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Research Proposal
Digital Storytelling: A Safe Space for Creativity
Evelyn Thorne
University of Oregon

Digital Storytelling: A Safe Space for Creativity
by Evelyn Thorne

I. Abstract

This research project will examine how digital storytelling can provide safe space for creative expression. The foundation for this theory will be laid out through a literature review that will first establish why safe space is necessary for creative expression and then cover how the process, facilitation methods and ethical guidelines for digital storytelling affect safe space. Interviews with expert digital storytelling facilitators and experienced digital storytelling participants will be conducted to build a new conceptual framework for this theory based on perspectives in the field. The goal of this research project is to evince how digital storytelling can be effective in helping adults express themselves creatively.

II. Key Words

Digital Storytelling

Safe Space

Creative expression; creativity; creative agency

Facilitation

Process

Ethics

III. Problem Statement

There is currently a strong focus on public participation and community engagement in arts and cultural programming. This is reflected in the subjects of arts conference such as the recent National Arts Marketing Project Conference with the theme of “Powered by Community” or the Social Theory, Politics and the Arts Conference, whichemphasized building creative community through technology. It appears that every arts administrator is talking about participatory design whether it’s from a leader in the field like Nina Simone (The Participatory Museum, 2010) to Gail Anderson’s call to reinvent the museum (Reinventing the Museum, 2012) to a panel on participatory arts including representatives from museums, theater, and state arts agencies (Buckley, Erickson, Jackson-Dumont & Lane, 2013). It is obvious that arts administrators are calling for more public participation in the arts and yet, there are roadblocks, the biggest being a lack of arts education.

The NEA strategic plan states that their research has “identified arts education as the single best predictor of a person’s arts participation patterns throughout life” (p.8, 2010). It goes on to say that while the NEA has made arts education a priority, states have had difficulty keeping arts education in the curriculum (p.20, 2010). This creates inconsistent arts education across the United States and thus also a range of arts participation. Furthermore, poor arts education has an effect on one’s creative agency[1] (Runco, 2007). Consequently, even with available opportunities to participant in the arts, someone with low creative agency may not take advantage. Therefore, while arts administrators may be calling for more engagement in the arts, a lack of arts education can still deter the public from participating.

As a result, arts practitioners need to find a way of reaching out to a public with a wide range of creative agencies. This study examines how digital storytelling can help adults express themselves creatively, by analyzing what elements of digital storytelling influence safe space for creative expression.

IV. Conceptual Framework

Literature Review

Through observation of digital storytelling workshops, training in facilitation and emersion in related literature, a theory that digital storytelling is an effective method for cultivating safe space emerged. There have been many studies on the benefits of digital storytelling in regards to self-efficacy, media literacy, civic engagement or trauma healing (Stellavato, 2013; Tolly, 2007; Hill, 2010; Herman, 1992), but little attention to creative agency. However, it is a key belief of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) that creativity is a human right: “As [people] grow to adulthood, they often internalize the message that producing art requires a special and innate gift, tendency, or skill. Many people simply give up and never return to creative practice. Confronting this sense of inadequacy and encouraging people in artistic self-expression can inspire individual and community transformation” (storycenter.org, 2013).Thus,CDS’s methods are guided by a need for creative expression: they are looking to encourage artistic expression and help people build their creative agencies. It is the goal of this research project to look at how digital storytelling does thisby examining practices that build safe space for creative expression.

Through further reflection, three broad areas of influence were identified as factors to establishing safe space for creative expression: process, facilitation and ethics. These areas have mostly been identified through observation and practice in the field, but the literature review will provide an argument for why these areas are important. Furthermore, the conceptual framework lays out reasons why each of these areas was picked. The literature review will draw from a myriad of disciplines and scholars as to why these elements are important for building safe space for creative expression.

The focus on process will pull heavily from Joe Lambert’s foundational book for CDS: Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community(2013) as well as information available on CDS’s website. Using these resources as access points, an examination of digital storytelling internationally will be conducted in comparison to the CDS model. Aforementioned research on digital storytelling’s effects on media literacy and self-efficacy will also be used as they address tenants of the conceptual framework, such as accessibility and a focus on process. The conceptual framework lays out how these tenants affect safe space and will need to be backed up by the literature. For example, the step-by-step process is upheld as a positive influence on creative expression since it sets the stage for creative constraints (Richardson, 2013), while also providing clear guidelines that lesson stress. Or a process vs. product focus is endorsed in community cultural development sector as a method for building community trust (Goldbard, 2006). These and other areas of the digital storytelling process will be examined further in the literature review.

