This Digital Storytelling Workshop is hosted by Bradford UNESCO City of Film in collaboration with the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC), and is facilitated by Dr Antonia Liguori from the Storytelling Academy and Dr Rob Harland from the Graphic Design Research Unit at Loughborough University as part of the Design Outreach: Utilising Graphic Heritage for Heritage Interpretation funded project.

Bradford UNESCO City of Film has been invited by the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC) to host an inaugural scoping study to explore the relevance and importance of the Bradford’s urban graphic heritage for local-residents, heritage practitioners, policy makers, public administrators, not-for-profit organisations, government agencies, creative designers and academic researchers.
This one-day interdisciplinary event, centred around digital storytelling, provides a mix of shared discussion, hands-on workshop activities, photo-documentation, and practical outcomes, that foreground Bradford’s pre-eminent historic
urban fabric and its contemporary multicultural identity.

The event provides the basis for developing future resources to be made available to the wider UNESCO City of Film network, UNESCO Creative Cities, and other designations worldwide.

Graphic Heritage: What is it?
Graphic Heritage is an emerging concept that is still evolving and being defined. For the purposes of this workshop, it refers to the use of graphic objects as a form of interpretation and presentation about urban enviroments sensitive to heritage. Hence, it is referred to in the title of the workshop as urban graphic heritage in acknowledgement that graphic heritage may also apply to other topics, such as sport or food.
In the context of cities, towns, and villages, urban graphic objects can help to communicate and interpret the value and essence of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in at least two ways:
Intrinsic, as an embedded element in or as urban heritage at different levels, for example, as building adornment such as the liver bird atop the Liver Building, Liverpool, or the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing in London;
Extrinsic, as an independent thing that informs about an urban heritage setting, for example, place names, pedestrian signage, commemorative plaques, or public art.