Story‐Making as Methodology: Disrupting Dominant Stories through Multimedia Storytelling

Abstract

In this essay, we discuss multimedia story-making methodologies developed through Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice that investigates the power of the arts, especially story, to positively influence decision makers in diverse sectors. Our story-making methodology brings together majority and minoritized creators to represent previously unattended experiences (e.g., around mind-body differences, queer sexuality, urban Indigenous identity, and Inuit cultural voice) with an aim to building understanding and shifting policies/practices that create barriers to social inclusion and justice. We analyze our ongoing efforts to rework our storytelling methodology, spotlighting acts of revising carried out by facilitators and researchers as they/we redefine methodological terms for each storytelling context, by researcher-storytellers as they/we rework material from our lives, and by receivers of the stories as we revise our assumptions about particular embodied histories and how they are defined within dominant cultural narratives and institutional structures. This methodology, we argue, contributes to the existing qualitative lexicon by providing innovative new approaches not only for chronicling marginalized/misrepresented experiences and critically researching selves, but also for scaffolding intersectional alliances and for imagining more just futures.

Telling My Tale: Reflections on the Process of Visual Storytelling for Children and Youth Living With Cystic Fibrosis and Muscular Dystrophy in Canada

“…The visual narrative, then, acts as a temporal bridge between the past, present, and future (Rich & Chalfen, 1999;Sairanen & Kumpulainen, 2014). Valentine (2008) and Rice and Mundel (2018) also remind us not to fall capture to dominant modes of conventional storytelling, such as those that are characterized by a clear protagonist, trajectory of narrative arc, obstacle, and finite, uncomplicated conclusion. For James and Valentine (2008), it is important to recognize that some stories do not end, do not subscribe to these conventional and often simplistic plot lines.…”

“…Despite an audiences' need for closure, some stories remain unresolved. As noted below in our reflection section, it is critical to embrace the multiple and polyvocal ways that people tell stories, including those that do not conform to teleological endpoints (Gastaldo et al, 2018;Rice & Mundel, 2018).…”

Healthcare providers’ engagement with eating disorder recovery narratives: opening to complexity and diversity

“…36. Carla Rice and Ingrid Mündel (2018), “Story-Making as Methodology: Disrupting Dominant Stories through Multimedia Storytelling,” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 55, no. 2: 215.…”

“…Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 17 , no.2: Art. 7, Carla Rice and Ingrid Mündel (2018), “Story Making as Methodology”…”

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“…Following recent efforts to support others with research design and knowledge production processes (Bissailion 2012; Braedley 2016; McAleese and Kilty 2019; Rice and Mündel 2018; Silver 2019), our goal with this piece is to support fellow graduate students in bringing their projects to fruition by thinking through the ordinary work and tensions involved in research—what we call “working the project.” Rather than providing a universal how to guide, we introduce an iterative, situated, relational approach to research design and proposal writing that is grounded in our feminist commitments and our everyday work experiences. We elaborate on our own ways of doing research and making change through our social and institutional work in Carleton's Department of Sociology and Anthropology.…”