Digital Story Telling
Digital story telling allows everyday people to create short but impactful personal stories about their experiences through digital media such as videos.
Digital Storytelling (DST) can help to elevate the voices of underrepresented populations and communities and can be used as a tool for those communities who value storytelling as a way of knowing and understanding.
What are Digital Stories
Digital stories are short, first person video narratives created with the combination of voice recordings, music & sound, pictures, and short video clips. Digital stories are often used in health research as an arts-based research method, in knowledge translation and dissemination, advocacy, social justice, education, professional development, and more. Digital stories are a powerful way of communicating experiences and emotions. Humans connect and learn from the hearing and telling of stories.
Who is a storyteller?
- Anyone with life experiences, insights, and ideas
- Anyone with the willingness to participate in a workshop to create their story using digital media
- No video production experience needed!
Workshops
With the support of trained digital storytelling facilitators, workshop participants will learn the 7-steps to digital storytelling and; take part in story circle (group sharing and feedback), write a script, record their voiceover, select images and short video clips, assemble their stories in a web-based video editing software program, and take part in a digital storytelling première.
In-person or Hybrid Workshops are also available.
Past Digital Storytelling Projects
Painful Truths, Common Threads in a Tapestry of Chronic Pain and Identity Research Study (2025)
This research study was a collaborative partnership between the AbSPORU Patient Engagement Team, the Chronic Pain Network (CPN), and Patient Research Partners (PRPs). Together, they co-developed the study’s objective: to explore how digital storytelling can reveal the impact of chronic pain on identity through first-person narratives.
Eight individuals from across Canada, each with lived experience of chronic pain, participated both as participants and co-researchers. They also co-designed knowledge translation activities to share insights and learnings from the study with broader audiences.
The resulting collection of digital stories was titled Painful Truths, Common Thread in a Tapestry of Chronic Pain on Identity, a name chosen by the PRPs to reflect the emotional depth and authenticity of their experiences.
Sprout Vulnerably
Tanis Laird
Here I Am
Vasilisa Kalinina
Masakit
Jenny Lorca
Turning the Page
Ada Glustein
I Choose Lemonade
Heather Dyck
Finding My Balance
Jillian Banfield
Zana
Zana Gordon
The Other Side of Pain
Nikki Chopra
Bias and Stigmatization in Healthcare (2023)
In this digital storytelling workshop, the storytellers created personal stories on their experience of bias and stigmatization in a healthcare setting. The four patient research partner storytellers will be co-presenting a workshop at the 2023 NorthWest SPOR Collaborative Forum. This workshop was supported by Dr. Lorraine Thirsk, Associate Professor, Athabasca University.
A Return to Medical Altruism
James Thesen
What Did I Do?
Angela Aitchison
GUT FEELINGS (2022)
In this digital storytelling workshop, the storytellers created personal stories on the topic of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and/or Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), and their struggles with diet and/or mental health. The seven storytellers named this collection of stories ‘GUT FEELINGS’. This workshop was supported by the IMAGINE SPOR National Chronic Disease Network. The group worked together, with support from the AbSPORU Patient Engagement Team and the IMAGINE SPOR Network, to co-produce an online knowledge translation educational event. To view the GUT FEELINGS educational event visit the IMAGINE SPOR Network website here or their YouTube channel here.
Compassionate Care
Sandra Holdsworth
Super Bowel Sunday
Ashley Patel
Finding
Robyn Hyne
Her
Alia Abutalib
Bathroom Anxiety is Real
Megan Marsiglio
Reflections
Sherry Pang
Quality of Life: From the Patient Perspective (2021)
In this digital storytelling workshop, the storytellers created personal stories on the topic of “Quality of Life: From the Patient Perspective”. This workshop consisted of seven storytellers from diverse lived experience backgrounds living with chronic physical and/or mental health challenges. The seven storytellers created individual personal stories on what it means to them while living with a chronic condition or illness. The seven storytellers helped to co-present a digital storytelling workshop at the International Society of Quality of Life (ISOQOL) research conference as well as a workshop at the 2022 NorthWest SPOR Collaborative Forum.
It’s Easy
Cliff Ballantyne
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CALGARY
University of Calgary Foothills Campus
3330 Hospital Dr NW
Calgary, AB T2N 4N1
EDMONTON
University of Alberta North Campus
Dianne and Irving Kipnes Health Research Institute
11405 87 Ave NW
Edmonton, AB T6G 1C9
Land Acknowledgment
The Alberta SPOR SUPPORT Unit operates on and acknowledges the lands that are the traditional and ancestral territory of many peoples, presently subject to Treaties 6, 7, and 8. Namely: the Blackfoot Confederacy – Kainai, Piikani, and Siksika – the Cree, Dene, Saulteaux, Nakota Sioux, Stoney Nakoda, and the Tsuu T’ina Nation and the Métis People of Alberta. This includes the Métis Settlements and the Métis Nation of Alberta. We acknowledge the many First Nations, Métis and Inuit who have lived in and cared for these lands for generations. We make this acknowledgment as a reaffirmation of our shared commitment towards reconciliation, and as part of AbSPORU’s mandate towards fostering health system transformation.
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