Our work uses contemporary approaches to storytelling to enable the voices of all people to be heard and listened to. We understand how storytelling can be used at an individual, community and policy level and can work with others to offer:
- Bespoke training for prospective facilitators, academic and professional researchers, CSR professionals and creative practitioners. Our workshops have been commissioned by public authorities, commercial organisations, representative trade organisations, NGOs and Universities.
- Research and evaluation that either participatory storytelling to be used as a qualitative action research tool to embed previously unheard voices within larger projects, or as a means to review completed activity as part of an evaluation process. Our research and evaluation portfolio includes activity with public authorities and Universities.
- Community development and engagement work with specific groups and individuals. We’ve run storytelling workshops in community settings across the globe and . examples include work with the recently bereaved, people experiencing homelessness, users and survivors of the mental health services, LGBTQ+ people and migrant communities.
Sample Projects
- Extending Creative Practice and Silver Stories (2009-2015) – These two linked projects were developed and led by Digitales. They explored the scope to use Digital Storytelling as a means to train older people in the use of ICT and to capture personal stories as visual testimonies. There were nine partners from six countries and the programme culminated in a conference held at Politécnico de Leiria, Portugal and an exhibition that travelled to Romania, Denmark, Portugal, Finland, Slovenia and the UK where it was hosted at Goldsmiths and the University of Brighton.
- StoryA (2016) – Partners from ten countries used Digital Storytelling as an action research methodology to tell stories that explored the experience of young people living or working abroad. By allowing young people to provide personal accounts of the skills and knowledge gained through travel, StoryA provided a means to interrogate the quality of youth work and the importance of non-formal learning.
- Untold (2017) – The seventh biennial international Digital Storytelling Conference was led by DigiTales and hosted by the University of East London. It brought together over 130 academics, activists and practitioners from across the globe to collaborate on the development of new creative projects through a carefully constructed Open Space. It also provided an opportunity for DigiTales to showcase our work with young homeless people from across the UK to an international audience.
- Reading on Screen (2017-2018) – collaboration between the universities of Bournemouth and Brighton, and DigiTales, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council – workshop in Brighton, Bournemouth and Sheffield to capture stories of people’s experiences of reading.
- Digital Reading for Inclusivity, Versatility and Engagement – DRIVE (2020-2022) – remote training of digital storytelling facilitators in three different regions of Kenya and remote support whilst they gathered digital stories in Nairobi (urban), Chavakali (peri-urban) and Loita (remote, rural with Maasai participants).
Recent Portfolio
FutureAbilty – (2020-2023) Digitales was a member of a strategic research partnership of organisations – Universities, Research Centres and Cultural Enterprises – developing work with Visual Methods and Digital Learning tools to create new Open Educational Resources designed to make online teaching more attractive and accessible in Higher Education. Digitales created an online module for colleagues looking to use Digital Storytelling in their teaching practice.
Vozes de Macieira/Voices of Macieira (April 2023 – December 2024)
Macieira is a small village in the centre of Portugal. Once a thriving community, with its own school, the village, like so many others in the region, is depopulating and the average age of residents is over 75. People’s lives are incrementally impacted by the effects of climate change, particularly the frequency, increased duration and scale of the annual wildfires which blight the region, taking lives, homes and livelihoods.Voices of Macieira drew upon the stories and memories of older people through an intergenerational collaborative filmmaking project to begin to open local discussions around climate change action.
Histórias do Coração verde de Portugal/Stories from the Green Heart of Portugal (2024-2025),funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal, explored participation and engagement in climate action. Green Heart of Portugal employed a hybrid methodology, combining elements of digital storytelling and community/participatory media to create three videos in central Portugal designed to stimulate discussion and community action particularly in relation to the wildfires which so blight this region incrementally as summers become hotter and drier.
Current Projects
DST 25 Conference in Belem, Brazil
Digitales is one of the partners organising the 2025 Digital Storytelling conference which will take place in Belem, Brazil in November 2025. This is the first time the conference will be held in the global south and it will be hosted by the Museu da Pessoa.
Oral History of Digital Storytelling
Digitales is leading the development of a new initiative exploring the legacy of Digital Storytelling in the UK and internationally through oral history.