Georgia Evans
Senior Editorial Officer , Europeana Foundation
With our Digital Storytelling Festival taking place in May, we ask the mentors of its Online Creative Residency to finish the sentence: ‘Digital storytelling is…’ Discover their insights!
Digital storytelling is, for me, a dynamic avenue where I combine technology with the charm of the past and the vibrancy of the present. The results are thought provoking stories that resonate with audiences and forge connections across time. I love the way collage art - a storytelling mechanism in itself – always opens up new possibilities for expression and the desire for exploration.
Storytelling is how humans have always connected with each other. Digital storytelling is simply doing what we’ve always done, but using more modern and technological ways of communicating. Storytelling connects one human being to another, passing on knowledge, warnings, messages... The digital part means we can do that with people on the other side of the world, as well as those right beside us. So it’s really exciting - it means we can get to share our stories with so many more people, and learn from everyone, wherever they are.
Digital storytelling is the most ancient and at the same time the most modern tool we have for communicating content; sharing emotions and feelings; and building relationships. It is not about being talented storytellers. It is about believing in the power of stories and their ability to speak in a universal language that transcends diversity and temporal and spatial distances.
Digital storytelling is about using the most advanced digital tools for one of the most ancient methods of humankind - narrating stories. As novel digital technologies enable two-way communication and interaction, storytelling in the digital world is becoming more and more story-doing. We are inviting people not only to listen to our stories, but to create them with digital means and in the digital world.
Digital storytelling is like casting a spell with words. It takes you to amazing places, makes you see paintings in your head, and makes you feel and share all sorts of emotions. A powerful tool that can be used for many different purposes: to teach, to entertain, to inspire, to heal and to change the world.
