Course

There are no prerequisite skills or knowledge needed before taking the course. You will just require openness, curiosity and interest in learning about digital storytelling and community food growing. To do the practical activities, you will need a smartphone.

Learning Journal

When doing the course, keeping a learning journal can be helpful as it enables you to write and create written and visual notes about what you are learning as you engage in the various module activities. Some entries may be short and specific, while others reflect on what you have read or learned. Noting your reflections can deepen your learning experience. You can use a physical notebook or create a Word document to record your learning on the computer or other digital devices. The key is to make it a fun, interesting experience rather than a chore.

(Photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com)

We really hope you’ll enjoy this course!

To live well and fulfilled lives, we need to feel safe, secure and nourished on a physical, intellectual and emotional level. At the most basic level, what gives us this nourishment are shelter, food, water, a sense of love and belonging, and stories, of course. This is probably best illustrated by Leo Lionni’s children’s book about Frederick the mouse. You might remember this story from when you were a child, in fact it is one of the authors of this course favourite children’s stories:

Activity: Storytellers in your life (10 minutes)

Take a moment to reflect on the ‘storytellers’ in your own life. Who are the people in your community, family or food growing initiative that keep and share stories and memories? In your learning journal, note down some of those storytelling moments. How do they make you feel? What values do those storytellers bring into your life and your community?

As humans, we navigate our internal and external world by telling stories. Stories are how we make sense of the world around us. They also shape the way we are going to interact with the world in the future. They are one of the most powerful ways to unite people and to influence, teach and inspire others. Storytelling creates connections among people, and between people and ideas and is a very powerful way to link and share your culture, history, experiences and values with others. But storytelling requires space and food is one of the primary ways that creates space for us to share, tell and create stories. 

Activity: Exploring what is meant by ‘food’ (10 minutes)

When we refer to ‘food’ in this course, we are thinking about it in a very holistic way that includes different types and varieties, how it is grown, where it comes from and is distributed, how it is stored and processed, how it is made into a meal, with whom it is shared, and what happens to whatever is left over. We are also thinking of the multiple social and environmental impacts: effect of people’s mental and physical wellbeing; impact on planet Earth (deforestation, pollution, soil loss, loss of agro-biodiversity, pest and antibiotic resistance) and impact on communities (active or passive role in its production, food security and sovereignty, resilience and flourishing). Pick two completely different items of food (maybe one that comes from your community food growing initiative and another imported from abroad and brought in a supermarket) and explore their origins, impacts and/or benefits. Write down your reflections in your learning journal.

Click the book icon below to read the main part of this section on food and storytelling.

Community food growing for a flourishing future

In this course, we would like to introduce you to a framing of ‘resilience’ which has a greater focus on wellbeing, emotion and mental health. Telling stories that imagine a better future and community gardening are both hopeful acts that acknowledge our vulnerability. In a world where it is easy to be cynical about the future, they are acts that say “I care and I’m trying”, thus opening us up to transformational change but also potential disappointment...but we won’t know unless we try! That seed we just planted might or might not sprout, our little seedlings might wither and die, people we care about might leave our community food growing initiative and those stories we imagine might not come true. They are also acts that not only envision a better future, but are a way of enacting this future in the present moment. We refer to these acts and stories as radical hopefulness. They stem from a critical engagement with the world around us that acknowledges the issues we face right now with regards to, for example, the climate crisis and social justice and inequalities. This means acknowledging and facing any of our own difficult emotions we might have, like fear, eco-anxiety and a sense of despair. However, acting with radical hopefulness means responding to those emotions with care and putting this care into practice. Community food growing itself is a way of acting with care by engaging in an alternative form of food production that challenges the dominant agro-ecological food system and in a way that is often deeply connected to other people.

We can also put this into practice by telling radically hopeful stories, so stories that acknowledge difficult situations and challenges, but also show us ways to engage in those situations and leave us feeling empowered. These are the kinds of stories that we want to tell together during this project. Madeleine Jubilee Saito’s comics linked below illustrate the spirit of radical hopefulness beautifully. They also highlight the emotional impact of visual communication and the potential power of visual storytelling.

 © Madeleine Jubilee Saito https://madeleinejubileesaito.net/

Take a moment to note your thoughts and feelings as you see the comic.

Kath Burton’s story about Lavender Place is also a great example of such a radically hopeful story. Her film tells the story of Lavender Place, which is currently facing eviction. Even though engaging with this reality is painful, Kath chose to tell this story to acknowledge and remember how important this place has become for her and the community: 

Even though they do not know yet what will come next, telling these stories can help to focus on what we want and need in our lives, as a basis for new community relationships.

