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(Tacchi, Jo A. (2009) Finding a voice : digital storytelling as participatory development in Southeast Asia. In: Hartley, John and McWilliam, Kelly, (eds.) Story circle : digital storytelling around the world. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.)

This case study looks at the use of digital story-telling in a research project called ‘Finding a voice’ which is a ‘local participatory content creation’ experiment which seeks to empower people in India, Nepal, Shri Lanka and Indonesia to ‘communicate their voices within and beyond marginalised communities and to influence the decisions which affect their lives.

The study concludes that digital story-telling can promote:

• advocacy on behalf of a marginalised or voiceless group;
• positive messages about excluded or discriminated groups;
• messages that promote good health related behaviours
• digital literacy among disadvantaged communities
• use of media to ‘highlight social issues or demonstrate how one might challenge adversity, often through the device of providing an inspirational example’

Relevance to the Project:

• the project also has ‘marginalised’ people as its target group (immigrants or refugees)
• one of our learning outcomes is to ‘develop their ( i.e. the teachers’) awareness of social/cultural/ethical issues from the refugee/immigrant perspective
• another outcome speaks of the target learners being able to express themselves and articulate their experiences

Elements of design leading to success:

• importance was attached to training of teachers (That could be part of our design)
• context has to be taken into account when deciding on content and technology (this is perhaps fairly obvious)
• when the project ran in ICT centres which had previously concentrated on basic computer skills, the use of creative and expressive skills in digital story-telling was seen as career-enhancing. (I think the message for us here is that digital story-telling might be a more motivating way of teaching digital literacy. Digital literacy is not one of our expressed aims I admit)
• strategies for distribution need to be considered;some digital stories were screened locally (I’m not quite sure what is meant by ‘screened’ but we might consider whether our design should build in how the story might reach a wider audience)

Barriers to success:

• access to ICT was variable (so our design needs to address this issue)
• not adapting the cultural context to local need (keeping our personas in mind should help us avoid this)