This article provides a description of the emergence of the Spanish ‘Occupy’ movement, Democracia real ya. The aim is to analyse the innovative discursive features of this movement and to connect this analysis to what we consider the innovative potential of the critical sciences. The movement is the result of a spontaneous uprising that appeared on the main squares of Madrid and Barcelona on 15 May 2011 and then spread to other Spanish cities. This date gave it its name: 15M. While the struggle for democracy in Spain is certainly not new, the 15M group shows a series of innovative features. These include the emphasis on peaceful struggle and the imaginary of a new democracy or worldview, transmitted through innovative placards and slogans designed by Spanish citizens. We consider these innovative not only due to their creativity, but also because of their use as a form of civil action. Our argument is that these placards both functioned as a sign of protest and, in combination with the demonstrations and the general dynamics of 15M, helped to reframe the population’s understanding of the crisis and rearticulate the identity of the citizens from victims to agents. In order to analyse the multimodal character of this struggle, we developed an interdisciplinary methodology, which combines socio-cognitive approaches that consider ideological proposals as socio-cognitive constructs (i.e. the notion of narrative or cognitive frame), and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in the analysis of discourses related to processes of social imagination and transformation. The socio-constructivist perspective is used to consider these discourses in relation to their actors, particular contexts and actions. The use of CDA, which included a careful rhetoric analysis, helped to analyse the process of deconstruction, transformation and reconstruction that 15M uses to maintain its struggle. The narrative analysis and the discursive theoretical concept of articulation helped to methodologically show aspects of the process of change alluded to above. This change was both in terms of cognition and in the modification of identity that turned a large part of the Spanish population from victims to indignados and to the neologism indignadanos, which is a composition of indignado and ciudadano (citizen).
The Assassin’s Creed franchise mainly consists of video games but has over the years created a narrative universe spanning different media. Seeing how the traversal from the individual installment Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag into the narrative universe of Assassin’s Creed changes player engagement with the franchise allows one to understand audience interaction with different mediaproducts in a transmedia and convergent culture. Seen as a performed possible world, the individual installment is shown, through a three part gameplay analysis, to function as an unfinished commodity. This implies striking a balance between an individually satisfying experience and a plot-hole ridden incentive for further activity. When the individual installment incites traversal into a narrative universe, the player can construct the universe from installments through a hyperdiegetic, intermedia, or crossmedia engagement, depending on the reliance on medium specificity. Ultimately, this article provides a model for audience interaction in the transmedia age.
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We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed way. Creative, expressive and reflective writing practices are described and parallels are drawn between these and existing practices and theories in narrative career counselling. Key exercises in graduate courses for writing for personal development are discussed and a theoretical explanation is given as to why a particular order of approaches and exercises works best to promote career learning.
Postdoc research project Transformation through Interactive Narrative DesignMedia psychologist dr. Christian Roth's postdoc project Transformation through Interactive Narrative Design (TIND) is part of the Professorship Performative Creative Processes, the school Games & Interaction, and the Expertisecentrum Onderzoek, Innovatie en Internationalisering (OOI). Here, Christian interweaves education and practice-oriented research. He studies the artistic, pedagogical and academic perspectives regarding the power of transformation through applied Interactive Narrative Design (IND).Within the two-year postdoc research project TIND, Christian studies the training of interactive narrative designers with the goal of developing teaching methods and learning tools for artists and designers, such as game and interaction designers, to enable them to create more effective artefacts.Why interactive narrative design?IND offers agency, defined as the ability to influence narrative progression and outcomes in a meaningful way. As such, it carries the potential to create and emotional impact and spark transformative change. This enables interactors to explore different points of view and to feel the weight of their own choices and consequences. This, in turn, allows for a more thorough understanding of complex multi-stakeholder issues, which could have a significant impact on the success of emerging artistic, and learning applications.The TIND project will enable