Norway digital storytelling workshop

In order to refine and agree Common Good First’s thinking on digital storytelling (DS), project partners from Glasgow Caledonian University and Rhodes University travelled to Porsgrunn in Southern Norway to spend several days at a workshop with their colleagues from the University College of Southeast Norway.

During our first afternoon, on a beautiful sunny day, our colleague, Inger-Kjersti Lindvig very generously invited us to her home so that we could work on the documentation for this work package – a glossary of digital storytelling and our literature review.

Our next few days were spent on campus where we focused primarily on the uses and impact of digital storytelling in higher education and within the wider community, as well as how these might be adapted for use in Common Good First. To help this discussion along, we were joined by one of Europe’s pre-eminent experts in digital storytelling, Professor Grete Jamissen.  We spent most of our first morning with Professor Jamissen, where she shared insights from her new book on Digital Storytelling in Higher Education, to which Inger-Kjersti also contributed.

We then heard from Dr Sharli Paphitis from Rhodes Unversity about the early-stage pilot she led there for Common Good First.  This give us some very clear pointers about the direction we might take on CGF, as well as possible structures for the delivery teams.

Our session on campus ended with a wide-ranging debate about tools and processes for digital storytelling, with input from USN’s Bjaerne Naerum, an expert on technology.

One of the key learnings from our time in Norway came from Professor Jamissen where she encouraged us to view digital-storytelling as eminently adaptable. If you hold onto the important values for your project – and make them non-negotiable – you can flex the model as you need to.

Our Norwegian hosts made the visit one to remember and we left re-energised about digital storytelling and how we can use it for Common Good First.