Finding our voices in the dangling conversations: Co-producing digital stories about dementia

The concept of power, as embodied by the storyteller’s voice, is key to the digital storytelling process. Stenhouse and Tait reflect on attempts to promote the voice of people with dementia during a digital storytelling workshop. Adaptations to the usual digital storytelling process risked silencing participants’ voices through 1:1 facilitation, holding the narrative ‘threads’ for participants and writing the scripts to enable people with dementia to engage. Facilitators’ engagement with issues of voice and power through reflection in and on action supported a co-creative relationship with participants, opening up spaces for their voices to be heard. The chapter also engages with the issue of authorial voice in the process of collaborative writing, resulting in a literary style that allows the voices of both authors to be heard.

The stories created as part of this project can be viewed on the Patient Voices website at www.patientvoices.org.uk/dc.htm