designers through an interdisciplinary approach, including applied game design, immersive theatre, behavioral and cognitive psychology, and the learning sciences.A good example for offering different perspectives on a complex topic is the narrative simulation Mission Zhobia: Winning the Peace, which is used for the training of peacekeepers. Or the news game, I am Mosul, which aims to raise awareness around the effects of war by bringing it close to home: choose your Dutch city and make choices on how to survive if the war was there. And the interactive story Adventures with Anxiety offers a new understanding by letting interactors play anxiety embodied within a wolf. IND is a complex and challenging interdisciplinary field in which design knowledge from other media can often not be directly transferred. As a new medium, it introduces new affordances in technique and user experience. This requires practice-based research for further development of the educational format, demonstrating its potential while identifying and overcoming common learners’ challenges. This project aims to develop a framework for the design and evaluation of meaningful interactive narrative experiences that effectively stimulate a variety of cognitive and emotional responses such as reflection, insight, understanding, and potential behavior change. It provides tools, methods and activities to enable aspiring or practicing narrative designers through an interdisciplinary approach, including game design, immersive theatre, behavioral and cognitive psychology, and the learning sciences.HKU education means to prepare students for success in the creative industries and IND plays an important role for current and future jobs in education, arts and entertainment. IND has the potential to create an emotional impact and spark transformative change by offering agency, defined as the ability to influence narrative progression and outcomes in a meaningful way. This enables interactors to feel the weight of their own choices and their consequences, to explore different perspectives, and to more thoroughly understand complex multi-stakeholder issues, which could have significant impact on the success of emerging artistic, and learning applications.The planned output is a collection of design tools and methods for interdisciplinary workshops and courses, which can be integrated into different curricula at the HKU, thereby enhancing existing programs while enabling the refinement of training methods. Once completed, this postdoc project delivers a training method with multiple applications designed to harness the power of interactive storytelling for transformative personal and societal impact.ColloborationsThe research project is directly embedded in the curriculum of the HKU schoolGames & Interaction with annual educational offerings such as the Minor Interactive Narrative Design (MIND) and HKU wide broad seminars. Course evaluation and literature research will be used to create new and adjusted training for different HKU schools and the industry.More informationAre you interested to learn more about the postdoc research project Transformation through Interactive Narrative Design? Get in touch with Christian Roth: christian.roth@hku.nl
Within TIND, Christian Roth studies the training of interactive narrative designers with the goal of developing teaching methods and learning tools for artists and designers to enable the creation of more effective artefacts. Interactive Narrative Design (IND) is a complex and challenging interdisciplinary field introducing new affordances in technique and user-experience. This requires practice-based research for further development of the educational format, demonstrating its potential while identifying and overcoming common learners’ challenges. This project aims to develop a framework for the design and evaluation of meaningful interactive narrative experiences that effectively stimulate a variety of cognitive and emotional responses such as reflection, insight, understanding, and potential behavior change. It provides tools, methods and activities to enable aspiring or practicing narrative designers through an interdisciplinary approach, including game design, immersive theatre, behavioral and cognitive psychology, and the learning sciences. HKU education means to prepare students for success in the creative industries and IND plays an important role for current and future jobs in education, arts and entertainment. IND has the potential to create an emotional impact and spark transformative change by offering agency, defined as the ability to influence narrative progression and outcomes in a meaningful way. This enables interactors to feel the weight of their own choices and their consequences, to explore different perspectives, and to more thoroughly understand complex multi-stakeholder issues, which could have significant impact on the success of emerging artistic, and learning applications. The research project is directly embedded in the curriculum of the HKU school Games & Interaction with annual educational offerings such as the Minor Interactive Narrative Design (MIND) and HKU wide broad seminars. Course evaluation and literature research will be used to create new and adjusted training for different HKU schools and the industry. Outcomes will be shared via an interactive website and events.
