publications – Page 2 – Antonia Liguori / Participatory Storytelling

New publication: Co-designing a Digital Storytelling Toolkit to Improve Youth Mental Wellbeing

Grateful and delighted to have contributed a chapter on co-designing a digital storytelling toolkit for personal and collective wellbeing to this very interesting new volume on museum education edited by Prof Antonella Poce (Università di Roma Tor Vergata).

Please, read the abstract below.

Social interaction between peers is an essential factor in the development of an inclusive practice within formal and non-formal Education, aiming at increasing individual and collective well-being. Starting from this premise, Digital Storytelling was identified as the core methodology of this research, considering the key values of its original model and its flexibility as a participatory practice that enhances creativity and collaboration in a context in which mutual learning and peer support are prioritised. Considering the ongoing global challenge of funding mental health services, there is fertile ground for innovation, especially in the area of creative, online approaches to mental health literacy and healthy relationships among young people.
This paper explores the potential of applying participatory approaches, co-design techniques and digital storytelling as mixed methods to support youth mental well-being.

Please, cite as: Liguori, A., Co-designing a Digital Storytelling Toolkit to Improve Youth Mental Wellbeing, in Poce, A. (ed) Empirical Studies in Museum Education 3, E.S.I. – Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, pp.143-160, ISBN: 978-88-495-5277-5.

New Publication: Amplifying Community Voices for Sustainable Climate Adaptation

Springer book cover Handbook global social problems

Delighted to see our work on Amplifying Community Voices for Sustainable Climate Adaptation. Future Yetu: A Digital Storytelling Project in the Nairobi Slum of Korogocho published on The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems.
Always wonderful to work with the amazing artist and activist Daniel Onyango and the brilliant landscape architect Pia Jonsson! And this time we were also joined by Humphrey Otieno, whose mission is to involve communities in informing and improving policies in Nairobi.

Please, read our abstract here.

There is increasing awareness of how crucial is developing participatory approaches that could effectively dismantle knowledge hierarchies and facilitate conversations across various sectors of the society in environmental decision-making (Konisky and Beierle, Soc Nat Resour 14(9):815–826, 2001). Digital storytelling and other creative approaches can assist individuals to overcome barriers to participation (Liguori et al., Front Environ Sci 8:589856, 2021) as well as having a collective function in building a sense of community (McEwen et al., Reweaving urban water-community relations: creative, participatory river ‘daylighting’ and local hydrocitizenship. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2020). Nevertheless, storytelling is often applied as a small-group workshop activity, that can rarely produce large-scale impact beyond the community in which it is applied, and often reveals its limitations in the replicability of the creative process without the presence of an expert facilitator. The Future Yetu project is described and analyzed as a case study to provide new insights on how to co-design creative approaches and tools that can facilitate meaningful participation, amplify community voices, promote alternative livelihood initiatives, and influence policymaking for sustainable climate adaptation. A set of recommendations on how to expand knowledge exchange opportunities between residents and policymakers are shared as a way of inspiring other communities that have similar environmental issues, with the necessary acknowledgment and deep consideration of local challenges and opportunities. In fact, one of the key lessons learned through this project is that community engagement around issues related to climate change must be tailored to local needs and imply the involvement of committed stakeholders at a very early stage. By analyzing a co-creative, 4-step process based on issue-idea-solution-implementation, this chapter offers insights on new creative and democratic ways of working with not only “hard to reach” groups, but also “hard to engage” community members, based on dialogue and social capital.

Continue reading our chapter online.

New publication: Participatory Action Research in Digital Storytelling: Using Mobile Technology to Co-Create Social Change in Kenya

A real privilege to be part of this fascinating book on Co-teaching/co-research in contexts of inequality

This chapter reflects on the outcomes of an ongoing transnational partnership between Hope Raisers, a youth-led NGO based in Korogocho slum in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Storytelling Academy at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom (UK). A group of researchers and artists explore the value of digital storytelling as a tool for participatory action research (PAR) through an exploration of the challenges and opportunities of applying this tool to facilitate online and face-to-face conversations.

