Relational, Appreciative, and Process-oriented Digital Storytelling: A Duoethnography

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an approach to group and community digital storytelling based on the following pillars: (a) extensive periods dedicated to group forming; facilitating meaningful interactions and members synergies through organized group work activities, (b) cultivating an appreciative and inclusive culture that takes advantage of the individual differences, and (c) a process-oriented practice, informed by systems thinking, that listen to the individuals’ voices and needs as well as to the group-as-a-whole process. In this context, digital storytelling could help people and communities to re-author themselves in more empowering, meaningful, and life-promoting ways. In the first part of this work, we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of our approach, we describe the details of a first pilot offering, and we provide an initial narrative evaluation by the participants. In the second part, we engage in an evocative duoethnography of our practice to provide a narrative, performative, in-context, and dense description of our lived experience as designers and facilitators, and as human beings that we actively participated in the unfolding of our program. Implications for the transformative power of duoethnography are discussed.