The challenge — and satisfaction — of telling stories remotely
Senior Producer at Unfold Stories
The pandemic will one day be part of our past. In the not-too-distant future (I hope), we will talk about how and where we spent it. It will be our history, which comes from the word for when we first told our stories.
I will always think of my role at Unfold Stories in this context, as it began just before our world was hit by the Covid virus.
A unique assignment
During my time at Unfold, one of my principal assignments was to uncover the human stories about how digital identity systems affect people from across the globe. Meanwhile, the pandemic was having a huge impact on us all.
This storytelling series for Instagram focused on the cross sections between technology and humanity — and the importance of “Good ID”.
It was a fascinating insight into what identity verification can mean to people — from those experiencing exclusion or marginalisation, to those for whom digital ID is providing a better life, with new opportunities.
Until this assignment, I had never fully appreciated what a privileged position it is to take identity for granted. I am not someone who has had the trauma of being forced out of my country of birth, without the means to prove I have qualifications. I have never had to resort to DNA testing to find out about my heritage. These are snapshots of what we covered during this really tricky period in all our lives.
Rethink, reset
A month into the series, the WHO declared a global pandemic. At the time, we were busy making plans to travel to meet the heroes of our stories.
While it isn’t necessary to experience these events in order to tell the stories, it does really help to be able to meet your interviewees in person. As a storyteller, meeting face to face, in someone’s home and country, helps you to truly connect with that person, to see the bigger picture, scan the horizon for new perspectives, and ensure the story you are telling will be as powerful as it can be.
A month into the series, the WHO declared a global pandemic. At the time, we were busy making plans to travel to meet the heroes of our stories. It soon became clear this was not going to be possible. Nobody knew how long travel would be restricted.
All interviews would instead have to be done over Zoom. Video calls in themselves are not particularly challenging. We can be grateful the technology existed at all. But we realised that what we had originally planned was no longer going to be possible.
Looking back now with more clarity, this was a symptom of the world we were all in at that time. To deal with it, things just had to be done differently, which meant a total reset. There was also the massive hurdle of how we would bring these stories to life visually, as taking photographs was going to be impossible.
Just listen
The first person I spoke to was Piro, in Tirana. I soon discovered that to draw out the very best from Piro involved asking one simple, overarching question, then allowing him room to talk.
Sitting back and really listening to what he said elicited many new angles which I wouldn’t have considered, and provided fascinating new areas to move the narrative into.
When he told me that — thanks to technology — he can now stay in Albania and grow his businesses, his pride for Albania struck me.
He now doesn’t have to move to the EU to gain access to the EU’s markets. He won’t ever need to move away for economic reasons and can instead build a future in the same place as his past.
Even though working on this project remotely felt like navigating in the dark, looking back I can see more clearly that these stories are also about how digital transformation is first and foremost allowing us to adapt. We don’t actually have to travel in order to reach and connect with people.
We can instead tell stories with a huge amount of impact.
But most importantly this ability to adapt is perhaps the bigger story. Doing things remotely is actually really satisfying.
This storytelling project took root in a very different way because of the pandemic. Despite the challenges, it has grown into some of my proudest work.
