Customized Program Development

In addition to our workshops for members of the general public and educators, the Center offers end-to-end planning, teaching, post-production, distribution, and follow-up services for groups interested in developing their own small, medium, or large-scale digital storytelling efforts.

Rather than simply replicating our Standard Workshop curriculum within specific community or institutional environments, we work closely with partners to determine what methods and approaches will best suit their goals. Questions about desired story themes, participant languages and literacies, available technology resources, and plans for story sharing closely inform this custom program development process.

We match staff member(s) with clients based on program objectives and issues being explored. As a group, our staff has well over 75 years’ worth of collective experience in teaching, marketing/communications, and program planning, development, and evaluation within a wide range of sectors, including health and social services, K-12/adult education, visual and performing arts, broadcast media production, youth empowerment and organizing, community development, substance abuse and trauma intervention, international health and human rights, and much more.

The process of customized program development involves:

Needs Analysis. We talk at length with partners about the context of their work, what activities they are interested in, available resources, and desired outcomes. Some may wish to host a single customized workshop; others are aiming to build capacity to ongoing digital storytelling within their organization or network. We help build a vision for what will be both meaningful and realistic, based on a continuum of transformative possibilities:

Personal Reflection and Growth. While change is an inevitable part of being human, people often lack opportunities to share and bear witness to their own struggles and joys and to those of others. Digital storytelling workshops offer a safe, supportive environment in which participants of all ages and from all walks of life can explore their histories and reflect on how they got to where they are.

Education and Awareness. Amidst the madness of mainstream media, digital stories stand out for their directness of emotional expression and voice. While facts, timelines, and third-person perspectives by “experts” are important in describing an issue or problem, a digital story helps bring to life the reality of individual experience. Stories are invaluable as educational, training, and awareness-raising tools across multiple sectors and disciplines.

Community and Movement Building. Social action begins with individual action, as people identify similarities between their own lives and the lives of others. Digital storytelling workshops afford great opportunity to examine experiences and issues across chasms of difference – be it cultural, linguistic, political, racial, gendered, age-related, etc. Subsequent story screening events, when carefully planned and facilitated, have the potential to generate deep and strategic discussion and mobilize civic action.

Policy Advocacy. In an ideal world, people’s concerns and needs would form the basis for public policy debates. Unfortunately, abstract data and special interests all too often dominate. Digital stories can bring the voices of those who are typically overlooked (the poor, immigrants, the elderly, youth, and members of other marginalized communities) into the policy arena.

Research and Evaluation. Whether in an academic or community context, digital storytelling methods can be used to explore people’s understanding of particular issues, assess local needs, or evaluate whether or not these needs are being met. Workshops enable community members to document problems and pinpoint strengths and resources within local areas. Digital stories serve as valuable evidence of community-based work.

Program Planning. Once a framework for a program has been established, we work with partners to create appropriate proposals, work plans, staffing, and timelines. Our breadth of experience enables us to anticipate and address potential challenges and assist with researching, writing about, and pitching comprehensive customized programs for both producing and sharing stories.

Curriculum Development. With our commitment to personal story, group process, and participatory production methods in mind, we work with partners to identify strategies for building a range of valuable methods into the planned digital storytelling workshop(s)/training(s), such as community photography/Photovoice; leadership development training; health, media literacy, or political education; traditional documentary film methods; tactile art making (i.e., drawing and painting); music production; or advanced technology/production training.

Implementation. We have capacity and experience within our Center for carrying out a wide range of program components. Not only do we lead workshops, train trainers, and produce story compilations; we also develop education/training materials to accompany stories, organize and facilitate community screenings and dialogue sessions, document and publicize project accomplishments, and conduct qualitative evaluation research to determine outcomes.

Follow up. We believe in sustaining relationships with our partners over time. This means that we stay in touch once a program has been carried out, to keep up to date with how it has impacted both storytellers and story viewers. Some of our client relationships are short term, involving single workshops; others have lasted for years and have included multiple workshops, facilitator trainings, and materials development activities. We do our best to network likeminded groups with each other and function as a hub of information and resources about digital storytelling around the world.

For more information about Customized Program Development, please email info@storycenter.org or contact our main office at 510-548-2065.