Author name: ArtedelContatto

During the first two days of July, we were happy, as project leader, to invite in the beautiful spaces of AMKA Onlus in the San Lorenzo neighbourhood, in the heart of Rome, the partners from Portugal for the presence meeting of the European project Mediascapes.
These two days, together with the team of teachers from the IC Emma Castelnuovo of Rome and the Escola Secundaria of Viriato and all the project partners, were precious to talk together about the results achieved in these months of activity and those still to be achieved in the continuation of the project, but they were also a unique opportunity to see the transmedia products realised by the students projected.
Among teachers, trainers and all those present, the exchange of knowledge and practical skills on Transmedia Storytelling acquired activity after activity could not be missed.

And like any well-organised in-presence project meeting, we organised tours for our Portuguese fellow travellers around Rome and the Ponte di Nona district, thanks to the collaboration of Coop. SS Pietro e Paolo, to discover the culture of our places.

After months of activities carried out by all partners of the Erasmus+ Mediascapes project, including methodology research and workshop meetings, we have almost reached the end of this journey. Between Italy and Portugal, the last stages took place in the schools involved: four days of restitution of the audiovisual products realised during the transmedia storytelling workshops, characterised by the dialogue between the participating students, trainers and teachers, but above all of maximum expression of the theoretical and practical skills acquired meeting after meeting.
These are the moments in which it is possible to see that the objective we set ourselves with this project, i.e. to experiment with and promote the languages linked to storytelling and transmediality in education, has been pleasantly received and completed with the best desirable results.

RESTITUTION DAYS IN ITALIAN CLASSROOMS

At the I.C. Emma Castelnuovo in Rome, each class participating in the project dedicated a day to the restitution activity.
The young male and female students of class IV told the story of how they approached transmedia storytelling, in a course that saw them grappling with stop motion, podcasts and a graphics tablet, to tell a story based on a theme they had previously tackled in class and which had particularly impressed them, namely the ancient art of origami. Seeing the material created in synergy with the entire class group, recounting the learning experience with the help of the expert trainers, and sharing what was understood about the power of transmedia characterised this first restitution meeting.

The second day of restitution, which saw the two participating classes from the Secondary School, was also animated by the same activities of dialogue, confrontation and expression of what they had learnt by experimenting with interactive cinema, with interviews, theatrical improvisation techniques, photography, and double interviews. This day was also dedicated to the narration of the final product they were able to realise: the teamwork of all the students led to the production of an audiovisual product that talks about them, their experiences and emotions as inhabitants of the Ponte di Nona district.

RESTITUTION DAYS IN PORTUGAL

Also in Viseu, Portugal, among the classes of the Escola Secundaria Viriato, two days were dedicated to a restitution activity to present the results obtained after months of fruitful training sessions. The first session was a meeting between participating students, teachers and expert trainers, in which they had the opportunity to talk about the activities carried out and to critically evaluate together the results of the Medascapes‘ workshops.

In particular, space was left for the showcasing of the work process carried out by the students, to emphasise its importance and success. All the boys and girls expressed all the synergy and motivated participation with which they worked, as well as the theoretical knowledge and techniques acquired on transmedia storytelling, all necessary elements for the conception and production of On the Move, the final short film made, of which they were able to recount the multiple micro-narratives that composed it and its meanings.

During the second session, the students were able to present the entire project to their parents, explaining its organisation and objectives, the transmedia storytelling workshops and their experiences. Of course, all the useful materials resulting from these efforts and, above all, On the Move, could also be shown. After the viewing, the meeting ended with a stimulating discussion around a concept that, we are sure, will remain in the minds of all present for some time to come, and which will provide further opportunity to talk about transmedia storytelling and transmedia logics applied to audiovisual production: is On the Move a film? What is missing for this story, the material filmed and produced, to be considered a film? Can we ‘keep moving’?

For the Mediascapes project, between January and March 2024 partner Cine Clube de Viseu conducted a series of workshops themed Transmedia Storytelling in the Escola Secundária Viriato (in Viseu).
From practicing storytelling to editing the material produced, through the various workshops the participating students were able to create transmedia narrative products that were created and shared through different media.  

