Experimenting digital Storytelling - To Amuda with Love...

"නිර්මලී, එයා මට සලකන්නෙ වීරයෙකුට වගේ. අපේ ඇස් ඇතුලෙ ත්‍රස්තවාදියෙක් උනාට උඹේ ස්වාමිපුරුෂයාව උඹටත් වීරයෙක් වෙන්න ඇති අමුදා. අපි හැමෝම ලෝකෙ දිහා බැලුවෙ පාට පාට කණ්නාඩිවලට මුවා වෙලා. ඒත් අපි හැමෝම හීන පොදියක් කරතියාගෙන අමාරුවෙන් ජීවිතේ ඇහිඳින මිනිස්සු. 

මං උඹෙන් ඉල්ලන්නෙ එක දෙයයි. මං කරපු පව්කාරකමට මේ ලෝකෙ එළියවත් නොදැකපු ලේ කැටියෙක්ගෙ ඉරණම තීන්දු කරන්න දෙන්න එපා අමුදා!...."

No you are not at a wrong site!

This is a story with a historical background of social media. This extract is from, Sri Lanka's first Facebook crowd written book.

Crowd writing is a relatively new term to Sri Lanka, yet it is   a popular Facebook activity  all around the world. The main purpose of it is,  creating artistic content as group efforts which could be named as collective creativity.

This Facebook crowd writing activity took place on November, 2014 as a reconciliation project.The main focus of the project was to write a story with a crowd of people with same ethnicity, about a plight of a person that belongs to a different ethnicity.

10 project leaders were appointed for the task by the             project coordinator,UN conflict annalist  Michael MacDonald. Each project leader was given a script with the beginning of the story and  rest was there to be woven by each member of the group. No one was forced to write according to any agenda, and all the divers imaginations were heartily welcomed to the story. 

The project was called, In bodies not our own. 

It was an eye opening experience to see reconciliation with a new perspective. Team leaders were requested to create either a Facebook page or a group as the sphere. Therefore a Facebook group was created by me, with the name 'Cham's team'. 30 members were added to the group initially, on the 2nd day another 15 members requested to join the group, the group setting was changed from private to public and let anyone interested to join. This group was for Sinhala Buddhist ethnic group, therefore writers with other ethnic backgrounds were directed to the other 9 groups which were working on their stories parallel  to mine. 

This was the first post, posted by me to introduce the prompt of the story.

Interested individuals were allowed to continue the story either in  English or Sinhala provided that group leader would translate the non- English parts to English later.

It was a fun filled learning experience. Story was built with the idea any person should be able to express true feelings towards reconciliation without any interfere through the story.First I didn't have much faith on this method, whether a group of people step by step would be able to represent their collective perception on reconciliation but sooner the group started commenting  all my doubts vanished.

Within 10 days the story was picturesquely built up  with 100 comments by  34 individuals. The project was successfully completed. 

This learning experience changed my perspective on Facebook, it was known to me as a sphere that I could be politically active, a space that enables me to get connected with individuals, yet creating collective perceptions on such a creative method was alien to me. This was an amazing out of the box creative assignment .  

Please feel free to visit and leave your comments on this Facebook storytelling project.

Facebook - Cham's Team

Constructive Criticism is heartily welcome!

For more digital storytelling please visit...
Chaminie Bliss

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