Rising Dawn

This small market town is a cyclists’ favourite place to stop off for refreshments. So I’ve stood here many times. It’s the climax of one of my regular rides. There are about 18 miles on the clock as I pull up and sit on one of the benches on the green outside the Co-op.

I make a long phone call from here - business has to go on and so we chat, appropriately, about arrangements for the storytelling course we’re running at the Riding Lights Summer School.

The summer school is one of the reasons I’m doing this ride. Four Palestinian students have been invited to travel here and I hope to help them pay the airfare. A quick look at the help.co.uk/ridingbike website reveals donations have reached £360.00. Gift Aid will bring that total to £458.00. Good progress for the first few days. The momentum has to be maintained for a number of weeks yet.

If you want to donate click here

After a four finger Kit Kat and some grapefruit juice I’m on the return trip.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Speed up, life’s too short
Just as dieting makes you fat, time management courses make you inefficient.

An insight from Lucy Kellaway - a columnist in The FT - I have been known to take issue with her in the past. But this time I think she may be on to something - maybe.

I am in Acton, training curators at the London Transport Museum to run Digital Storytelling Workshops. It involves taking them through a workshop to tell their own stories using personal narrative and photos from their own albums.
Today was a storycircle. That’s how they identify their story. At this stage it doesn’t have to be linked to transport but a surprising number are. A journey across the US by Greyhound, a car in search of purple fluffy dice (yes really), the driving instructors wart (honest) - all have transport links. There’s a story about blue shoes and another about a fondly remembered grandmother whose failing memory still held on to the many verses of the Lady of Shalott.

In the next few days these stories will take on a life of their own as they are turned into short TV films using digital technology - digital stories. In the process everyone will start to understand the skills that inspire others to tell their stories in the context of the transport museum.

Inspire is the key word. Technical skills are simple to master; inspiration is vital if people who may have written nothing more than a wishlist since leaving school are to gain the confidence forge their story into a script.

I love this work - and the stories I’m told in the workshops. What story would you tell? No more that 300 words.

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digital storytelling, travel, media

I have six Mac Mini’s that I use in my digital storytelling workshops. Before each workshop when I update the software to the latest version one thing always impresses me. They are fast. I’m not talking about Intel Core 2 versions. They are three year old Power PC models with 1.42MHz processors.

Of course, they would be relatively slow on a benchmarking test, but they start quickly, open the iLife apps fast and generally get on with the job at a respectable pace. (more…)

I’m at my son’s house in London, staying overnight before a workshop day in the capital tomorrow. The is the fourth workshop day I’ve run as part of the Women’s Interfaith Media Literacy project.
I’ll run two short workshops to experience the storytelling part of digital storytelling while other practitioners pass on their skills in print media, broadcasting, and PR. Previous days have been in Bradford, Leicester, Coventry and now London. No matter where I go, I find that people love telling stories, but many don’t know where to start - or finish!
So I will use my Magic Story Bag to see what secrets it reveals and then teach them how to structure those revelations into a story script. Behind all the best journalism is a good story and the best writing is storytelling. What’s your story?