STORIES FROM THE CINE CLUBE DE VISEU WORKSHOPS 

Storytelling
The first workshop meetings allowed participants to get in touch with the practice of storytelling. Guided by Alice Santos, Carla Augusto and Mariana Duarte, they were able to devote themselves to developing their creative thinking, acquiring strategies and creative processes useful for constructing a story with themes close to their own cultural universe and interests, even touching on important issues such as bullying and interculturalism. Exploring the endless narrative possibilities offered by the use of media, students felt pushed to tell their own stories freely, to listen to the stories of others and to work in groups, thus constructing the story underlying the final product. 

Animated cinema and stop motion
Animated cinema and the stop motion technique were the theme of the second block of workshop meetings. With the help of Margarida Pessanha and Graça Gomes, the smartphones, professional equipment, PCs and graphics tablets were the media with which to practice, developing creativity and manual drawing and cropping skills to the fullest and, above all, acquiring the basics of combining animation with the final transmedia narrative.

Sound design and filming
For the completion of an audiovisual product, one cannot miss the workshop meetings dedicated to sound design and video filming. Students, with the mentoring  of José Pedro Pinto, were guided through the impact of sound in films and in to the recording and post-production phases of dialogues, ambient sounds and music, freely choosing the space inside and outside the school most suitable for their scene, and then tried their hand at filming. With the guidance of Inês Alves, all the participants experimented with the use of cameras, sound, clapperboard, secretarial work and actorly expression: the youngs felt spurred to get involved themselves, working as actors and as camera operators, strictly adhering to the techniques they had learned and critically reasoning about the emotional manipulation that music can perform on images.

Thanks to the final support of Inês Alves, José Pedro Pinto, Carla Augusto, Mariana Duarte and a basic approach to editing a few clips, both participating classes were able to complete the realization of an audiovisual product, encountering the challenges inherent in this creative process and understanding firsthand what lies behind it. Collaboration among students, classes, teachers, trainers and coordinators was the key to success.

COMMENTS FROM CARLA AUGUSTO

What was it that impressed you the most? 
“On the one hand, the school organization, with all its disciplines, programs and schedules, which define and shape the life and time of students, the nature of their learning experiences, relationships and participation. The entry of creative entities and projects from outside the school allows us to validate another way of being at school. When students are part of creative processes they are more free to participate in a more autonomous and critical way, driven by a personal and authentic interest, experiencing a register different from the existing right and wrong, a register of search, conversation, rehearsal, attempts, satisfaction , criticism, recognition.
Therefore, the pragmatism of the young students in the way they participated in the different activities was very clear about what they think these creative proposals should be: they should not be the same as classroom activities, they should offer practical experiences, they should have the necessary time ( which should come from the curriculum and not from their free time), they must allow each person to find their own way of participating, they must allow reflection on individual and project paths and results.
I was very impressed by the school that appears in the final film: an ethereal space and luminous students.”

In your opinion, what did the kids like most or what worked best?
“Having attended all the workshops, I would say that what they liked most was DOING, using equipment, trying new techniques, working alone but being accompanied and seeing concrete results. That’s why they really enjoyed doing animation, recording and editing sound and filming. Above all, filming, being in front of and behind the camera.”

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At I.C. Emma Castelnuovo in Rome, the workshops based on the creative and participative practice of Transmedia Storytelling continued between April and May, this time involving a primary school class. Nine meetings in which the students were able to experiment the creation of different creative materials and media content for the composition of a short film, playing with various techniques including animation, filming and podcasting.

THE FEEDBACK BY THE TRAINER MARIO CIRILLO
The workshops at the primary school were led this time by Mr. Mario Cirillo, an expert in stop motion techniques, with the support of collaborators Roberto Romano and Giacomo Pierro.
The starting point was the themes discussed in class and the construction of the narrative, where the participants went through the different narrative forms to start constructing their own stories. The stories then took shape through the origami technique, as the class chose to do. Through the use of this particular art form, which involved the class in the creation of paper origami and allowed them to express their creativity and practical skills, it was possible to bring a short story to life. The story was then digitally animated using the stop-motion technique.