Victoria Emanuelle’s story about her experience setting up a community food growing initiative in her college is also a great example of radical hopefulness. Victoria’s story clearly shows the difficulties she was facing during lockdown that led her to setting up a community food growing initiative, as well as the difficulties of creating and maintaining a community. Yet, her story also shows all the warm and wonderful moments in between and their potential impact:

But why is our approach aimed at catalysing flourishing communities through food growing centred around visual storytelling? Through the use of colour, composition and framing, visual representations such as drawings, photos or videos can elicit strong emotions and create an emotional connection to the viewer. Often, visual representations also help to simplify complex stories while delivering a powerful message and creates a rich contextual environment for the viewer. They can provide a more holistic, and multi-sensorial (sound, colours, shapes...) account of the story. For example, these videos produced during our first community food growing course revolve around the same idea as the comic above. They illustrate the difficult situation Nieves and Safia were in, being and feeling stuck at home, and the jump they took with diving in their community food growing experience and the influence this act of hopefulness and the engagement with their community food growing initiative had on their lives:

 © Madeleine Jubilee Saito https://madeleinejubileesaito.net/

How does this view resonate with you? Take a moment to note down your thoughts and feelings.

Even though we cannot address them solely on an individual or systemic level, working on a community level can generate action and help us feel connected by making real local change in a world of global problems. Right now, choosing how to imagine and envision the future is more important than ever. As we reflect on our experiences from the Covid-19 pandemic and think about rebuilding better to meet the environmental and social justice challenges of our times, we need those hopeful visions of the future to have something to build towards grounded in existing successful practices within our community food growing initiatives. And fundamentally, we need to explore what the ingredients are that generate a flourishing community.

Wendy Alcock’s story about Incredible Edible Barnet illustrates how we can address those bigger problems through local action:

Belinda Murray’s story likewise shows that a sense of trust and community can help prepare for whatever is to come. Building community can help us be prepared for the Winter to come –  for future challenges, even though we might not even know yet what they are.

Activity (15 minutes): Exploring ingredients to community flourishing

We’ve started our own little brainstorm of what exactly these ingredients could be on this interactive whiteboard here: https://padlet.com/CobraCollective/Flourishing. Some of us have added pictures, others have added words. Please feel free to make your own contribution so that we can create a broad collective picture of what constitutes community flourishing.

We know that given all the dark things currently going on in the world, we need strong communities where people can come together and support each other to flourish. These two videos produced during our first course show the importance and power of community for these food growing initiatives:

© Madeleine Jubilee Saito https://madeleinejubileesaito.net/

Telling such disruptive hopeful stories means acknowledging any difficult emotions we might have, such as fear and anxiety, validating them, and then moving through them, trusting that brighter things are possible. It can be scary to be hopeful, to tell hopeful stories because we might be disappointed, but that makes telling those stories and focusing our energies and efforts towards the things that might help create a more positive future even more powerful. Fundamentally, it means being willing to imagine and to trust that this future is possible as well as allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and acknowledge our emotions openly. This video from our first course illustrates this leap of hope beautifully:

Creating visual stories is a messy, cyclical process - like many good things in life. The big challenge is weaving your thoughts, feelings and emotions into a coherent narrative and finding ways to express this visually in a way that others can follow and understand. This means switching between thinking about what you want to say and how that’s going to come across for others watching and listening to your story. Like anything, these are skills you can practice, though, and this section of the course is going to introduce you to a process you can follow to develop your stories.

Visual storytelling

One of the most important things about digital visual storytelling is that it’s about constant learning, trying and improvement. In most cases, the first product or output you are going to produce is not the final story that you will share publicly. So,  imagine developing a digital visual story by following the process shown in the figure below.

Creating a digital story through cycles of continuous refinement and improvement.

Refining the idea for your story usually happens in a continuous cycle of planning something, trying out your idea, seeing what happens and reflecting on whether that’s what you want your story to be. In a way, this mindset and approach is the most important element about creating digital visual stories, it’s all about continuous learning and improvement and seeing whether your story fits for you. So, try to keep this in mind when something doesn’t work out quite the way you wanted it to, that’s a perfectly normal part of creating a story and part of the process. Overall, the main goal is to capture and share positive things that work well in your community food growing initiative and to share them with the wider community food growing network.

Click the book icon below to read the part on different storytelling approaches.

A process for visual storytelling

We will show you a process now that can help you come up with and realise your ideas. By doing that, we’ll show you a few different ways in which you can develop and tell a story. The process we’re suggesting goes like this:

Each of these steps will be explained in detail below, but in summary, a ‘rich picture’ is a very straightforward hand-drawn visual exploration of a situation on a single canvas (this could be on paper or digital). This represents a story with low narrative appeal. Similar to an abstract painting, there is no clearly defined intent, message or character. People viewing your rich picture should be able to develop their own understanding of what you are trying to communicate. This unstructured ‘jumble’ of visual imagery can then be used to inspire a more structured, ‘linear’ sequencing of images using the ‘photostory’ technique (as the example produced by Nieves above shows). We are now moving more towards a ‘highly narrativized’ structure. You can then go to the next stage where you can record a narration of a slightly more sophisticated sequence of pictures, photographs or video clips. A more advanced option is where you combine your narration with questions you can ask fellow community food growers, so we can directly hear from their experiences, which we have called a ‘journalistic video’. And at the most advanced level, a ‘participatory video’ is co-produced collectively within your community food growing initiative, where a group of people work on the storyline, collect the audiovisual material, collaborative edit, and then screen the emerging results to a wider group of people to gain feedback and make improvements.

