Preparations are well underway for our visit to Vancouver where members of the project team will be showcasing the S2C project and sharing insights with an international audience of community members and academics at the c2uexpo . The conference aims to bring together a diverse range of people interested in working together to create social change, with a focus on community based research, service learning and other forms of experiential learning and social innovation. The conference is hosted by the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver where there will be a wide variety of presentations, conversations, community jams and journeys that all aim to explore diverse and contrasting perspectives on community issues, opportunities, and collaborations.

Thomas, one of our young researchers, has been involved with the project since it began and is looking forward to sharing some of the stories that he has been involved in curating.

Whilst we are there we will be talking about some of the ways in which we have been trying to reach out and connect with disadvantaged children and young people through storytelling as we reflect on our journey since August 2015, when we first decided upon our project aims as a team of young people and academics. We will examine some of the complexities of the relationships between the university and the community, the young people and the stories, and the stories and the audience. We also hope to discuss how multiple tellers of multiple stories from the edges of the community can combine to create meaningful messages, in digital and print forms, for people in a more central location.

In conversation with other academics and community based practitioners and researchers, we hope to share some examples of what has worked well for us as a team and learn about what has worked well for other individuals and community groups from all over the world.

We will also be presenting stories and phygital objects that we are hoping to install and share across different communities later in the year.We hope to preview a series of storytelling objects that have been co-designed with young researchers and university-based digital designers as one way of communicating their stories to the public and to new users of welfare services. For example, over the last year or so, the project team have been busy designing and creating a suitcase which represents a ‘bag of knowledge’. On opening the suitcase, people will be invited to interact with stories that feature some of the young people that have been engaging with the project through 3D-printed characters that activate different stories on the screen contained within. Click on the link to our You Tube channel below to see some examples of our work in progress…

 

 

We are looking forward to finding out what our audiences think and are hoping to bring home lots of ideas about how to ensure we reach out to as many people as possible as our project moves into the final phase. Watch out for our next blog post where we hope to tell you all about it!