The focus is around issues of global interest from a local and personal perspective. A number of case studies are discussed to demonstrate the impact of a digital storytelling mobile lab, via PAR, on a group of stakeholders including community members, Nairobi-based artists and UK-based researchers. The case studies recount the processes of exploring hybrid forms of storytelling (digital and performative) to co-design a public event focused on waste management and to develop community-led solutions to the design of urban spaces. The methodological, social and cultural challenges faced while applying PAR approaches to facilitate the digital storytelling process are addressed.

There is critical reflection on the ways in which workshop participants and other storytellers were supported in shared, collaborative and asynchronous projects from different, non-traditional learning locations. Through this, it is demonstrated that, while PAR approaches promote social justice, there are a number of ethical dilemmas to tackle and protocols to develop. In this way the authors share different ways of applying a culturally appropriate and practical PAR approach to address societal issues and create social change.

This chapter is part of the fascinating book Co-teaching/co-research in contexts of inequality: Using networked learning to connect Africa and the world available open access via this link.

New Publication: Exploring the uses of arts-led community spaces to build resilience

Read our latest publication exploring applied storytelling as both individual and social practice.

In a time of many extremes — climate, pandemic, isolation — there is strength in community linkages that can provide resilience through arts-generated connections. The artsled recovery approach to communities suffering extreme events and social isolation offers the capacity to use applied storytelling as both individual and social practice, and to generate creative contributions to social change. This paper will explore the extent to which, in bringing people together, the arts can create spaces that are open and conducive to real dialogue and engagement, developing resilience with wider applications.

Monkivitch (EO of Creative Recovery Network) talks of listening to the ecology of voices, advocating for the voice of the artist to be central to government recoveries from extreme events. The intent of looking at co-creative systems or ecologies is to explore beyond disciplinary boundaries and articulate a social purpose both for the artists and the community involved in the curation. The creative arts process, in extreme events contexts, offers engagement with and empowerment of the community to develop and sustain resilience and adaptability. In this paper, a team of artists and academics with expertise in community participation, applied storytelling, socially-engaged arts and water risk management, will reflect on a variety of approaches to co-create arts-led community spaces.

Two case studies are described to explore collaboration and co-production between creative artists and their communities as a participatory process to develop emotional resilience.

The UK-based case study, ‘The Reasons in the Fens’, brought together diverse members of the community to develop and share personal stories and to work with a songwriter to compose a community song about the impact of the flood drought nexus in their region leading to developed empathy for diversities of views. The Australian case-study, the digital Regional Arts Park in Victoria, enabled co-curation using a creative ecosystem design which related strongly to storytelling for resilience. Both case studies offer opportunities to reflect on how a creative ecosystem provides a framework for exploring the disruptive role of the cultural sector in space/place resilience-building. The ongoing purpose of a creative ecosystem, as described in this paper, is in fact to strengthen creative organizations and individuals, which will develop a complex system ‘involving a multitude of people, institutions and places. To flourish, they require access to a suite of interconnected resources and capabilities’ (Creative Victoria (2016). Creative State 2016–2020, p. 19. https://creative.vic.gov.au/data/assets/pdf_file/0007/54349/creativestate.pdf). The requirement is for the cultural, creative, social and commercial parts of this ecosystem to have meaningful interactions. This creative ecosystem potentially leads to a dynamic model with a vibrant or creative interplay between cultural values and stories. As Hartley and Potts (2014). Cultural Science: The Natural History of Stories, Demes, Knowledge and Innovation. London: Bloomsbury, p. 70) indicate, ‘culture is the “survival vehicle” for groups (and) stories are the survival vehicle for culture’.

Please, read the full paper open access on the publisher website.

Citation: Liguori, A, Rossignol, KL, Kraus, S, McEwen, L, Wilson, M (2023) Exploring the uses of arts-led community spaces to build resilience: Applied storytelling for successful co-creative work, Journal of Extreme Events, 8(4), 2250007, ISSN: 2345-7376. DOI: 10.1142/S2345737622500075.