FRIDAY 29 OCTOBER - Meeting the Digital Storytellers.

As the rest of our group headed back into San Francisco for the visit to the On Lok Center for Chinese Seniors in Chinatown, San Francisco (report to follow), I remained behind in Oakland and, after a short taxi ride, made my way to the University of Berkeley and to the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS), where I had arranged to meet Executive Director Joe Lambert and some of his students.. The Center is based in an unassuming building with a deceptive shop frontage on Martin Luther King Jr Way.


Having had to confirm I was in the right place I entered the Center to find a group of students coming to the end of their storytelling workshop. I was made most welcome and was able to sit in on the final presentations of their digital stories at the culmination of their course. Some of the messages conveyed were extremely powerful and I quickly came to realise that the technology is the means rather than the end in digital storytelling. The power is in the story, not the medium and the students whose work I witnessed had clearly got this message very well. My interest is in how this approach can be used more effectively in the support of older people with increasing frailty and memory loss. Digital stories have the potential to reconnect older people with their lives and their personalities and can greatly enhance dignity and self esteem in advancing old age. The technical skills of young people connected with the rich life stories of their elders is also a powerful force in supporting intergenerational relationships.


Joe Lambert (right) was supported in conducting the workshop by Andrea Spagat, Northern California/Pacific Northwest Region Director of the CDS.

The 5 day workshop that was concluding was for those studying to become facilitators of this developing art form in their countries and states. Students had come from across the USA including Alaska, and from South Africa and New Zealand. I am most grateful to them all for allowing me to sit in as a fly on the wall during their wash-up meeting at the end of their course. This was a deeply powerful conversation for all participants and the programme had clearly been a hugely uplifting experience for them all; life changing for many.


Thanks guys! What a great group you are. Good luck in taking the message to your communities.

See: www.storycenter.org

Location:Berkeley, California, USA