However, you can also always use each of these ways separately if you don’t want to go through the whole process or already know exactly what you want to do. We’re just suggesting this as a way for you to clarify your thoughts, work through an idea and gradually involve other people, but this is by no means a fixed structure that needs to happen exactly like this for every idea. For now, we’ll focus on introducing you to tools that can help you design your story, later on in the course we will provide you with a step-by-step instruction for the technical elements. Besides what we’re showing you here, there are also many other approaches you can use to tell a visual digital story. For example, the fiction video approach, where you write a script and design a fictional story that is then played out by actors. This can be a really powerful tool, too, but for this course we are only focusing on approaches that can help you with telling stories about your perspective and direct experience of actual community food growing.

Click the book icon below to read the part in this section on our proposed process on visual storytelling.

In the next sections we are going to introduce you to the main concepts and techniques you can use to actually create your digital stories, but this idea of continuous learning and constant improvement is actually the most important one.

Before diving into designing your own digital stories, we are going to give you some background information about the key concepts and technical approaches that you can use when creating digital stories.

If you are new to shooting video using your smartphone, we recommend you watch this brief introductory tutorial on how to capture video footage using your phone or a tablet: 

3.1. Framing

Let’s start by talking about how to frame your video when creating single shots. Framing means selecting a part of reality according to what you want to show in your story. There are different types of framing and this video provides an overview of the different frames you can use to tell your story:

3.2. Shooting a steady video

The best way to shoot a video is by using a stable place to hold your mobile phone or tablet. Often, people use a tripod for this, but if you don’t have one, don’t worry! We are sure you can find a creative solution to put your smartphone where it is not shaking too much, like setting it on a table or shelf. If that’s not an option, you can also shoot the video by hand. This video tutorial gives you an overview on how to use different types of camera movements with and without a tripod to shoot your video:

In addition to the overall frame, it’s also important to choose the right camera angle for taking your shots. The camera angle marks the position of the camera in relation to the subject we want to shoot.

• Low angle: when the camera is placed below the subject and the lens is pointing up. Filming a subject just a bit below the eye level makes them look heroic, powerful and grand.
• High angle: when the camera is placed above a subject with the lens pointing down.  High angle shots are used to make the subject or object seem vulnerable, powerless, or weak.
• Eye level angle: when the camera is placed at the same level of the eye of the subject. Eye level angle is the most neutral angle and it is perfect for interviews.

3.3. Lighting your videos

Choosing the right lighting for your videos is also very important as it can help the viewer follow the main action of your story more easily. 

Lighting can help you to highlight the main action or actor in your shot and to make sure they are well visible.

Watch this video tutorial to learn more on how to use light in your visual digital stories: 

Here is a summary of the different types of light that exist:

• Natural light: is any light that we can find in nature, such as sunlight.
• Artificial light: is any light produced by electrical means, such as a light bulb.
• Direct light: is when there are no obstacles between the source of light and the subject. 
• Diffuse light: is when there are obstacles that filter or reflect the light between the source of light and the subject.

If you are interested, you can also watch this tutorial to learn more on how to shoot a video with diffuse light in outdoor or indoor spaces:

3.4. Shots - Scenes - Sequence - Film

Now that you know more on how to frame and choose the right lighting for single shots, let’s talk about how different shots can be used together to create the scenes and the sequences of your film.

Shot

A shot consists of a single take of video footage. One take can also last just a few seconds.

More shots together create a scene

A scene is generally made of different angles and frames of the same character that happen in the same location in a precise time of your video story.

More scenes together create a sequence

A sequence is a part of the narration where each event follows a set of related events, movements that follow each other in a particular order.

A film is made of many sequences

Here, you can see an example of a short film made with the shots, scenes and sequences that we showed above:

Here are examples of 3 simple ways that you can use to put together a scene or sequence.

• move in: start with a long shot or extreme long shot to set the scene, then move closer.
  
• move out: start with closeups, then gradually use wider shots to reveal where the scene is set.
• Use three shots: the thing, the person, the person with the thing.

3.5. A-Roll and B-Roll

Now that you know a little bit more about the different elements of video production, we need to talk a little bit more about the different types of footage you need to collect to create your stories.

In video production, A-roll is the primary footage of a project's main subject, while B-roll shots are supplemental footage. For example, if you interview someone, shots of the person you are interviewing will be the A-Roll footage of your video. All the footage you will collect to show what the person is talking about will be the B-Roll footage. The term “A-roll” is no longer used, but “B-roll” remains a common term in today's film industry and a useful concept to keep in mind when creating your stories.

