Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling

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Notes

 [1] Note that the purposes to which such capabilities are put are assumed to be positive and liberatory (such as to use flashmobbing tactics to organize peaceful leftist protests); the recent beach riots in the Sydney beach suburb of Cronulla, reportedly coordinated largely via sms messaging, are testament that this is not always the case.

 [2] Among the many neologisms emerging as a result is Axel Bruns' idea of the ‘produser’ (2005b).

 [3] Where, to be precise, ‘vernacular’ did not merely mean ‘English’; it meant not-Latin, and so not-learned. ‘Vernacular’, then, was the language of folk, magical or superstitious knowledges, rather than the language of literacy.

 [4] In the United States, the term ‘vernacular’ is used equally to refer to (white) ‘folk’ culture on the one hand, and the forms of cultural expression associated with African-American or ‘native’ people on the other (see, for example, Baker, 1984).

 [5] In the late 1990s, Henry Jenkins built on this framework to reformulate grassroots, alternative, and fan-based media as sites of vernacular media theory (1998a, b).

 [6] Melissa Gregg (2003) has discussed the politics of empathy in cultural studies scholarship with particular reference to the career of Richard Hoggart.

 [7] This model of digital storytelling is that adapted from the initiatives of the Center for Digital Storytelling based in Berkeley, California, by Daniel Meadows, and subsequently used in the BBC's ‘Capture Wales’ programme. See www.bbc.co.uk/capturewales for further information or to watch the stories.

 [8] The Youth Internet Radio Network (YIRN) is a research project funded by the Australian Research Council and led by John Hartley and Greg Hearn that aims to engage young people in an investigation of how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be used for interaction, creativity, and innovation. The project has created partnerships with urban, regional, and indigenous communities at 10 different sites and has undertaken digital storytelling workshops at each. The 51 digital stories produced at these workshops will be included with other content that young people produce on a streaming Website (www.sticky.net.au) to be launched early in 2006.

 [9] The Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV) is a joint venture of the Queensland Department of Housing and QUT. The KGUV is an area at the edge of the CBD that includes the QUT Kelvin Grove Campus, Kelvin Grove High School, the site of a former military barracks and a retirement home, as well as new residential and commercial developments. At a cost of half a million dollars, the government has funded a three-year Sharing Stories project led by Philip Nielsen and Helen Klaebe, as part of a strategy to build a sense of community identity and inclusiveness in the development. The project will produce two books representing the history of the area from first settlement, and has launched a Website which includes community oral history, visual artworks and digital stories.

[10] As an indication of the impact that digital stories can have, this particular film led to discussions at the local Community Centre and a meeting to discuss with young people how paint sniffing is affecting them and what they thought needed to happen to improve the situation.

[11] Ethical considerations at the time of writing require that the author remain anonymous in this article; however, when the YIRN online network (www.sticky.net.au) is launched in early 2006, the story will be available for public viewing or download, as all content is searchable by title.

[12] However, this is changing, with the emergence of open storage and distribution channels such as OurMedia—see www.ourmedia.org

[13] I am nonetheless aware of the theoretical problem raised by the idea of the authentic self—see Will Tregoning in this issue.

[14] To view the digital stories, see http://www.kgurbanvillage.com.au/sharing/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jean Burgess

Jean Burgess is a PhD candidate in the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology. Her research focuses on the cultural politics of everyday creativity in new media contexts. Correspondence to: Jean Burgess, Creative Industries Faculty, OD-403, O Block, Queensland University of Technology, Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove, Qld 4059, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]