StoryLiving project promotes digital storytelling as a methodology and as a communication and healing tool for youth living with ASD and other mental health disorders.
Storytelling generally indicates a linear narration built round three main elements: the beginning of the story, a middle point (climax), and an end. Digital Storytelling is a methodology used in various sectors and disciplines in which stories are narrated through digital and media tools. In education, for example, digital storytelling is used as a learning methodology. Student narrating a story can learn in a more practical and immersive way. Narration helps us in organising our thoughts and information and to reprocess what we are learning or experiencing.
The topics or frameworks of narration can be various. The narrator present the story to the audience using images, videos, text, and sounds and using a digital tool or platform to “host” the story. The narrator can use a fictional story, an autobiographic story or narrate a specific topic learnt in school. In any case, the youth, the narrator is directly involved in the creative process.
Within the research carried out on the effects of COVID-19 on youth living with ASD and other mental health disorders, project partners have interviewed nearly 140 professionals working with these youth and what has emerged is that they know what storytelling is and that sometimes they even use it in their daily work. In particular, they have underlined that autobiographic storytelling can have a strong healing impact in their lives to process their emotion and identify their challenges and strengths. However, they do not know the methodology and how to use it at its fullest potential. In particular, they do not know the steps to build the story with the youth and sometimes how to use digital tools to portray the story.
This is why, in the framework of StoryLiving projects, partners are developing a training course for professionals in which they can learn digital storytelling techniques and how to effectively use the methodology in their work.
