Oral histories

This project was designed to promote and map a public memory of communities along the Balonne River (Surat, St George, and Dirranbandi).  Remembered stories develop a community's interest in itself, especially if shared without censoring or prejudice. Through the self-reflective process of storytelling and making new expressive forms based on these,  families and the community can discover their historical patterns of resilience in their community. The dialogue may uncover complex issues and ways of seeing their communities that may not have been previously discussed; enabling their resilience and self-reliance will become more valued and apparent as they work through "how" they "mean" in their community.

This project collects digital stories from a wide variety of community residents as verbatim data for a collected history, and as stimulus for local and USQ students to create new works of visual art, theatre and digital web archive.  

The objective is to engage and enable these communities through family connections to the schools, to generate new ways of expressing intergenerational public memory as a community resource. In this time of drought when many people are leaving these areas, it is appropriate to use non-partial cultural and artistic methods to bring people together without prejudice, while generating new ways of expressing a public memory for reflection by the community. The outcomes will produce archived digital stories accessible through the internet, as well as touring visual arts and theatre artefacts to stimulate continuing community dialogue. 

Project dates and milestones

Description of the project

This is a project about storying lives. The St George focus group suggested concern that stories from older members of the community might be lost. Digital storytelling processes connect people, events and places tapping living memory in special ways. This digital storytelling project will assist St George to record its memory

Outcomes

This is stage 1 of a public memory project directed to  empower a community to write its own history and reclaim its culture,  by learning the past in planning for the future.
A community resource will be developed that creates an intergenerational connection within the community that includes gathered visual and verbal narratives as on-line picture books that reclaim personal and community history. Digitized images will record aspects of participant's life journeys. Local artists and students will create an exhibition of  visual responses to the tales, incorporating a digital archive accessible to the community and future scholars.