetmesélés elemzései a bonyolultabb narratívákat is feldolgozzák, s ennek komoly szerep jut az online közösségépítésben (Bromley 2010), több társadalmi és üzleti funkcióban is. A többségi társadalom ez alapján válhat el-/befogadóvá (Kapitzke 2000) egy-egy témakörben, egy-egy helyen vagy régióban.…”