In the first phase, participants learned the basics of writing for film, understanding the concept of the three-act story and the hero’s journey as applied to animation. They then worked in groups to write their story step by step, carefully choosing characters and plot twists, and then studied models to create the most useful and imaginative origami. In a process of cooperative learning, the whole class showed great creative skills and an ability to find original narrative solutions from simple clues. With the materials in place, all that remained was to create the magic!

After drafting the script, it was time to film, split between stop-motion and fiction. The students were able to photograph and film, using both professional equipment such as cameras but also digital devices that are part of their everyday lives, such as tablets. Shot after shot, moving the origami, the students understood how to animate each object. All this was accompanied by the filming of the fictional part in which they tried acting. Immersed in transmediality, they finally moved on to experimenting with podcasting in English. Between microphones and headphones, taking turns to record themselves, they decided to read short parts of the story and dialogue they had created beforehand. 

The result is a short film that combines different media languages, from stop-motion animation to fictional filming and podcasting.Each participant was able to learn the most important tools for writing and creating a story through which they could express themselves and welcome the ideas of others in a context of cooperation and collaboration.

After the initial activity of methodological research on Transmedia Storytelling in the field of education, the workshops started in both the schools where the project is active. The workshop activities, based on the creative and participatory practice of Transmedia Storytelling, develop and implement what was collected in the propaedeutic phase of methodological research, promoting the development of soft skills, meta-cognitive and emotional learning of students with special educational needs.

THE WORKSHOPS LED BY THE TRAINER STEFANO CIPRESSI: SHORT FILMS, STORYTELLING AND DIGITAL DRAWING
In Italy, at I.C. Emma Castelnuovo in Rome, three classes took part in the Mediascapes workshops. During activities, which took place over 7 meetings, different types of media were employed from a transmedia perspective:
-Video, by filming in class through the guided use of professional equipment and in outdoor spaces by exploiting the potential of smartphones;
-Audio, by working on soundscapes and voiceovers;
-Drawing, by experimenting with the use of graphic tablets;
-Photography, by conducting group exercises. 

All the materials produced by the students will make up the short film that will then be edited and will constitute a work in progress of the activities of this first part of the workshop meetings.
The theme that characterized the students’ work was that of their neighborhood, narrated through the emotions, problems and contradictions they experience daily. Fundamental was to stimulate the participants to tell their stories freely, putting into play theatrical-style exercises thanks to the presence of two expert trainers in this field, Mr. Eugenio Banella and Ms. Francesca Marras, working on listening, empathy, exchange and dialogue with the group. This initial approach gradually encouraged the boys and girls to talk openly about their experiences in the neighborhood, sometimes even in a personal and intimate way, and in this way, through the media products they produced, especially the audiovisual ones with the help of the trainer Stefano Cipressi, they were able to clearly express the way they experience the neighborhood they live in and the activities they carry out there, as well as how the neighborhood itself influences their lives.

The creative practice of Transmedia Storytelling allowed the children to experience the classroom and the moment of exchange with the peer group as a moment when they were both actors and spectators at the same time, i.e. sharing without limits and learning to listen without prejudice, having fun and being able to overcome emotional obstacles. The value and potential of Transmedia Storytelling as a teaching method was positively received by the students, who actively participated in the activities, brought their own skills into play and understood how the combination of different media content can create a storytelling that tells about themselves.

If you have read our interview series, you already know that with the project “Mediascapes. Transmedia digital Storytelling for audiovisual and media literacy skills” we want to explore this form of communication and storytelling and effective teaching methodology through the conscious use of various media, analogue and digital. And precisely for this reason, we developed a methodological research in which the stories of teachers, experts and researchers on the subject are a key component!

OUR LAST INTERVIEW: Mr. Corrado Petrucco

Having reached the end of our interview journey, our last notes come from the discussion on Transmedia Storytelling we had with Mr. Corrado Petrucco, Associate Professor at the University of Padua. He brought out the importance of the creative process of storytelling production, which in his view should always be divided into two phases in order to be functional. To this end, he distinguishes a first phase in which the participants are trained in the correct use of the various tools and equipment for creating media content, since “it is necessary for them to learn, for example, how to shoot with a video camera, how to distinguish between the different shots, and not to be tied to shooting only with their smartphones”; the second phase, on the other hand, focuses on the work of self-discovery and self-discovery of one’s own ideas, in order to construct a narrative that is a perfect expression of the self. “There has to be a balance between the visual, spontaneous, media part and a metacognitive reflection on the content they are going to develop, which will be verbalized in text format. In this way you can develop dual skills: media and textual, verbal”.

