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• 1 2015-09-29T04:59:16-07:00 Making Your Story 10 plain 2015-10-16T07:42:24-07:00 Making Your Story was the second webinar in the Storytelling and Digital-Age Civics series, held on January 16, 2014. Moderator Derek Williams was joined by MAPP team member Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, Dorian Electra (musical artist), Tani Ikeda (imMEDIAte Justice Productions), Roxana Ayala (high school students), Uriel Gonzalez (high school student), Charlene Carruthers (Black Youth Project’s BYP100), Andy Warner (cartoonist), and Lauren Bird (Harry Potter Alliance) to discuss how to decide the best way to give shape to your story.
  
  The participants discussed the following questions during the webinar:
  • Walk us through a story you created. How did you create it? What media did you use?  Why?  Did you have to acquire new skills to achieve it?  Who was your intended audience?
  • What narrative devices and aesthetics did you use to make your story stand out and draw people in? What role does “art” or “craft” play in the construction of a story which you hope will inspire some kind of social change?
  • How do you balance the effort that you put into making your own story and facilitating other people telling their stories?
  • How do digital platforms become part of the making of the story--each platform’s specific affordances and limitations?
  • Do you see barriers to participation in digital media production and who gets to tell the stories that rise to the surface of public awareness?
  • Are there skills you think one needs to tell stories effectively? What are these skills?
  • How do you deal with the challenges of a media environment that seems to consume endless numbers of stories but provide short attention to any given narrative? Is the goal to constantly generate stories or to create stories that have evergreen value?
  • Are there some aspects of your mission that have proven particularly challenging to translate into a compelling media story?
  In this second webinar, the focus shifted from a discussion of the use of story to the question of how to best give shape to stories for civic purposes. The element of story can make concepts that feel extremely abstract more relatable. High school students Roxana Ayala and Uriel Gonzalez spoke of their experience of using GIS maps to explain de facto segregation to fellow students and community members.  According to Roxana and Uriel, “It’s pretty hard to explain to a freshman ‘you’re being segregated.’ It was something so complicated, but when they saw it on a map they saw that it was real.” And these stories can take many forms.  Musical artist Dorian Electra and Tani Ikeda from imMEDIAte Justice Productions shared notes on creating projects that use media as a catalyst to engage youth in “boring” issues like economics and health education. Cartoonist Andy Warner described how he uses story characters to create a call-and-response dynamic with his audience.
  
  Story can be a compelling component of a campaign, and developing stories that resonate is a skill, something that Charlene Carruthers pointed out from her work with the Black Youth Project’s BYP100 particularly when facilitating conversations with people with diverse views. As illustrated above, every individual and group has different strategies to do so. For the Harry Potter Alliance, they have termed one of their strategies “cultural acupuncture.” Lauren Bird from the Harry Potter Alliance explained how it helps her organization create campaigns with wide cultural resonance.
  
  Don’t have time to watch the full webinar? The MAPP team also published highlights from this series on Henry Jenkins’ blog, and key moments from Webinars 1 & 2 and Webinars 3 & 4.
  
  Looking for an overview of the series as a whole? MAPP Project Director Sangita Shresthova also published “Learn to Listen. Really Listen: ‘Storytelling and Digital Age Civics’ Series Artists and Activists Share Seven Key Insights” on Digital IS.