B-roll shots are important for any type of video production. They are necessary for creating the context and adding depth to your story. The B-roll shots can help to cover up potential errors and are crucial to illustrate and demonstrate the actions that the main subject is talking about that might otherwise remain unexplained. By doing so, they also keep your audience actively engaged while watching your story.

3.6. Planning your video using text

All stories start with a great idea. To create your visual digital story you can start writing down your ideas on a piece of paper by answering some of these simple questions below.

The list of questions to answer to develop your idea:

• What is your video about? 
• What is the message you want to send and why?
• Why is it important for you to tell this story?

The list of questions to answer to realise your video idea:

• What happens in your story?
• Where does it happen?
• When does it happen?
• Why did it happen?

Watch the video tutorial below to learn more on how to plan your video using text:

More complex films need to have a script. A script is a written document that helps you remember what and where something happens in your video. If you want to learn more on how create a script you can watch this video tutorial:

3.7. Planning your video using a storyboard

Storyboarding is a visual way to represent what is going to happen in your video shot by shot. A storyboard is made up of a number of squares with illustrations or pictures that represent each shot in your story.

This video tutorial describes storyboarding in more detail:

For your digital stories, you will be creating quite short stories of only a few minutes to share your experience, so it’s important that your storyboards will be quite short and that the main content of your story can be written in 5 or 6 lines.

3.8. The importance of sound in your video

Using a microphone

Sound is another important element in creating visual digital stories. Remember that you need to be very close to the subject and select a place with very little noise to make sure the audio is good. If you plan on being outside with a microphone, avoid recording in a windy area. Seek a shelter or shield your microphone from the wind by placing your back against it.

There are very cheap microphones (10 GBP) that you can buy to improve the sound captured from your smartphone or tablet. To learn more about sound and the different microphones watch the tutorial below on the importance of sound in your video.

If you are interested in buying an external microphone, here are some suitable options. Please note that it is not required to buy a microphone for this project! These are entirely optional and probably most useful if you are planning to create more additional digital visual stories beyond this project:

Option 1

Option 2

Remember, when talking in a microphone, you want to sound natural but also lively. Try practising with a friend. Your voice and tone should be similar to the one you use when you explain a story with friends over dinner. 

Integrating ambient sound

We are holistic and sensorial beings. Part of storytelling is to transport us to a world whether real or fictive. Sound becomes a crucial aspect of how we record audio-visual stories. Just think how bland a movie would be without the soundtrack. 

Try to bring us to the soundscape of your garden. We want to hear it breathe and live.

What do you hear in the morning? Are there birds, people working and laughing? Can you hear the busy streets nearby? Do you hear people watering the soil? What about the sounds made when you work the soil and harvest the food? How festive and lively is sharing food afterward?

You can interweave these sounds in your audio mix, using microphone/phone to record and sound softwares to integrate like GarageBand or by simply adding different soundscapes in between and/or underneath narrations in your video. The clip can last 10, 30 or 40 seconds, it is your choice.

3.9. Voiceover

Another way to use a recorded text and create the sound for your video is a technique called voiceover. You can create a voiceover recording someone reading a text. The voiceover is a piece of narration in a video not accompanied by an image of the speaker. In the final edit, the voiceover can be accompanied by words, illustrations and videos that clarify what you are listening to.

You can record the voiceover using the simple “Voice Recorder” app already preinstalled on most smartphones. Place your phone on a table and make sure you are speaking close to it in a calm and quiet environment.

Using the tools you learned about in the previous sections, here’s a simple way to create a short story with a narrator and a smartphone

The instructions below are valid for any high narrative story, whether it is a simple photostory or a complex participatory video process.

For whichever story technique you chose to develop, it’s always a good idea to start with the rich picture. Get a blank piece of paper and draw the images that come to mind when thinking about your community food growing initiative: its location; the people involved; the challenges overcome and those that continue to affect the initiative; how the location changed over time as you intervened; the result achieved (both in terms of produce grown and social achievements).  

Based on this rather random visual Rich Picture representation of your community food growing initiative and the higher-level questions listed above, maybe you can now begin to identify a story that emerges. You could for example tell a positive story about a group effort to deal with a challenge.

1. Identifying the story: Identify a radically hopeful experience in your community food growing initiative. Think through whether it has the ingredients for a positive and uplifting story: Are there interesting characters involved? Is there a challenge that was overcome? How was the solution a truly community effort?

2. Once you have a rough idea, share your story idea with some friends or family members, possibly using your Rich Picture as a prompt. Especially in those early stages just sharing your ideas with others can really help to shape them and for you to figure out what you want to focus on. Speaking with others about it can also help you find the exact words and terms you might want to use to explain your idea. Feel free to draw a second version of your Rich Picture based on input from others.

3. Write your project idea on a piece of paper. Why do you want to tell this story? What is your story about? Where does the story take place?

