Community Engagement through Digital Story Telling

Horton N¹*, Moynihan IM¹*

1. Feral Arts, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

This presentation outlines progress in the implementation of Feral Arts’ community cultural development program – Rural Communities and Globalisation – in the upper Burdekin region of north Queensland. The focus of the three-year program is on collaborations that enhance engagement initiatives in the natural resource management, local government and education sectors. The aim is to bring new voices and perspectives into these processes, adding cultural and historical dimensions to the shared vision of socially, economically and environmentally sustainable futures.

Through the Rural Communities and Globalisation program, Feral Arts are collaborating on digital story telling projects with a number of local rural communities and other key stakeholders including Indigenous, government, business, environmental, educational, scientific, farming, mining. This innovative and experimental work explores the potential of cultural and technology based approaches in rural community development. The program has been developed as a creative response to the opportunities and challenges posed to the region by economic development and globalisation, and aims to enhance community involvement, and ensure that local history, knowledge and aspirations guide the process at every level. The program is also exploring the

Working in video, photography and digital multimedia the Rural Communities and Globalisation program provides opportunities to explore the multiple layers of the ownership and identity people have with place. Through Placeworks – a suite of software tools being developed and tested in house by Feral Arts as part of its program – the work aims to develop a common gathering point for local stories, videos, images, songs – building a shared cultural and community history database.