First day! Lisbon waiting to welcome me and my family for a few days. Beautiful landscapes, great weather in the Atlantic coast and... here I am, eager to meet people, practice and learn from this experience!

Though it is Sunday, we went for a walk near the beach. The water was FREEZING COLD!

We started our course on Digital storytelling. It was Axel, our great teacher, Kristine, my colleague form Latvia and me! 

Digital Storytelling is a workshop-based practice in which people are taught to use digital media to create short audio-video stories, usually about their own lives. The idea is that this puts the universal human delight in narrative and self-expression into the hands of everyone. Despite its use of the latest technologies, its purpose is simple and human. 

After a brief approach to the origins of "Storytelling" and "Digital storytelling" we started focusing on the practical part of it through the main tool we were going to use in the course:

Adobe is a great tool. Videos, flyers and more! 

Let's try it with our first improvised story? What about? What to tell??

Before we proceed let us first pimp up CLOSAT a little bit, let’s bring in an extra card:

• J = Joker

This card can give your story idea process a surprising twist, a new angle / perspective, a new layer. Especially when you are stuck. I normally ad at least three Joker cards:

• At the same time, somewhere else …

• Things are not as they seem!

• 10 days / months / years before

So how do we play the game?

Each player gets 12 index cards. Front side: Write the corresponding CLOSAT letter in the centre and your initials in one corner of the card.

• Three cards with a C

• Two cards with a L

• Two cards with an O

• Two cards with a S

• Two cards with an A

• One card with a T

On the back side you now write your description. Maximum three to four lines. Be precise! Not too little and not too much, but enough to get your imagination started. As you’ve seen above – e.g. the Uncle James (C) card – Rabiger’s descriptions are very “elaborated”. For me this is too much. It’s not helping me in my creative process. Furthermore the information given is often needless while other for me important things – to visualize The Uncrowded Restaurant (L) – are missing:

• What is the interior design of the restaurant? Old style, hipster, modern, pizzeria …?

• Social profile: Low class or upper class customers?

• Age structure: Retired people from the neighborhood, business people, youngsters …?

• How is the light inside? During the day, at night?

I find it helpful that especially for the characters you already bring in some possible drama or even conflict. E.g. “A catholic priest – 43 asian – thinking about leaving church – he has an affair with a married woman.” You can use the whole information right from the start or only later, little by little when wanted. It is up to you.

So let’s proceed. In a group of four we now should have 48 cards. Plus three Joker cards makes together 51 cards. From here there are different ways to play the game. First you have to decide whether you wanna put all shuffled cards together in one big pile, a hat, a box or whether you keep them separated, the seven piles of cards lying on a table next to each other: C – L – O – S – A – T – J. When it’s you turn you can decide which card from which pile you wanna draw. You can also use a die: Instead of the numbers put the six letters CLOSAT on it. 

Rabiger recommends to start with two or three cards from the Character pile and one or two each from the Location and Object piles. His process is always the same:

• A selection of cards is made. He often starts with only Character, Object and Location.

• They are put on the table next to each other.

• Some time (often 10 minutes) is given to come up with a story.

• The story is presented.

• Then the game starts all over again.

I thought during our Digital Storytelling course... what shall we explore today to tell you later? I googled up some info about Palacio da Pena, drove the car, got lost in the middle of nowhere, and finally we arrived into Sintra and its amazing "Disney-like" fortress: the Palacio da Pena!!! 

FAMILY TRIP TO PALACIO DA PENA IN SINTRA!! DEFINITELY, IT'S WORTH A VISIT!!!