4. Think about your audience. Who is going to watch your video? For example, if you are producing a video for children, you will need to avoid using difficult language. Are you producing a video to involve more people to take part in your gardening project? Then you will want to use a warm tone to make sure people feel inspired. If you are unsure about who the audience is, our recommendation is that you tell a story that you can show to your friends, family and fellow community growing members. If you can inspire more local community members to become involved, then your story will certainly inspire other people from other communities. But don’t worry about making the story ‘transferrable’ to other settings - make it as authentic as you can using language that you use every day.

5. Choose an engaging title for your story.

6. Think about a narrator (a main character and the voice that will tell your story). You could be the narrator of your story or choose someone else to do that for you.

7. Creating a narrative: Once the story and narrator have been identified, write out the narrative of the story: set the scene; introduce the challenge and the key characters; describe how the challenge is resolved; explore the lasting wellbeing impacts on the community and on individuals. On a piece of paper, write down what you want to say in a few lines. Remember that all stories have a start (opening), a middle and an end (conclusion). Practice reading your text and estimate how long it will take to read it. Try to aim for a story that can be read out for about two to five minutes.

8. Make a list of the necessary B-Roll footage. To show what the narrator is saying in your story, what pictures or footage do you need to collect? Try to keep things simple:  you won’t go to the moon to film astronauts! Think of something that you can capture easily or with the help of your family and friends.

9. Develop a storyboard: try and break down the story into individual scenes and make a note of the different images that can represent the story. You have learned about different frames and how you can create scenes or sequences by putting together different shots. Sketch the sequence on a piece of paper to make sure you have a visual plan to follow when you go to capture your footage.

You now developed your storyboard, the next important thing is about consent which we will introduce in the next section.

For other participants, ensure that the objectives are fully understood and that no false expectations are built. Make sure to consider all the ethical aspects. All participants must be asked for their consent before collecting and screening any image or audio in which they appear. You can use a written form or they can give consent via video. For people under 18, you need to collect the consent from their parents.

5.1. Ethics

When creating digital stories that include footage of or the perspective of other people, it’s very important to consider the ethics of sharing and creating such stories. When your story includes other people, it’s crucial to ensure that the objectives of the project are fully understood by the participants and that no false expectations are built. Once everyone has fully understood those objectives and the process you are going to take, you have to obtain consent from everyone participating in your story. It is important that all participants are asked for their consent before collecting and screening any image or audio in which they appear. You can use a written form or they can give consent via video. For people under 18, you need to collect the consent from their parents.

This video tutorial gives some more detail about those ethical considerations for digital storytelling and participatory video:

5.2. Consent

Free, prior and informed consent is a specific right to consent for Indigenous peoples that has been recognised in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). However, it is good practice to follow this principle for any digital storytelling project. A consent form explains the conditions for any specific project and must be signed before starting any project activities, like the form you signed before starting this course.

If you are interested, here is a brief video summary that explains free, prior and informed consent in more detail:

5.3. Copyright

Copyright is a mechanism to protect intellectual property and refers to the right to copy or use an intellectual piece of work someone has produced, such as a photo, video or audio recording. Copyright means that only the original creators of those products and anyone they give authorisation to are allowed to share and reproduce this work. Making something copyrighted, therefore is a way to protect your intellectual property against someone using it without your consent and gives you a legal mechanism to prosecute them.

In this project, we will use a copyright mechanism called “Creative Commons”. Creative Commons is a type of license that you can use when you want to give other people the right to share, use or build on work that you have created. There are different types of Creative Commons licenses that you can choose if you for example only want to allow non-commercial uses of a piece of work you have produced. For other people sharing your work, it also protects them from any concerns about copyright infringement as long as they share or use your work in the ways and under the conditions that are specified in your chosen creative commons license.

Here is a good video that explains the idea behind creative commons in a bit more detail:

In this project, we are going to use a Creative Commons license where people are allowed to re-use and share the digital stories we are going to produce for non-commercial purposes.

Reflection (5 minutes)

What did you imagine under the concepts of ethics, consent and copyright before studying this section? Are there any misconceptions you had? What is the most important new insight you gained here? Write down your reflections in your learning journal.

1. Capture the main track of your video: The narrator telling the story. For this, we suggest using a mid shot or a headshot frame on a neutral background with a diffuse light to make sure that the attention is concentrated on the subject talking and not on other things happening around them.

Make sure to shoot the video in a quiet place with not many noises around and that isn’t too windy to make sure the internal microphone of your smartphone is capturing the best sound.  If you don't have a tripod for your smartphone, try to find a place with a table or a shelf where you can put your smartphone. Alternatively, you can also hold your phone with both hands while keeping your elbows right next to your chest, to make sure the image is as steady as possible. Remember to shoot your video horizontal.

