What makes the Re•Vision process unique is the focus on multimedia stories as research creation and knowledge mobilization methods and art as activism. Participants in the storytelling workshops create multimedia stories, which are short videos (2-3 minutes) that pair audio recordings of personal stories with visuals and soundscapes.
This work is accomplished through REDLAB which is both
a physical space and a mobile media lab for producing and editing digital media at the University of Guelph, and
an on-line infrastructure for running workshops remotely or in hybrid ways.
Since 2012, Re•Vision has led hundreds of digital storytelling workshops with marginalized groups (Rice et al., 2020; Rice & Mündel, 2019).
In 2020, in response to COVID-19, Re•Vision researchers developed a prototype for online story work to assess and rebuild models of multimedia story-making for folks under lockdown who wished to stretch their storymaking by producing shareable multimedia stories with an embodied (felt, experiential) and embedded (place-based, contextual) knowledge from home.
Amanda Buchnea: Expanse
The shift from in-person story-making to at-home multimedia storymaking demanded a careful reassessment of the troubling conditions of knowledge under which we work, specifically around the pace of story production (Hartman & Darab, 2012; Mountz et al., 2019). Since 2020, Re•Vision has facilitated over 14 workshops online and have revised the methodology and method to reflect that shift.
Both in person and online, the workshops are designed for 12 to 15 participants and typically take place over the course of two to five days in person and three to four weeks online. They involve
an in-depth framing of the themes or issues that bring storytellers together;
a story circle where participants share initial ideas around the experience or moment they would like to develop;
writing exercises to help participants develop their scripts;
tutorials on using audio, video, and editing software and equipment; and
full technical, writing, and conceptual support for the workshop’s duration to help participants from script development to finished video.
To conclude each workshop, participants are invited to share their stories in a final screening and everyone leaves the workshop with their own video.
The act of making space for people to tell their own stories coupled with the translation of these stories into a widely shareable multimedia format has allowed renewed and varied engagements with systemic issues of racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and colonialism.
References
Hartman, Y., & Darab, S. (2012). A call for slow scholarship: A case study on the intensification of academic life and its implications for pedagogy. The Review of Education/ Pedagogy/ Cultural Studies, 34(1-2), 49-60. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2012.643740
Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyndman, J., Walton-Roberts, M., Basu, R., Whitson, R., Hawkins, R., Hamilton, T., & Curran, W. (2015). For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal jniversity. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(4), 1235-1259. https://www.acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1058
