The competition has closed, the results are in, the winners are announced. Here’s a short recap of the Living Archive’s Digital Story Competition.

UPDATE – listen to ABC Darwin’s report about the competition!

The competition launched in May 2015, thanks to a bequest from a longtime supporter of Indigenous education, who requested that donations to the Living Archive project be made in lieu of flowers at her funeral in December 2014. The project team wanted that money to go to something that would engage people in the stories contained in the archive, so the idea of a competition was birthed.

Many people who look at our archive enjoy seeing the stories, and often ask “Can we listen to them?“ Sadly our project doesn’t have the capacity to record or digitise audio and video files that go with the stories (although we know there are a lot out there!), so we’re always looking for ways to add multimedia recordings. And we know that there are many very creative people around, with access to useful tools to create interactive materials. Since we are creating a living archive, we wanted to make sure that the original story owners approved the entries, so entrants had to get signed permission from the creators.

The entries were slow to come in – not surprisingly with the busyness of the school year – so we extended the deadline by two weeks. In the end we had 13 valid entries. The competition was open to anyone in Australia, but interestingly, almost all came from remote communities in the NT. One was from WA but the teacher had connections with an author in a remote NT community where she used to work, and another designer contacted a community to get permission.

The instructions were very general, allowing any combination of text, image and audio. As a result, the entries represented many different presentation styles, including:

• a teacher reading a story directly from the book
• an animated video created by year 3/4 students with narration in English and language
• a video of children ‘acting out’ parts of a story in the playground
• a video mixing pages from the book with simple ‘stop-motion’ animation using toys
• an animated video with English subtitles
• a recording with props and a bright background, followed by a song
• a narrated Powerpoint presentation read by the author
• ibooks with audio components and fantastic graphics
• a website with animated video and a recording of a class performance at assembly

Three judges were invited to assess the entries:

• Bruce Pascoe – Indigenous author from Victoria, winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2013, advocate of Indigenous languages
• Dr Kevin Gillan – Executive Director of Education Partnerships with NT Department of Education
• Jeanie Bell – Indigenous linguist and senior lecturer at Batchelor Institute

They were asked to judge according to the following criteria:

• Presentation: The layout and format support the content
• Usability: the entry is easy to open and view, doesn’t crash or freeze
• Engagement: The entry is creative and engages the audience
• Enhancement: The digital story enhances the original PDF
• Technical skills: The entry makes good use of the available technology
• Overall: The entry is well-compiled and complete

All the judges spoke highly of the entries they viewed, praising their creativity and the work that went in to creating these multimedia resources. some of their comments include:

• A very impressive collection of stories brought to life through digital technologies”
• “The high level of student participation in their development is to be commended.”
• “Beautifully illustrated and excellent animation”
• “It was interesting to note the number of entries that used a number of multimedia tools in their approach.”
• “A fantastic way to engage students, community and school staff in developing a creative approach in the celebration and use of local languages.”
• “It was a real honour to be asked to watch and listen to these stories”

When the judges’ scores were added up, we found that we had a tie for first place! And surprisingly, both entries were for the same story – a delightful tale of three clams, called 
Ḏiŋ’ Ḏaŋ’ ga Ḏoŋ’. You can see both entries here – click on the URL (bottom right) for the Shepherdson College entry, and click ‘watch’ (above the cover picture) for the FaFT entry.

Congratulations to the FaFT Playgroup at Galiwinku and Ellemor 8 at Shepherdson College who will share the $1000 prize pool between them.

Thanks to all the entrants for your fantastic contributions.

All the entries are now available here, as well as being added to their corresponding books in the Living Archive.