Start

Peter, from this great adventure and James Taylor, tutor and technical demonstrator at University of Cardiff, secured funding from StoryFutures to develop an industry-academic collaborative project framework, delivered with students and local partner organisations. This project was funded as part of the third and final round of StoryFutures’ Train The Trainer programme.

This represents somewhat of a new venture for Cardiff Uni, which has very little existing engagement or networking with industry in this way, and builds on similar work the team from this great adventure does as long-term Industry Partners with Loughborough University London and UAL Central St Martins.

The core ambitions of this project are:

• To bridge the divide between theory-based academic learning and creative // technical industry best practice

• To combine storytelling and narrative design techniques with practical learning and creative development using interactive and immersive technologies – in this case 360° film and location-based binaural audio.

• To integrate this great adventure’s narrative-led methodology with design thinking and design sprint approaches

• To focus this project on real-world challenges facing cultural organisations by engaging local partners to act as ‘clients’ and set the challenge briefs

• To design an approach that can be integrated into Cardiff Uni’s portfolio for futures students

• To inspire students through an active of creative and technical development, using real technologies, to create narrative experiences that respond to the challenges posed by

Overall, the aim of this project has been to develop a framework for collaborative projects that can be replicated and adapted and delivered with any university, working with different local partners and the potential to swap out different technologies.

Beyond this, the framework would be designed so that it can be ‘dialed up’ or ‘dialed down’ and delivered with school learners, for example, as well as delivered with cultural organisations themselves as a form of training, awareness raising, and professional development.

Journey

Peter and James designed an adaptive collaborative project framework, initially to be delivered over a ten-week timetable, aligned to the academic calendar. This co-creative framework combines project client briefing sessions, development workshops, 1-2-1 mentoring sessions, reviews and presentations, as well as masterclasses with creative and technical industry practitioners.

We ran a launch event at the university for students and potential ‘client’ organisations and local industry partners, and following this initial phase, 8x students signed up from different schools at the university. Students ranged from first year part time students to recent third year graduates, and history of religion to data journalism. Asher Cox, a postgraduate student at Cardiff, was also brought into the project delivery team in a paid capacity as a facilitator.

After a slightly slower than expected engagement process, Peter and James revised and compressed the timeline to deliver the project over a six-week period, showing that the adaptive framework design was functioning as planned.

The brief from National Museum of Wales was linked to their Art 100 initiative – taking their artworks out of the museum and using them to bring communities together, and support different types of conversation. Literature Wales’s brief was to explore how interactive, immersive, and location-based technologies could extend and build on their Land of Legends mythology and folklore mapping project.

We guided and supported the students through the complex creative process of ideation, concept and narrative development, exploring different forms of storytelling experience, and getting them used to the qualities // challenges // opportunities presented by the technologies.

Students undertook research to identify potential stories and characters associated with Cardiff and Welsh heritage and folklore, as well as analysing the materials shared by the ‘client’ organisations. They engaged in visioning and audience experience planning, and visited different sites around Cardiff and to map out their story-trail routes. Scripting came next and developing the Tone of Voice for their key characters and experience, followed by on-site filming and recording their pieces.

Destination

Students decided to created two trails:

The first is a 360° interactive film trail that takes audiences from the pier on Cardiff Bay up to the Penarth cliffs, and focuses more on the mythological storytelling.

The second is a location-based audio trail around Cardiff Bay, hosted on the Echoes platform, and focusing more on local social history and the evolution of Cardiff. (This was also placed into a 360° film environment for demonstration purposes)

You can experience the 360° films, with all hotspots stitched together, via this link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJf9KyE31PyDFlXGg7yN8K7bfog8pOmiP

If you’re in Cardiff, you can download the Echoes app and explore the location-based audio trail here: https://explore.echoes.xyz/profiles/xAtfogBDho0NHeV9

Working together, both groups developed a concept that used the bard, Taliesin, an historic and folkloric Welsh figure, to act as the key, timeless narrator character, inspired by his evocative phrase, “I have been. I have seen. I have known.”

This enabled them to develop a strong time of voice, building on this prophetic character, and use the timeless nature of Taliesin to bring together a wide variety of stories that span centuries of factual and fictional storytelling.

The final pieces were showcased at the university in a presentation to staff, students, and the ‘client’ organisations, followed by a Q&A session, and live demonstration of the experiences using Occulus headsets. Here, we learned that one of the students has been accepted into a heritage traineeship position, and cited this project as a key USP for her interview, and other students shared how this project will help them in moving into postgraduate study.

You can visit the main project website here: https://cardiffjournalism.co.uk/immersivemedialab/immersive-heritage-folklore/

Insights

Students at university are in need to industry exposure and engagement to develop the practical skills needed to augment their learning, and better prepare them for the world of work. Industry partnerships and collaborative project models are powerful tools for delivering this added value to the student experience and university offer. These generative networks will be increasingly essential as universities look to respond, adapt and evolve in 2022 and beyond.

The main recurring challenge of this project has been the timing in the academic year, with final projects, exams, dissertations, and students leaving for work or holidays – this is something that will be a key factor in planning future delivery of this framework.

Storytelling is an act and has a performative quality to it. Due to the tight (and subsequently compressed) timeline, space for participants to explore different ways of performing their scripts for the different mediums became squeezed – this is a crucial part of the process and safeguarding time for this will be reflected in future deliveries of this framework.

Are you looking to offer more for your students, to develop networks of industry partners, and to empower students through practical skills development and the creation of original work that enhances their employability, then we’d love to speak with you.