From these considerations, coupled with the account of a storytelling experience in which there was the creation of a digital storytelling in video format and the transposition of the story into paper format (comic strip), we believe it is of fundamental importance to share with you a reflection on the importance and benefits of the induction of various media in the classroom for the creation of storytelling. Mr. Petrucco said that by letting students experiment in the creation of storytelling, both digital and transmedia, they can really understand that whatever media they choose to use will always be an effective support, capable of generating media, narrative and, above all, expressive skills, but also of learning.

As already stated in our previous article, the aim of the project ‘Mediascapes. Transmedia digital Storytelling for audiovisual and media literacy skills’ is to shed light on the methodology of Transmedia Storytelling, a powerful form of communication and at the same time an effective teaching method that is still not very well known among the younger generations and students.

For this reason, the project’s first action was completely focused on carrying out research on Transmedia Storytelling, to create a reference point for young people, students, teachers, researchers, trainers and all those interested in understanding this practice, especially when applied to teaching. Our researchers have focused on a wide variety of texts and essays, to which it was added a ‘field research’ during which we interviewed lecturers and researchers, as well as professional storytellers who recounted their valuable experiences and key reflections on the topic of transmediality.

SECOND ROUND OF INTERVIEWS: Mr. Valerio Di Paola and Ms.Anna Rita Vizzari

During this second appointment, the first interviewed was Mr. Valerio Di Paola, lecturer at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ where he is also involved in the dissemination of transmedia logics combined with audiovisuals. Sharing this experience in the interview, he emphasized the benefits that this methodology can bring if it is well integrated in school education. In particular, he gave a brief and valuable account of the benefits of introducing transmedia logics into distance didactics that were made necessary in the pandemic of 2020. He described how during the pandemic and the consequent lockdown, a process of transmedialisation of teaching was necessary to make the virtual classes interesting: using social media, online repositories, devices to create video-photographic content became the way to make teaching transmedial. In addition to discovering the potential of what students were already using on a daily basis, a relevant aspect was the great development of creativity that this process generated: more personalisation, self-expression, exploration of new techniques and ideas.
Finally, Mr. Di Paola also added that in transmedial teaching, it is important not only to distribute sources across various media but also to consider feedback, including the production methods that each of them chooses to adopt for the creation of new content.

The second person interviewed was Ms. Anna Rita Vizzari, literature teacher in secondary school but also a lecturer in Storytelling workshops. According to her approach, it is important that the experience of transmediality is presented to students, especially the youngest ones, in a natural way, i.e. making them naturally part of the curricular activities. The most interesting example she shared was: ‘Students must be encouraged to be free to make videos even during the activities they are doing. For example, students using Minecraft can create a narrative that takes up the salient points of a history chapter or literature text. More concretely, they can simulate how soldiers lived in the trenches in the First World War, set up a scenario with the tools Minecraft provides and then show the characters moving around in it and make a narrative by recording it’.
The most important aspect that Ms. Vizzari emphasized that, thanks to all the different media and different ways of using them, this methodology can also be useful for students with special needs, as it is a compensatory tool that allows the enhancement of different intelligences and the growth of motivation thanks to the customisation of the paths and the creation of a product.

As already stated in our previous article, the aim of the project ‘Mediascapes. Transmedia digital Storytelling for audiovisual and media literacy skills’ is to shed light on the methodology of Transmedia Storytelling, a powerful form of communication and at the same time an effective teaching method that is still not very well known among the younger generations and students.

For this reason, the project’s first action was completely focused on carrying out research on Transmedia Storytelling, to create a reference point for young people, students, teachers, researchers, trainers and all those interested in understanding this practice, especially when applied to teaching. Our researchers have focused on a wide variety of texts and essays, to which it was added a ‘field research’ during which we interviewed lecturers and researchers, as well as professional storytellers who recounted their valuable experiences and key reflections on the topic of transmediality.

