Using New Tools To Tell Stories

In 2013 Montclair State University launched a university-assisted community school program, known as the Orange Community School Initiative (OSCI), to help educate, engage, empower, members of the Rosa Parks and Oakwood Avenue School communities in Orange, New Jersey. Since its launching, a number of students in the School of Communication and Media have been involved with the initiative, but perhaps none more so than in Associate Professor Beverly Peterson’s Transmedia Projects classes.

Since January 2015, Peterson’s transmedia students have met with various arts organizations, community and health advocates and residents to explore how the next generation of storytelling techniques can be shared to better develop an engaged community. Using this research, students are developing HAT CITY HUB, a dynamic, collaborative and interactive public forum that unites the many voices and community efforts involved in revitalizing the Orange community. The Hub will act as an online portal to house this joint “deep engagement” project and provide centralized access to a variety of community resources.

“To better envision how this online hub might look and function, students had an exciting opportunity to bring the skills they are learning in the classroom directly into the Orange community,” says Peterson.

Students’ ultimate goal was to explore ways that local non-profits, after school programs of all ages, and service agencies can take advantage of shareware and new technology. As student Jaclyn Allegretta states, “We focused on making story maps and using knightlab, an online storytelling program. Our final project was to put together a virtual scavenger hunt with an App we created. We created a scavenger hunt for kids in Orange to learn about the history of their town.  It was very rewarding.”

Peterson’s students gathered samples of successful projects other communities have used to generate public interest and engagement that can easily be replicated. They also designed their own prototypes using emerging narrative techniques. The specific focus was on collective identity, collective belonging, and collective self-efficacy.

“It was exciting to walk around with individuals who grew up in Orange because the stories they told while walking from place to place made the entire project connect and mean something,” says Francesca LaBianco, MSU Senior.