Story Telling in the Public Interest

There are lots of examples of digital storytelling being applied to cultural and social challenges: working with communities, documenting projects, gathering stories, and celebrating events. Often, however, these initiatives are one-offs and lacking strategies to aggregate content, build capacities, grow networks, share knowledge, and sustain activity into the future. Storytelling in the Public Interest engages with these challenges. Our aim is to embed digital storytelling into the communications culture of the community, and environmental, arts, and health sectors. By partnering with leading community networks and agencies in each of these sectors we aim to grow the impact of our work across the community and generate significant cultural, social and economic benefits. PlaceStories (http://ps3beta.com) is a map–based digital storytelling software system being developed by Feral Arts. The system supports a wide range of community-focused communications and storytelling projects in Australia & the United States. Members can create and publish their own stories direct to the PlaceStories map. They can create their own PlaceStories projects or join one of the growing number of public storytelling communities.