It is not an easy job for a non-professional actor to remember the text of a 1-2 minutes story in front of the camera. To make the process simpler, we suggest that the narrator is recorded looking at the camera only at the opening  (Video PART 1) and for the conclusion (Video PART 3). Collecting footage of the narrator saying 2-3 sentences at the start and at the end of the story is enough for a short story. 

The middle of the story (Video PART 2) can be captured simply showing the narrator reading the story out loud. 

This is because we will use only the voiceover and not the images from this part of the video. In this section we will use the B-Roll footage to show what the narrator is talking about.

2. Capture your other imagery (B-roll): now is the time to go into your community and take pictures to represent the story. Some of these pictures can be of actual real-life situations, while others you may need to role play with people involved in your community food growing initiative. When even role playing is difficult, you can be imaginative and take a picture of something drawn by hand. In some instances, when the subject matter is too difficult to capture with an image, a symbolic representation can also be a good substitute. Follow the list of B-Roll you have created and your storyboard to go and capture the footage you need for your story. Remember the sound of B-Roll is not that important. The narrator will be the main soundtrack of the story while the sound of the B-Roll footage will be deleted or reduced.

3. Select the best material you have produced. Start to select the best material from all the shots you have collected and delete the footage that you don’t need. For bigger projects the first selection needs to be done during the shooting, taking notes of the right takes to make sure you don’t have to re-watch all the footage again.

4. Download a free editing App for your smartphone. Powerdirector or FilmoraGo are good options, but there are also many other Apps if you prefer a different one. If you want to do your editing on a computer you can also send the footage via e-mail or WeTransfer to yourself and work from there. For this project, we (the Cobra Collective) are happy to help you with the main editing for you, but in case you want to create more stories later by yourself, this is the process you should follow:

a. Create the title of your video

b. Add the different parts form the narrator telling the story (Part 1, 2 and 3) on the main timeline

c. Put the best B-Roll you have collected on the second timeline that overlaps with part 2. Delete the B-Roll sound.

e. Add the credits with the names of all people who were involved in your video.

5.  Render you story: once you are happy with all the editing, all video editing software have a ‘rendering’ option which allows you to export the video in different file formats and levels of resolution. We recommend that you render your video as an MP4, as it’s the best quality for the smallest file size, and most devices can readily open an MP4 file.

6. Share your story: use one of the file sharing tools introduced in the previous section or any other means available to you to share your story with the rest of the food growing community to gain feedback on your story.

7. Debate and evaluate: look for opportunities to gain feedback on your story, what impact it may have had, and gain ideas for making some final adjustments to your story if necessary.

8. Consent for public sharing: once the final changes have been made, gain consent from your group to share this story publicly.

Practice activity (2 hours)

Try to create a 2 minute digital story following these steps about one element of your community food growing experience.

One of the most important elements of creating digital stories is to work collaboratively and share ideas with others. You might do that in person or work remotely, for example with partners that live in different countries.

This will result in 3 main problems to solve:

1. How to send big size video files
2. How to backup and access your video file when travelling
3. How to work on shared documents with your partners

This video tutorial explains different ways of sharing your videos:

Here, we have summarised some practical solutions for you:

WeTransfer is a simple way to send your files around the world and share lage files up to 2GB for free. You just need to have an internet connection and go to www.wetransfer.com, then type your e-mail address and the recipient's email address, write a text message, attach the file and send it.

Another solution to solve all 3 problems in one goal is to use a Cloud storage space. Cloud storage spaces are servers that are accessed over the Internet.

Google Drive is a good example.

Here are some of Google Drive's key features:

• Storing files: By default, Google gives you 15 GB of free storage space across Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos.
• Sharing files: Files are private until you share them. But at any time, you can invite others to view, edit, or download files and documents by sending them an email invitation.
• Accessing files from anywhere: Files can be accessed from any smartphone, tablet or computer. Offline access is also available.
• Secure storage: Drive files are protected by an AES256 or AES128 encryption , the same security protocol used on other Google services.

Remember, if you need more space, you can upgrade both WeTransfer and Google Drive by paying a reasonable price on a monthly or yearly basis.

If you don’t have access to the internet or prefer not to send your files online, you can also share and move files by using external SD cards and a universal card reader. There are different sizes of SD cards as shown in the photo below. Universal card readers come in many different looks and styles, but they usually have slots to insert SD cards and a USB connector to connect to a computer or other device.

Most smartphones and tablets can use mini SD cards to expand their storage. This allows you to create and save more video footage on your device. You can also use the SD cards to transfer your files between different devices or if you want to move your file from your smartphone or tablet to your computer.

Activity (20 minutes)

Shoot a brief video on your phone and share it with a friend via GoogleDrive and WeTransfer as described above. If you encounter any problems, write them down in your learning journal.

Editing is an important step in the digital storytelling process to bring all the different footage you collected together, delete unwanted footage and merge your A- and B-roll together into your final story. For this project, we, the Cobra Collective, will do the editing for you. If you want to do some video editing of your own for future digital stories, this tutorial gives an overview of the video editing process. While there are many different video editing programs and applications, the main concepts shown in the tutorial are usually the same. 

