Watch the video:

Storytelling for Community Planning – Training Video from Orton Family Foundation on Vimeo.

Watch the slideshow:

Limiting a story to 25 seconds feels a bit overwhelming at first, especially if you come from a family of long-winded storytellers as I do.  25 seconds to show something, to express myself, to reveal a complex landscape, or share a wildly intense experience?  It’s a lively challenge.  I found, though, that breaking 25 seconds into 5 shots requires you to truly survey an experience, pick out the details in a seemingly grand landscape and chisel into the heart of an activity, among other things. Looking for unique angles, small details, movement vs. stillness, and noise adds to the discovery of a place or the expression of a thought. What’s more, the 25 second vignette can be a great activity to foster conversation between people familiar with the same place, but who chose or would choose different images to convey the importance of that place or to “paint that picture.”  Want to see how your neighbors and friends view the town?  Host a 5×5 potluck dinner – conversation, food, and discovering more about a place, yourself, and others.  Can’t beat that… or can you?  What are your ideas of how to use a 5×5 vignette to bring people together in conversation?

5×5: Stockholm from Ruthie on Vimeo.

SO, grab a camera, tell a story in 5 short, 5 second clips about something in, around, or about your town, and share your 5×5 with us!

Here are a few choice 5×5’s:  Letus Test, Autumn, Spring, The Bay

With Orton, we are exploring the potential role of storytelling, both traditional and digital forms, in community engagement efforts. Damariscotta has experimented with story circles and story interviews thus far as ways to bring the community together and to give everyone a voice in planning for the town’s future. Sharing stories about our connections to a place, our experiences in that place, our personal hopes for the future of that place slows us down enough to look carefully at what we value in our communities, and invites us to listen deeply to one another, to create bonds and bridges within our communities, and to work towards creative, collaborative solutions to the challenges of our times. Digital Explorations trained the story gatherers, and edited the clips and photos into this digital story to provide a brief glimpse into the project. These first-round story interviews explored residents’ connections to the town.