Decision Points.

Abstract

This paper reports on two community-based creative storytelling projects undertaken by the authors and other members of the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK, in May 2018 and May 2019. Both projects were devised around the belief that creative writing using digital tools would be engaging and even inspiring for UK secondary school students who might not normally have access to digital tools or feel motivated to engage with creative writing. The practical aim was to write, design and produce digital interactive stories, and publish them online. These narratives would feature many types of media including written text, film, sound, photography, and drawings. The paper outlines the process employed to implement and evaluate the practical work the students undertook, as well as the empirical and scholarly research underpinning this work and its production. We will also provide evidence of the participants’ reactions to their involvement in the two recent iterations of the project. Finally, we offer some tentative findings and conclusions around the effectiveness of our approach in engaging students of varying abilities and attitudes. We hope this paper will aid media, literature, and creative writing educators in devising and delivering digital-interactive projects of their own.