How new Storytellers are going beyond narrative, and building solutions to the problems they encounter.
By the day’s end you would have read any number of articles, posts, watched videos, listened to podcasts, WhatsApped or Wechated someone.
The extreme end is dooms scrolling. How much do you remember from the stories you’ve read, and what happened next? Did it lead you to do anything?
There are storytellers e.g. journalists, TikTokers etc whose sole purpose is to create stories. That’s more than enough and is a craft skill, centuries old, for those at the top of their game.
These storytellers create narratives on any number of subjects — the environment, education, fashion, war and they do that admirably, to inform constituents. But as society and cultures ever mature, tried and tested approaches require renewed attention. As the saying goes, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you got”.
You can trace the media’s development and observe this pattern. Here as more than a hypothesis is the argument. Could there be a different type of storyteller? For there’s ample evidence the 20th century model is showing its age, showing how ill-equipped it is for the complexities and dynamic societal changes of the present and perhaps the future. Look at the impact of disinformation alone.
The 21st century model for storyteller then would envelop the following:
- Be more innovative at storytelling to have GREATER IMPACT and deeper meaning with audiences.
- To possess the cognitive skills and tech-play and be capable of BUILDING REAL-WORLD solutions from merging of different disciplines.
- To possess the KNOW HOW to counter inequality and racism in its individual and institutional forms.
GREATER IMPACT
There is a style of storytelling that is generally absorbed by many and which invariably stays lodged in your memory. The late great Robert Drew behind the documentary Primary (1960) knew of this.
Thirty years later, and following six years of research towards a PhD, coupled with my work as a practitioner over many years, I could demonstrate how the blend of narrative and pictures yielded for audiences what they referred to as cinema or cinema-like. Yet these were factual journalistic stories.
My research illustrated that the future was being shaped by the 18–35 years of age generation. It happened sixty years ago, thirty years ago (see below) and is happening now AI, cinema et al. More and more young people use a cinema lens to watch news — something to consider for future of journalism conferences driven within industry.
As I’ve written extensively and taught around the world e.g. Russia. Lebanon, China and India etc, the breakthrough of this style emerged through videojournalism practitioners, who used cameras and a lens dynamic purposefully.
BUILDING REAL-WORLD SOLUTIONS
The number of cases of ADHD diagnoses and treatment is rising. Ayushi, one of our students after writing about it had a solution, Lens Smart, and prototyped it in our lab. Reminders would appear at the side of the lens to prompt the user. This example is one of several cohorts have produced in the Lab we run. AI too won’t replace storytelling. The case study is Free Style Chess based around Moravec’s Paradox.
KNOW HOW
Inequality is often not that unconscious, it’s designed into systems that maintain such an order. Diversity often as exhibitionism is about aesthetics rather than meaningful change. Providing cohorts with the cognitive tools to see this, provides them with greater freedom of choice.
In March, I’m chairing a panel on driving deeper diversity at leading UK Creative Festival. I’ve worked in this space since the early 90s.
In a society that has traded stories for the cognitive satisfaction of taking in a story, the brief of a future storyteller then would be to extend this attribute to solve problems. That is that story plus must yield something. That’s where the Applied Storyteller comes in. Designers found themselves dragged into this which would become design thinkinng.
It’s analogous to the Chemist and Applied Chemist (which I was previously). The Chemist is interested in how elements interact. Composition. Theoretical knowledge: Hydrogen and Oxygen equals water. But the Applied Chemist has an additional motive to create a product that uses water. Examples of Applied Chemists include: pharmacists and chemical engineers.
In the late 19th century as electricity was establishing itself as a technological solution to artificial lighting and the use of Whale blubber for candles, the roles of the electrician emerged. In the 20th century with different electrical systems emerging new problems arose andthere was a need for a new type of electrician — an applied electrican, or otherwise electrical engineer.
You’ll read many things about Applied Storytelling. It’s becoming de rigeur, but I see the idea of interdisciplinary storytelling to build on a message for public good is its strongest theme.
I’ve had the opportunity to see this at work from students and cohorts. My own background offers a hint of this. A scientist (Applied Chemist), journalist (BBC Newsnight &. Channel 4 News), Artists in Residence at the Southbank Centre, Creative technologist (tech start-ups) and Academic ( PhD in story forms e.g. videojournalism), and working in diversity since 1992.
I imagine in 2032, the Applied Journalist will be commonplace. Resisted until then because journalism experts will tell you journalism has defined characteristics, and creative entrepreneurs have defined roles too. But this demarcation in a digital space is artificial.
It was the pre-digital environment that yielded the reporter journalist as the videojournalist (do-everything-yourself) — a move heavily resisted by the Industry in the 90s. The photo below now almost thirty years old captures how several youngsters, including me, turned the industry inside out as the first videojournalists in the UK.
The videojournalist was the swiss army knife that would lead to the multimedia journalist (works on platforms), the mobile journalist and raft of journalism solutions such as cinema journalism in which I was tasked on teaching regional newspaper journalists written up here in the UK Press Gazette.
The extension of this becomes the Applied factor, but with one important caveat, it is about the application to solve real world problems. It is about the consideration of language and understanding reportage’s impact within different cultures. It’s about solutions to combat extreme ideologies which nestle within narratives providing emotional insidious answers.
Can Applied storytelling be taught? Yes! We’re doing it now with new cohorts, but it requires an approach to education that relatively few institutions offer, and that must change.
About me.
I’m a Reader/ Associate Professor at Cardiff University interested in Innovation, Diversity and different storytelling forms. I sit on the management board of Sbarc | Spark — a super tech hub in Wales, and am a co-investigator for Media.Cymru. I’ve been a journalist since the 1990s working for, among others, Newsnight, Channel 4 News and ABC News in various positions and was an artist-in-residence at the Southbank Centre. More here
