Stories can be the means by which people work out their thoughts and ideas: they can be an exploration, a search for meaning or an offering up to others. From a community development point of view, story is an extremely useful tool for helping people to locate themselves in their own lives and their communities. And more importantly, it is universal and there are no prerequisites required in order to tell a story. Many organizations collect stories within the communities they work with but the way stories and curated and presented is still lacking a shared methodology that can support an effective impact on stakeholders and decision makers.
With a network of 6 organizations from different EU countries, such as UK, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Poland, we collaborate to develop core curricula of informal, non-formal and formal learning and development in curating, cataloging stories to produce meaningful digital data which can be accessed in diverse ways by different social groups. We will develop pathways for improving digital curating skills in communities, routes to obtaining new qualifications, up-skilling, and re-skilling for employment.
This project will promote empowerment and active citizenship, especially for young people and other groups at risk of social exclusion, by providing them with the tools, competences and structure to enable their voice to be heard by influencers and policy-makers.