The apps we recommend for editing digital stories using mobile phones are PowerDirector and FilmoraGo. Both can be downloaded for Apple (PowerDirector, FilmoraGo) and android-based smartphones (PowerDirector, FilmoraGo).

If you want to edit your stories using a desktop computer, it's best to use OpenShot or PowerDirector.

So, you have created your powerful video…and now what? Obviously, you may have had ideas on who you were aiming your story at when you were developing your ‘seed’ (see Section 2). Now the task is to transform your story into a powerful tool that can deliver impact. It’s a good time to develop a dissemination strategy: who are you going to target? How is your story going to reach your target audience? How are you going to follow things up in order to achieve the desired impact? How are you going to measure impact and learn from the challenges encountered so that your next video can be even more effective?

Showcasing your videos

Social Media

Video is the best way that you can engage an audience on social media. Video content performs best with social media algorithms because video captures a viewer’s attention for longer (in some cases achieving 10 times more engagement than text-based posts). As most social media users have a preference for videos, posts containing videos have a greater 'shelf-life' i.e. they stick around for longer because videos generate more interactions (likes, shares and comments).

Key tips for creating videos for social media are:

• People on social media have very short attention spans. You need to capture their attention in the first 8 seconds. So make sure your very first sense communicates something captivating.
• Often, social media users scroll down their feed with sound muted, so if you can, you need to include captions with your video. Most platforms have automated caption tools to help you with this.
• Another aspect that you need to be careful with is that social media platforms have preferences for certain format types. For example, platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels require a 9:16 format (portrait view), YouTube and Facebook have a preference for 16:9 (landscape view), while Instagram generally goes for a 1:1 (square) format. Most platforms will crop the video to the right shape during the upload process, but that may result in loss of key visuals. One tip, if you think you are going to create videos for multiple platforms, is to always have your key informational content at the centre of the frame.
• Most platforms have a preference for short videos. TikTok, for example, limits video lengths to 60 seconds (although they are currently exploring extending this to 3 minutes). One potential workaround is that you could break your longer video down into shorter pieces, but these still need to be self-contained ‘stories’.
• Finally, in order for people to ‘find’ your video posting, you may want to consider using hashtags. Basically, hashtags allow users to find content related to specific themes, it’s a way to filter content and be able to find new initiatives operating in the same field that you’re interested in. These could include Hashtags for your stories could be focused for example on location (e.g. #Reading) and key themes (#communityfoodgrowing). Usually, it’s good to use a range of hashtags, but the number depends on the platform. On Instagram, people commonly use a lot of hashtags, whereas on twitter it’s best practice to focus on one of two key ones. If you want to promote a new project or initiative, it’s good to use a mixture of established hashtags referring to existing commonly used ones and a new one that you might want to coin specifically for your project.

The following YouTube video will give you some more tips on size and frames that you should consider for different social media platforms:

Or you can refer to this as an example for how to use and upload different social media platforms:

While this YouTube video will give some tips on using a specific tool (which we are not promoting - there are plenty of other tools you could use) to edit a video for different social media platforms:

Community events

A video screening is a great excuse to bring a community together. A screening can be used to celebrate achievements during a growing season, set the scene for a debate or planning the future of your community growing initiative. It’s a great excuse for bringing people together during a ‘quiet’ time in the growing season to maintain and strengthen relationships. 

Practical considerations for hosting a community screening are:

• Securing a venue - this could be your actual community food growing site but unpredictable weather, sourcing electric power, and finding appropriate space can be challenging.
• Securing screening equipment - you will need a good projector, a laptop, good speakers and a flat screen on which to project your video (often a white wall can do). Make sure you test all the equipment out with plenty of time.
• Why not combine the screening with sharing food cooked from your own community grown vegetables? A simple formula is to ask each participant to bring a dish and their own plates, cutlery. 
• Don’t forget that the community event itself could be excellent material for interviews and recording material for future videos!

This blog post shows an example from a screening event organised for this project in the Calthorpe community garden: https://cobracollective.org/news/calthorpe-community-garden/

Video-mediated dialogue

Video-mediated dialogue is a two-way video communication led by communities aimed at engaging decision-makers. A first video highlighting an issue or showcasing an initiative is first produced by community members. This first video is then screened to decision-makers which are then asked to record a response video, which is taken back to communities for viewing and feedback. In that way, you generate a record of interactions, with decision-makers answerable both to the explicit issues raised by communities, and their subsequent commitments.

