• Vicar’s shed for ex-cons – Yorkshire Evening Post – This is one of the stories I recently recorded at a workshop for the Yorkshire and Humber Faiths Forum.
• What does social capital have to do with digital inclusion? : Connected Communities – A chance to participate in this event online. Storytelling is the heart of digital inclusion. The means to tell your story are secondary to knowing what you want your story to say.
• Video tools list for journalists – Jumpcut is closing down. Yahoo bought it about 18 months ago and now they’re pulling the plug as “part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!”. So I went on a search for other sites that offered slideshow and video editing services. None appear to be as versatile as Jumpcut, but there’s a list here if you want to plough through and give them a try. If you find one that suits the digital storytelling process come back here and comment. After a quick browse through the list Movie Masher appears to be best suited.
• 7 Minutes to Reinvent the Internet – The web has turned advertising principles on their head. The money is flowing in new directions and who knows where it will all end up. Seven people look into the not too distant future to suggest how advertising can be reinvented to fit the internet. Whilst these presentations are largely about making money, the lessons about how people use and experience the internet are valuable to all content creators.

This event is this weekend May 16th. There are many storytelling events scattered across the globe – although not many in the UK. I am gathering stories at a digital storytelling workshop in Birmingham for engineers, but it’s not open to the public so it doesn’t qualify as an event for the International Day.

If you want to take part in a passive way why not treat youself to watching a few digital stories on the digistoriesuk YouTube Channel?

To start you off here’s a story from my family …

Riding Lights Roughshod is a professional touring theatre company – created by Riding Lights in 1992 to concentrate on the grass-roots community touring which characterised the early years of Riding Lights itself – which annually reaches a live audience of around 65,000 adults and children. It has been acclaimed from Belfast to Brixton for creating powerful new pieces of theatre.

Their collection sketches in the show Hope Street are compelling and moving. A mixture of traditional storytelling from biblical, classical and North American sources, mixed with the actors personal stories of hope. I’m at the Riding Lights Summer Theatre School in Harrogate.

This  afternoon we introduced our storytelling groups to the plan for the week. Sarah Rundle warmed everyone up and I explained how they will put the digital into storytelling. We haven’t worked together before but I feel good about the partnership. Sarah is a traditional storyteller and with her our group will develop their performance skills. I am running two slightly squeezed digital storytelling workshops so that everyone can experience both styles of story making.