How museums can capture stories

I always wanted to listen to stories. Stories from my family, friends, city. When I began to work in various museum settings, I discovered the stories there, sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden.  I was overwhelmed by the willingness of many visitors and collectors to share stories about what was behind the object, its background, and its function. Archiving tons of objects into a digital database I wondered how to capture these stories for the future.

When I got to know the method of Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, California I was impressed by its power and potential to capture these stories.

Together with the local museum in my hometown we now started a project called “Digital Heritage – citizens tell city history”.  Two of the stories that we created are featured on this website. They tell about personal experiences during World War II and will be shown in the upcoming exhibition of the museum.

The work with the storytellers has left a great impression on me. They have been children during the war.  The stories they shared with us are compelling and subtle at the same time. I realized, that the method of Digital Storytelling is the right tool to capture these stories that are going to vanish soon, if we don’t hurry up to conserve them.