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About StoryWorks

As public services throughout the UK try to ‘personalise’ what they offer, staff have started to realise the importance of seeing the world through the eyes of their patients and clients.  The power of the story is being re-discovered…

StoryWorks was established at the University of Glamorgan in January 2009 to undertake consultancy and research in the field of narrative and storytelling, with a particular  focus on  Public Services. Karen Lewis leads the unit, having joined the University from the BBC, where she was founder Producer of the BBC’s award-winning Digital Storytelling Project - Capture Wales - working alongside Creative Director  Dr. Daniel Meadows from Cardiff University.

The focus of much of the work to date has been on gathering stories from patients and service users to feed back into staff development and raise awareness of the validity of listening properly to the voices of “real people”. The stories can then be distributed by the organisation itself or can form the core content of awareness-raising sessions that StoryWorks will deliver to staff, management and/or trustees.

There has been particular interest from organisations seeking to create digital, multi-media narratives that can be distributed via websites or DVDs, and StoryWorks Development Officer, Lisa Heledd Jones, leads on this area.

Lisa has a particular expertise in digital media and storytelling, having also been a key member of the BBC’s Digital Storytelling team. She is also undertaking a Masters by Research in this field at the University.

StoryWorks is continually broadening its portfolio of work and is always keen to hear from organisations interested in working with storytelling and narrative in its many forms.

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What we offer

There is plenty of evidence that stories work as a way of discovering people’s experiences and views, and as an effective lever of change. But there is still much work to be done to establish the most effective ways to collect, analyse, present and use stories, in different contexts and with different audiences. As a matter of routine, StoryWorks evaluates what it does, and feeds that learning back into its work. It is also keen to explore new applications for stories, and new ways of drawing out their full value.

Digital Storytelling:

Digital storytelling uses accessible tools of multi-media production to enable people to share their stories in new ways. Digital Storytelling has been shown to be an extremely powerful methodology for gathering and disseminating stories based on real-life experience.

We run bespoke training workshops and also gather individual stories in a range of formats including text, video, multimedia and audio.

Some examples can be found in our Portfolio.

Staff Training:

In addition to Digital Storytelling, we can create half-day or full-day sessions to suit your organisation's needs. For example:

• Exploring the potential for patient stories to have an impact

• Story Cafe - a staff development session base on storytelling

• Building teams through organisational storytelling

Consultancy & Research:

StoryWorks offers research based activity or consultancy on an individual basis, to suit the needs of the client. We have a wide range of expertise and can tailor specific projects to meet the needs of your organisation.

 

Our ethos

Our work is underpinned by a genuine respect for the stories and the storytellers with whom we work. We endeavour to establish the most effective ways to collect, analyse, present and apply stories in different contexts and with different audiences. We are keen to explore new applications for stories, and new ways of drawing out their full value. We work closely with the commissioning organisation to ensure that appropriate ethical considerations are taken into account and issues of consent and confidentiality are respected.

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Based in the University’s Welsh Institute for Health and Social Care (WIHSC) in the Faculty of Health Sport and Science HESAS, StoryWorks maintains very strong links with the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling in the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI). This innovative cross-Faculty collaboration allows StoryWorks to draw upon a wide range of expertise in the fields of Health, Social Care and Storytelling, thus enriching the service it is able to offer to external clients and broadening the depth of academic expertise it can bring to research projects.

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