SECOND ROUND OF INTERVIEWS: Mr. Valerio Di Paola and Ms.Anna Rita Vizzari

During this second appointment, the first interviewed was Mr. Valerio Di Paola, lecturer at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ where he is also involved in the dissemination of transmedia logics combined with audiovisuals. Sharing this experience in the interview, he emphasized the benefits that this methodology can bring if it is well integrated in school education. In particular, he gave a brief and valuable account of the benefits of introducing transmedia logics into distance didactics that were made necessary in the pandemic of 2020. He described how during the pandemic and the consequent lockdown, a process of transmedialisation of teaching was necessary to make the virtual classes interesting: using social media, online repositories, devices to create video-photographic content became the way to make teaching transmedial. In addition to discovering the potential of what students were already using on a daily basis, a relevant aspect was the great development of creativity that this process generated: more personalisation, self-expression, exploration of new techniques and ideas.
Finally, Mr. Di Paola also added that in transmedial teaching, it is important not only to distribute sources across various media but also to consider feedback, including the production methods that each of them chooses to adopt for the creation of new content.

The second person interviewed was Ms. Anna Rita Vizzari, literature teacher in secondary school but also a lecturer in Storytelling workshops. According to her approach, it is important that the experience of transmediality is presented to students, especially the youngest ones, in a natural way, i.e. making them naturally part of the curricular activities. The most interesting example she shared was: ‘Students must be encouraged to be free to make videos even during the activities they are doing. For example, students using Minecraft can create a narrative that takes up the salient points of a history chapter or literature text. More concretely, they can simulate how soldiers lived in the trenches in the First World War, set up a scenario with the tools Minecraft provides and then show the characters moving around in it and make a narrative by recording it’.
The most important aspect that Ms. Vizzari emphasized that, thanks to all the different media and different ways of using them, this methodology can also be useful for students with special needs, as it is a compensatory tool that allows the enhancement of different intelligences and the growth of motivation thanks to the customisation of the paths and the creation of a product.

With the Erasmus+ project ‘Mediascapes. Transmedia digital Storytelling for audiovisual and media literacy skills’, we want to open a window on Transmedia Storytelling in order to shed light on this powerful form of communication and effective teaching methodology.

Our first objective was to carry out a methodological research that could be a point of reference for young people, students, teachers, researchers, trainers and all those interested in understanding the practice of Transmedia Storytelling. As well as relying on diverse texts and essays as traditional bibliographic support, we also decided to carry out ‘field research’, i.e. interviewing teachers, researchers and professional storytellers who shared valuable first-hand experiences and insights. 

Our first interview was with Ms. Simona Tirocchi, Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the University of Turin. She coordinated the Italian unit of the project TRANSMEDIA LITERACY. Exploiting transmedia skills and informal learning strategies to improve formal education funded under the Horizon 2020 programme.
An interesting moment of the interview was trying to identify 3 keywords that could define Transmedia Storytelling. The ones that the professor chose are:

1. STORY: The significance of the story and self-narrative in storytelling, revealing the identity, needs, expectations, and preferences of users.
2. MULTIMODALITY: The importance of using various communicative modes and representations in storytelling, especially in today’s multimedia landscape in which different forms of expression compose different content disseminated through different platforms.
3. CREATIVITY: Creating transmedia storytelling requires creative ideas and the ability to express oneself creatively across different media formats.

The second person interviewed was Mr. Enrico Granzotto, specialized in storytelling and immersive projects, some of which also involve Transmedia Storytelling. With him we wanted to discuss the benefits of transmedia storytelling in learning processes. An important aspect discussed was the fact that it’s the combination of several media that enables a powerful acquisition of knowledge, a process that articulates between textual content and audiovisual products, between narratives that can be listened to and others that can be experienced first-hand through virtual reality. To say it with his words, being able to interact in a hybrid manner between cinema, video games, virtual reality, television series, but also literature, leads to relating to different communication systems, which are pervasive, plural, in the contemporary mediasphere. In this way, users are able to explore different modes of communication but also different tools for acquiring knowledge, as knowing and relating to different digital and analogue tools offers further ways for accessing knowledge.