These are some key questions that you need to explore before you commit to video-mediated dialogue:

• What is the purpose of the engagement? Are you aiming to connect decision-makers with the reality of your situation, deliver a message, provoke them to think, or inspire them to act? 
• How will you identify and find the most appropriate decision-makers to engage with? Can you find those with the power to implement change?
• Do you have any contacts in influential positions who champion your cause and will help you build relationships? If not, how will you find people to support you?
• How will you invite decision-makers and explain how you will engage with them so that they are motivated to participate and know what to expect?
• How will you communicate with decision-makers? Are you informing, requesting a collaboration or confronting? Your approach will determine the kind of reaction that you will achieve.
• Are there likely to be negative or unexpected reactions? How will you stop potential risks to vulnerable community members?
• How can you build on an initial exchange to generate future collaborations?
• What are your plans for following up promises and offers made by decision-makers during the exchange?
• How can you encourage active commitment on the part of decision-makers to support community-led change?

Planning and measuring impact

Let’s now focus on how you can assess the impact of your video. The following impact questions have been adapted from ground-breaking work carried out by David Edwards and Laura Meagher (https://i2insights.org/2020/03/03/research-impact-evaluation-framework/). Core Impact assessment questions you may want to ask are:

I. Impacts: Who or what changed, in what ways, and how do we know?

II. Causes of impact: Why/how did changes occur? Which factors or processes caused impact?

III. Lessons and actions: What lessons can be learned? Which actions should follow to generate impact?

Looking at impact questions in more details, you could ask:

Ia. What changed?

1. Instrumental: changes to plans, decisions, behaviours, practices, actions, policies
2. Conceptual: changes to knowledge, awareness, attitudes, emotions
3. Capacity-building: changes to skills and expertise
4. Enduring connectivity: changes to the number and quality of relationships

Ib. Who changed? (Influencers and influenced) Stakeholder groups might typically include:

1. Your community members: did the video and associated activities result in more community members becoming involved? Did it attract a greater diversity of people? 
2. Policy-makers: did it have an impact on key decision-makers? 
3. Practitioners: did it promote the activities of a community organisation and its staff/volunteers?
4. Intervention champions: has the intervention changed how key individuals supporting the initiatives are perceived by the community and/or decision-makers?
5. Other individuals/groups/organisations: did it generate support from, for example, local businesses or other initiatives e.g. youth groups; wellbeing, employability?

Ic. How do we know? (Evidence and feedback)

Which indicators and methods should be used, and questions asked, to demonstrate impacts, and progress towards generation of impacts?

You may want to consider frameworks such as Ripple Effect Mapping to help you identify appropriate indicators and methods for collecting the information: https://extension.umn.edu/community-development/ripple-effect-mapping 

Having collected your baseline data on impact (what and who changed), you now want to understand how the impact came about. The following are some questions that you may want to ask:

II. Why/how did change occur?

1. Problem-framing: Level of importance; tractability of the problem; appropriateness of intervention.
2. Management: culture; team working; promotion of activities; planning; strategy.
3. Inputs: Funding; staff/volunteer capacity and turnover; legacy of previous activity; access to equipment and resources.
4. Outputs: Quality and usefulness of content (such as your video!); appropriate format and length.
5. Dissemination: Targeted and efficient delivery of outputs to users and other audiences.
6. Engagement: Level and quality of interaction with users and other stakeholders; co-production of knowledge; collaboration during design, dissemination and uptake of outputs.
7. Users: Influence of knowledge intermediaries, e.g. ‘champions’ and user groups; incentives and reinforcement to encourage uptake.
8. Context: Societal, political, economic, biophysical, climate and geographical factors.

III. Finally, what were the lessons learnt for impact identification and generation?

1. What worked? What could (or should) have been done differently?
2. What could (or should) be done in the future?

As the global Covid-19 pandemic has shown, the future will be characterised by an increased frequency and impact of extreme events, especially as the effects of escalating climate change and biodiversity loss escalate. Communities will be affected by heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires, mass migration of people, economic hardships, conflict and exacerbating health impacts. These disruptive effects will also increase pressures on public services, infrastructure and the wider economy, straining social functioning within families, communities and organisations, thus further deteriorating the collective capacity to mitigate and adapt to shocks.

Community food growing initiatives have shown how one can flourish during times of extreme hardship and lay a foundation for preparing for those extreme events. On a social, emotional and physical level they demonstrate the benefits that can come from connecting with others in dedication to growing and creating something despite all the challenges.

By now, you will hopefully have an appreciation for the connection between food and storytelling and the ideas of radical hopefulness for a flourishing future. We really hope that by now you’ve also been able to put your skills into practice and to capture some of those acts and stories in your daily life!

More background information and examples for community food growing

Tablehurst Community Farm

This 20-minute film tells a story about how social interactions create community among participants as they learn farm skills and improve their lives, especially as opportunities for young people.

Community Gardens, London

This 14-minute tour describes how London’s community gardens and farms have brought people together for mutual aid, knowledge-sharing and more nutritious food.

Julia Jung, Andrea Berardi, Claudia Nuzzo, Les Levidow, Fiona McAllister, Dave Richards, Beth Scott, Kath Burton