Another key element to digital storytelling is facilitation. CDS taught an extensive training on how to facilitate a digital storytelling workshop and has now expanded it to a certification program (storycenter.org, 2013). It is apparent that good facilitation practices is a core component to a good digital storytelling workshop, but the question is what are good or bad practices? This research project will try to answer this question by examining the practices CDS upholds and then asking how these practices are used in the field through interviews. For example, CDS uses Pablo Freire’s critical consciousness and reciprocal learning model as a guide. This model helps build safe space by creating an atmosphere of shared authority that in turn builds self-efficacy among the participants (Friere, 1974). Furthermore, research into similar facilitation styles, such as collegial pedagogy used at Youth Radio in Oakland, CA also defends a need for a strong balance between facilitator and participant (Soep & Chavez, 2010). This focus on shared authority in combination with personal guidance and individualized process are all factors that can have a strong influence on safe space for creative expression. The literature review will look at why these factors matter and how digital storytelling uses them.

The last component of the conceptual framework has to do with the ethics that guide the digital storytelling process. CDS has an extensive list of ethical guidelines that they developed in collaboration with other media storytelling organizations such as WITNESS and Photovoice (Gubrium, Harding, Hill, Photovoice UK & WITNESS, 2013). Core principles include a focus on “storytellers’ physical, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being”, the informed choices of participants and ownership over their stories (Gubrium et al, 2013). CDS has also formed a “Digital Storyteller’s Bill of Rights” with statements like “The right to know who might view your finished story after the digital storytelling workshop” or “The right to skilled emotional support if your experience of making a story is emotionally challenging” (Gubrium et al, 2013). The literature review will examine statements like these in reference to safe space and how they can affect creativity.

Further research on these topics and especially the definition and influences of safe space needs to be conducted. Please see the appendices for a detailed timeline on how this literature review will progress.

V. Research Methodology

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this research project is to examine how digital storytelling can establish safe space for creative expression, specifically for adults. At this stage in the research, safe space for creative expression is generally defined as a participant’s ability to feel safe expressing themselves creatively within the context of a digital storytelling workshop.

Digital storytelling is unique in looking at safe space for creativity with an adult population since the workshops are designed to engage a wide range of adults through the same process, regardless of artistic background or creative agency (Lambert, 2013). This research project will look at how the elements of that design, including the step-by-step process, facilitation practices and ethical guidelines for digital storytelling, affect safe space. The Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS)’s methods will be the primary focus of this research since they are the main training center for North America, but other resources will be examined as to place CDS within the context of digital storytelling internationally. Interviews with CDS’s expert facilitators and experienced participants of digital storytelling workshops will be conducted to garner perspectives on the working theory. A comparison of the results of these interviews to the literature review will result in a conceptual framework that will highlight the necessary elements to building safe space for creativity within the digital storytelling field.

It is the goal of this research project to provide evidence that digital storytelling is an effective method for engaging a wide range of adults with different creative agencies in the creative process. While digital storytelling has a specific methodology and practice, the elements of the process that affect safe space, such as a balance between process and product or a focus on participants’ rights, can be extrapolated to other fields. It is the hope of this researcher that practitioners interested in engaging adults in creativity, regardless of previous exposure to the arts, can learn from the digital storytelling process on how better to build safe space for creative expression into their initiatives.

Methodological Paradigm

This research project will follow a social constructivist worldview since it will build a conceptual framework based on pulled data from multiple perspectives. As Creswall states in Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, social constructivists “look for complexity of views rather than narrowing meanings into a few categories or idea. The goal of the research is to rely as much as possible on the participants’ views of the situation being studied” (p.8, 2014). While the literature review of this research project will examine three specific areas of digital storytelling, it is understood that interviews will change and shape a new conceptual framework. Furthermore, by looking at three broad categories of influences on digital storytelling, the complexity of the research question is taking into account. It is expected that new elements of influence on safe space will emerge from the research design and that the resulting conceptual framework may be entirely different from the original design. This is not seen as a negative aspect of the research methodology, but as an opportunity for discovery.

