Rise Up! Reconnect. Rebuild. Recreate

Monday the 20th of June – Wednesday the 22nd of June 2022 
Loughborough University, UK

Please, download here the Conference Programme (final version).

Keynote Speakers

Tony Phillips

Listening to the Voice of the Other: Lessons for the audio industry

An experienced radio and podcasting creator and executive, his career has taken Tony from producing, reporting and Commissioning Editor at BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 (where he created The Listening Project), to Vice President at WNYC Studios, New York and to Broccoli Content/Sony Music in the UK. At WNYC he created and developed A Piece of Work with Abbi Jacobson, made in partnership with MoMA, was the Executive Producer on Freakonomics Radio with Stephen Dubner and managed  editorial partnerships with Snap Judgement, Science Friday, The Anthropocene Reviewed and Sci-Show Tangents.

Most recently, Tony wrote and presented an Archive on 4 for Radio 4 on the tragic life of David Oluwale and he was executive producer with independent TV company Northern Town Productions on a Liverpool-based documentary film for Sky Arts entitled Statues Redressed. 

Joe Lambert

Waking Up Is Hard To Do:
Why Sustaining Democracy Requires New Stories

Joe Lambert founded the Center for Digital Storytelling (now StoryCenter) in 1994. He and his colleagues developed a computer training and arts program known as The Digital Storytelling Workshop.

Joe and his staff have traveled the world to spread the practice of digital storytelling, to all 50 US States and some 79 countries. Lambert is author of Digital Storytelling: Story Work for Urgent Times (6th Edition, Digital Diner Press) and his more recent Seven Stages: Story and the Human  
Experience (Digital Diner Press).

In 2022, Lambert celebrates his 39th year as a non-profit Executive Director, having evolved his work from the 1980s and early 1990s in the performing arts.

Diane Louise Jordan

Why It Is So Hard To Be Heard

TV and Radio broadcaster Diane Louise Jordan has served UK audiences and communities for over 30 years. With family at her core, Diane’s influence reaches beyond any colour, class, creed or generation with her mission to seek always to understand.

In 1990 Diane made front page news as the first black presenter of BBC1’s legendary Blue Peter. Diane has hosted many iconic British programmes, including BBC1’s Songs of Praise, and BBC Radio Two’s long running The Sunday Hour. 

Diane has dedicated the last three years to creating legacy through her oral history archive The Making of Black Britain, which recently launched on Google Arts and Culture, exploring what it means to be British, giving the people of Britain the chance to Speak, Listen, Belong 

Our Committee

Conference Chairs:

Antonia Liguori and Michael Wilson (Loughborough University, UK)

Conference Committee Members:

Lyndsey Bakewell (DeMontfort University, UK)
Jessica Berman (University of Maryland, Baltimore County UMBC, US)
Bev Bickel (UMBC, US)
Matthew Decker (Montgomery College, US)
Patrick Desloge (Hong Kong University)
Lindsay DiCuirci (UMBC, US)
Sara Bachman Ducey (Montgomery College, US)
Mark Dunford (University of Westminster/DigiTales, UK)
Daniela Gachago (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa)

Jamie Gillan (Montgomery College, US)
Pip Hardy (Patient Voices, UK)
Brooke Hessler (StoryCenter, US)
Grete Jamissen (OsloMet, Norway)
Tricia Jenkins (DigiTales, UK)
Charlotte Keniston (UMBC, US)
Joe Lambert (StoryCenter, US)
Michalis Meimaris (University of Athens, Greece)
Daniel Onyango (HopeRaisers, Kenya)
Ngozi Oparah (Loughborough University, UK / StoryCenter, US)
Philippa Rappoport (Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology, US)
Bill Shewbridge (UMBC, US)
Burcu Simsek (Hacettepe University, Turkey)
Tony Sumner (Patient Voices, UK)
Pam Sykes (University of the Western Cape, South Africa)
Chris Thomson (Jisc, UK)

Story Work for a Just Future

Exploring Diverse Experiences and Methods within an International Community of Practice 

Storytelling has been defined as ‘the artform of social interaction’ (Wilson, 1998), not only for its inner dynamics, but also for its power to unlock grass-roots knowledge, explore dilemmas, develop community resilience, engender change.

Stories can generate empathy and trust in the audience and at the same time demonstrate their usefulness because they have the power to give meaning to human behaviors and to trigger emotions (Bourbonnais and Michaud, 2018). ‘This happens because stories are perceived as vectors of truth. They also challenge the meaning of truth itself and suggest a deeper reflection on how various perspectives embedded in personal narratives about contested themes and events can generate multiple truths’ (Liguori, 2020).

Yet we acknowledge the existence of multiple truths when we recognise, as the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observes, ‘the danger of a single story’ (2009). As she describes, ‘because our lives and our cultures are composed of a series of overlapping stories, if we hear only a single story about another person, culture, or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding’. In a time of worrying ‘critical misunderstandings’ worldwide, we want to explore with you the value of Applied Storytelling as a tool to co/re-develop ‘A Just Future’.

The main contact for the DST Conference 2022 in Loughborough is Antonia Liguori.

Call For Papers and Presentation Proposals

Our conference is part of a multi-institutional, multinational, three-year process and programme, started last year with our successful 24hour online marathon – organised by Loughborough University (UK), StoryCenter (US) UMBC – University of Maryland Baltimore County (US), Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology (US), Montgomery College (US), Patient Voices (UK) – that includes a face-to-face event in Loughborough in June 2022 and a series of follow-on activities in the Washington, D.C. area and in Maryland, USA, in 2023.

Our conference will host various events (both in person and online) in its structure for inclusion of diverse perspectives and voices. In addition to academic papers, workshops, and roundtable discussions, we encourage practitioners from community settings, artists and students to contribute and express their creativity through various formats (short performances, artworks, video/audio submissions, etc.).

Within the umbrella theme of Story Work for a Just Future ,explored across our three-year programme of events, and in response to the current pandemic, for DST 2022 Rise Up! we are particularly interested in proposals with a focus on how our Story Work could help us and our communities Reconnect, Rebuild, Recreate.

To frame your ideas you could also consider (but not limited to) the following Re-words and use them as lenses through which look at context, content or practice:

  • Revive
  • Restore
  • Recover
  • Rewrite

All interested conference contributors are invited to share their work through six types of contributions, but we also welcome other formats.

Conference Formats: 

  • Academic paper (15 minutes)
  • Workshop (45 minutes)
  • Roundtable discussion (45 minutes)
  • Short performance (to be defined on a one-to-one basis) 
  • Artwork (to be defined on a one-to-one basis) 
  • Video/Audio submission  
  • Other: If you think you don’t  fit into one of these formats, please email us with your idea! 

Submission guidelines & key dates:

  • 250-word abstract to describe your proposal (please, specify which format)
  • Include a title, your name, email address, and affiliation if applicable
  • Submit your proposal via email to Saedstorytelling@lboro.ac.uk 
  • Deadline for abstract submission: 27th February 2022
  • Notification of acceptance: 31st March 2022
  • Early bird registration opens: 15th March 2022
  • General Registration opens: 30th April 2022 
  • Registration closes: 10th June 2022 (EXTENDED)
  • Conference presentations, videos, materials to be sent in advance by 5th June 2022. Special arrangements will be made on a one-to-one basis for other formats.
  • Early bird: £180 (£80 student and practitioner rate) 
  • Regular registration: £220 (£100 student and practitioner rate; £60 day rate)
  • Digital participation: It is our intention to make digital participation possible. Please write to Sally Bellman for more information.