This session will explore the art of good storytelling and the various ways a story can be shared with your audience. Using video, photography, photo essays, digital illustrations, student profiles, animation – and for some exceptional stories, the combination of these methods – to create a multimedia experience, allows and encourages consumers to reflect and feel, creating connections that makes your content memorable and fosters community across campus.

The creation of digital media projects that help your audience to engage with their own narratives – past, current or future – humanizes content that can otherwise appear tailored or corporatized. Of course, not every school, faculty, department or one-stop-shop communication extraordinaire can support high-budget, cinematic productions: these projects can be executed in many different ways, video is not the only way to engage with your target audience.

The purpose of this session is to prove that you can do powerful, low-budget storytelling yourself – building on the resources and talents that you already have access to. Find some students. Listen to what they have to say! Our campuses are alive with stories that are inspiring, powerful, funny and relatable – might I even say, emotion-inducing? – they just need the right person to come along and tell them. Harness the power of multimedia storytelling and you can be that person.