A respected slam poet named Doc Luben once said, “A successful poem is one that changes you half way through writing it” (personal communication, June 2012). This research project will use that quote as a guiding principle in hopes that revelations and epiphanies may result from further inquiry.

Role of Researcher

This research project is based on an assumption of the researcher that digital storytelling does affect safe space for creative expression. This assumption is due to prolonged engagement with digital storytelling and extensive observation including an internship with the Center for Digital Storytelling, training in facilitation of digital storytelling and experience leading digital storytelling workshops with the Trauma Healing Project. Rather than using this research to prove a hypothesis that digital storytelling does in fact affect safe space, the questions will look at how. Though, by showing how digital storytelling affects safe space for creative expression, this research will also posit why. Thus, while the research questions are based on an assumption, their examination will provide critical inquiry into that assumption as well.

Furthermore, the problem statement for this research project is largely influenced by the researcher’s personal experiences. Experiences as both an arts administrator and audience member have resulted in the belief that there are fewer opportunities for creative engagement for adults than youth, especially those who do not have the time or finances to invest in academic classes. Moreover, from informal conversation with many adults, it is also assumed that a large portion of the adult population have low creative agency. This is the result of many factors, but this paper looks specifically at the effects of a drop in arts education on arts participation. These are the problems that have led the researcher to look for a method that could engage a wide range of adults in creative expression and thus hopefully build their creative agency. Digital storytelling is proposed to be such a method and that learning from this method can help increase the opportunities available for adults to engage in creativity expression.

Research Questions

  1. How can digital storytelling cultivate safe space for creative expression?
  2. How do facilitation practices used for digital storytelling affect safe space for creative expression?
  3. How do aspects of the digital storytelling process affect safe space for creative expression?
  4. How do ethical guidelines for digital storytelling affect safe space for creative expression?

The main research questions looks at how digital storytelling can build safe space for creative expression, while the sub questions look at three broad categories of influence on the main question. These are the guiding questions for inquiry into the literature, but as stated above other areas of influence may emerge from the interviews.

Definitions

As already mentioned, at this stage in the research, safe space for creative expression is generally defined as a participant’s ability to feel safe expressing themselves creatively. Further research will need to be done to find a more specific definition of safe space.

Creative expression is seen as separate from creative agency, since the latter focuses on one’s confidence in his or her ability to create while the latter is the act of creation. One can participate in a creative act without having high creative agency. It is the experience of that creative act that influences one’s creative agency (Runco, 2007).

Delimitations

As just discussed, there is a difference between measuring creative agency and opportunity for creative expression. This project will look at the latter since the goal is to examine if digital storytelling helps participants feel safe to express themselves creatively instead of if their creative agency increased. A more thorough quantitative analysis would have to be conducted in order to establish an actual increase in creative agency, but this research puts forth a qualitative investigation of the basis for building creative agency, meaning safe space.

Moreover, while this study will be specific to digital storytelling, results can be applicable to other fields interested in public participation in arts since safe space for creative expression is necessary for creative engagement.

Limitations

Since this research will be focused primarily on the Center for Digital Storytelling’s methods, interviews will be conducted with facilitators and participants of CDS workshops. While CDS’s process is used internationally, variations on their process will not be considered in this research.

Benefits of Study

The results of the research project could be of benefit to practitioners hoping to build public participation of the arts into their programs. As discussed, there is current focus within the arts world on participatory arts and community engagement. This research could provide a strong framework for how to implement those strategies within arts programming. Furthermore, a focus on building safe space for creative expression, especially amongst adults, has the potential benefit of increased opportunities for creative engagement for a wider range of adults.

VI. Research Design

Research Approach

In order to examine the main research question of how digital storytelling can cultivate safe space for creative expression, a qualitative research strategy has been designed. According to Creswell, “qualitative research is an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (p.4, 2014). Since this research is taking a social constructivist view in examining a problem statement, it is best suited for a qualitative design.