Storytelling for immersive transmedia experiences.

In January 2018 we received some good news, our application to adapt a transmedia story from The Snow Witch, a novel by Matt Wingett had been successful. We were now in a position to start planning delivery of what would become our contribution to the 2019 Darkfest, a local festival celebrating the darker imagination of Portsmouth’s creative community .

Our project kicked off with a series of active participatory workshops are intended to inspire, inform and galvanise interest in new forms of writing. The workshops aimed to provide participants with an understanding of the concepts of transmedia storytelling, to provide participants with skills for telling their own transmedia stories and to equip them with a different perspective on this new emerging form of storytelling. The workshops were open to anybody and there was no requirement for any previous experience, just an open mind and a willingness to learn something new.

Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. We wanted to work with local writers to explore this new form of expression and discover new ways of writing collaboratively. The workshops were advertised widely including local writers groups as well as through New Writing South.

With the assistance the of University of Portsmouth we were able to run three day long workshops that bought some incredible talent to the city. We started with Joe Reddington’s Collaborative Writing session, followed it up with Alison Norrington’s transmedia session and concluded with a workshop by UoP’s own Mark Eyles on gameplay and fiction writing.

Some of the following blog posts are short reflections on the experience of the workshops and will hopefully outline some inspirations from those who participated. Others will explore a other aspects of the project and will perhaps offer an insight into the process of developing and delivering the Cursed City project.