Multilingual Digital Storytelling

This chapter examines how and why drama has become a key feature of a funded global literacy project. Critical Connections (2012 - ongoing) involves young people learning English and other languages through the process of digital storytelling in over a hundred pre-school, primary, secondary, and community-based complementary schools in seventeen countries. I present research on how drama can be used to support young participants in exploring texts, ideas, and narratives and move from talk to performance and filmmaking. Digital storytelling comes from a background of experimental theatre, folk culture, and cultural activism. Role-playing, developing characters’ backstories, and experimenting with how the story is told are crucial stages in the digital storytelling process. Transformative pedagogy unpins the way the Critical Connections project is implemented, and learners become more agentive and imaginative in their use of English and other languages through storyboarding, rehearsing, translating, subtitling, and editing. The aspect of the Critical Connections work presented here considers how drama is a transformative pedagogy in practice. Digital storytelling can provide the context for young people to play and improvise with their learning in English. This process of constant experimentation, revision, and reflection is viewed ‘as the essence of successful Digital Storytelling’.