Listen to - and download - audio samples
View photos & a digital storytelling clip
Or click on web links for a taste of the times
And dicover more about the therapeutic value of storytelling
We hope you enjoy your visit and our stories!
New generations of digital audio field recorders have made it possible for the Average Josephine to not only record oral histories to CD, but to easily share these stories via a range of new media platforms. [Below left: the trusty H4 audio recorder which participants loved checking out, donning earbuds, feeling its light weight, marvelling over it's tiny SD card and listening to its brilliant stereo audio...]
'Technology' - though often infuriatingly fleeting in its cycles of cutting edge and quick fading obsolescence, is a part of our culture; expressing much about how we live our lives.
In using new technology with ageing residents, hopefully a little of the social divide between cultural life outside the aged care home and life within, is broken down.I will never forget one participant seeing his tatoos through the screen of a digital camera for the first time (with glee), nor the immediacy of being able to google a map of 'Crystal street' for another excited participant eager to connect past and present. Nor the deepening of communication that grew where I could share a downloaded photo of Kings Cross circa 1950, a sewing machine model relevant to an anecdote, or search for some background historical context or music, that offered richness, or a nod - or a gesture of recognition or appreciation for a story that had been shared with me.
These are offerings - our stories. And what story brings is exchange and connection.
We carry our own stories within us sometimes for a lifetime; often told and offered in diverse ways and versions.Stories shared with us, are also part of our sense of identity and a sense of wholeness. Even where frailty of memory fails us, story and narrative still exists; in other forms often, but still wanting to, waiting to be heard.... and understood.
While the 'first' oral histories - recorded by anthropologists and ethnographers with native Indian Americans - were recorded on phonograph cylinders, we are now of course seeing digital mediums supercede reel-to-reel and analogue recording, and a larger crosspollination of digital recording to new media platforms.
Of course 'oral histories' actually go way back - much further than casette tapes, reel-to-reel and cylinders; beautifully exemplified here in Australia by the oral traditions, songlines and storytelling of Indigenous Australians. So too, dance, art, textiles have been used for thousands of years in telling story and of course in a rich tapestry of ways both here in Australia and globally - reminding us just how intrinsic and elemental storytelling is to our very individual sense of being - and a wider collective sense of belonging.
When we stop and listen to another's story, we give the other person "the time of day'; we open our selves to the possibility of connection and the sense that the teller matters. Being listened to - and having a voice - are essential elements of empowerment and respect; of being understood.
