Sunday, April 10, 2005

Indigenous Digital Storytelling Project

Riverina TAFE Indigenous Digital Storytelling WorkshopPart of the reason for being in Deniliquin was to run a couple of storytelling workshops at the request of the local Aboriginal community. In cooperation with the Riverina TAFE and Jennifer Edwards, Head Teacher IT, they are running a Digital Storytelling course. There's little point in publishing stories in either hard copy or digital format if they aren't interesting or entertaining so that's where I came in.

It was an interesting time to be in Deniliquin because, in between the two storytelling workshops, an Indigenous Place Names seminar was held. This was start of the process of getting local Wamba Wamba names on maps and road signs along side the current non-indigenous ones.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the Digital Storytelling workshops. I suspect they are happening at an important time. Some will be personal 'day in the life' stories. Some will be traditional stories in both Wamba and English text and local illustrations. We had a good time yarning, playing storytelling games and activities and getting people's stories into the computers. We've brought home a dictionary of Wamba Wamba words so, next time we're down there we won't go swimming in the Edward River, we'll be in the Kolety.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The work you are doing sounds amazing. I have always been fascinated by the Australian Aboriginal culture. Are you planning on posting the stories?

Mark

Austories said...

Hi Mark,
yes I really enjoy the work. I was just down in Wamba Wamba country again last week and sat in on the groups digital storytelling session one evening at the local TAFE college. Their stories are coming along well. Of course different people have different computer experience so they are taking their time with regard to publishing. I'll check with the group and see if they would like to have some feedback from the universe. Where are you from by the way?
Regards
Daryll

Anonymous said...

Daryll,

I live in Muncie, Indiana in the USA. I am a Canadian working here and doing a Masters degree in Digital Storytelling. Here is a link to my program.

http://www.bsu.edu/cim/storytelling/

I found your site will searching on technorati.com for digital storytelling blogs.

Mark