Playing with the team: The Development of Communities of Practice in a Digital Storytelling Project

Since its emergence in the early 1990's, digital storytelling has been variouslyidentified as a new media practice, a consumer and community-led movement,and a textual system. However, given its relative nascent status, there remainsthe need for further academic research focusing on the different forms it hasassumed. During the spring/summer of 2011, I conducted an examination ofTaking the Field (TTF), a digital storytelling project that aims to celebrategrassroots cricket in the UK through the construction of stories by village andcounty-level clubs. In contrast to most previous projects that aim to have theparticipants “speak” by constructing their own stories, TTF stories are researchedand constructed by project staff with the assistance of the clubs.My research centers on the experiences of two clubs in the project, Blaina CC andSpondon CC, through interviews and elicitation techniques with club andcommunity members using the completed stories and the artifacts used in theirconstruction. Through the theoretical framework of Gell's anthropology of art, Iconsider how digital stories act as objects that mediate social agency during theircreation and how the structure of this type of project contributes to the formationof communities of practice in the 'performance' of collective identity.