In this project on volunteering in LTH organisation we focus on three aims:1. To explain why organisations in different LTH sectors and regions had, have or need volunteers, how they interact with these volunteers, and the consequences (benefits and challenges) of volunteerism for these organisations.2. To determine how to find the right balance between paid and unpaid staff within the same organisation, considering the LTH sector and region they belong to, in order to create a healthy ecosystem within it (bearing in mind that no organisation can have both volunteers and paid staff do the same job - see above).3. To understand the perspectives, motives and expectations of why people (decide to) volunteer, how they interact with the organisation (management, paid staff) during volunteering, in order to interest them, recruit them, make use of them and retain them. In addition, it is also our aim to explain the benefits and challenges for people to volunteer.In this study, we will use an integrated approach, which implies that we aren’t only interested in the people- or organisation-side of volunteering (actor-side). We will also focus on the interactions between volunteers, paid staff and organisation during volunteering (core of the practice) in a certain LTH organisation, sector and region in the Netherlands (context-side). Studying volunteering in its specific contexts (organisation, sector, region) using an integrated practice approach, hasn’t been done before. In addition, as more and more LTH organisations in the Netherlands rely on volunteers (for their survival), either for economic, social or community (mienskip) reasons (context-related conditions), there is a need for a better understanding of volunteering (as indicated by aim 1-3). Finally, as not much literature has been based on Dutch studies about volunteering and the recruitment and retention of volunteers, this project will fill this gap.Besides the aims as outlined before, a more specific goal of this project is to provide recommendations for a sustainable business model for organisations to embrace volunteerism without affecting the structure of employees. In close cooperation with different LTH organisations, we will develop interventions as policy making instruments (and therefore also for the whole region where they are located). Furthermore, this research will contribute to industry, research (see also below), education (idem) and society. Our ultimate goal is to foster the wellbeing of the volunteers, paid staff and organisations and overall to contribute to social sustainability within The Netherlands.The above-mentioned aims and conceptual model lead to the following research question: How can volunteering in the LTH sectors in Dutch regions be shaped in a sustainable way for both volunteers as well as organisations?In line with what we discussed earlier, this also means contributing to a more stable labour market in hospitality, leisure and tourism in which voluntary work is recognised as an important and indispensable component of a healthy labour ecosystem.The approach we intend to adopt is a qualitative one based on narrative inquiry. While in the literature a quantitative approach using surveys to gather data is mostly used in understanding volunteerism and in measuring motives, we will observe and connect with the volunteers’ work in each sector/case identified and collect and analyse their individual stories. In addition, and in line with our integrated approach, we will investigate how the LTH organisations connected to these cases view the role, value and future of volunteerism.Societal IssueOur insights into volunteers’ work in different sectors will improve their quality of work by revealing drivers of their satisfaction, turnover, motivation, and passion. Managers can use these insights to train and retain volunteers as an integral part of not only their events, but the broader community. It is well-known that robust volunteering programmes are a cornerstone of contemporary social cohesion, and our findings will show how storytelling can strengthen these processes.Benefit to societyThis project will contribute in three ways to the LTH sector. The three outcomes of this study are first around a better understanding of what meaningful volunteering is, second, around the value of volunteers to LTH organisations, and, thirdly, about the value of such activities to Dutch society.The project will provide practical advice to LTH organisations on which interventions to use and in which contexts. This tangible output might take the form of a report, guide(s) mentioned above, and/or another instrument that suits the needs of managers and volunteers. The instrument(s) selected by LTH organisations and volunteers will help to disseminate best practices as well as to highlight the potential of volunteers and volunteering to wider society, other organisations and to current and potential volunteers. By following the steps in or using these instruments, we believe volunteer organisations will be better able to profile themselves and to recruit and retain volunteers.The present study will bring innovation in the field by generating new narratives on volunteerism, and by designing an engaging and appealing path for volunteers to join organisations. At the same time, it will design a structure for organisations to work with volunteers in a sustainable way.Consortium partners: Rodney Westerlaken, Geesje Duursma (both NHL Stenden, Leeuwarden)
