Animating Our Stories | Indigenous Writing and Digital Illustration

Overview

This program will ignite Indigenous authors and artists focusing on young readers to delve into new ways of storytelling using digital illustration techniques. Through guidance from experienced faculty including recognized Indigenous authors, an illustrator, and a digital animator, participants will learn to lift a story off the page, texturize it, and animate elements of it to life.

Animating Our Stories is a space where storytellers, content producers, and digital media artists will collaborate to fuse modern presentation techniques with the art of storytelling. Participants will explore technology as they learn to illuminate the audience experience of their already vividly imagined stories.

What does the program offer?

Animating our Stories uses storytelling as a form of artistic expression through new technology. The program will develop participants’ ability to learn and expand their storytelling techniques for young audiences. Participants will focus on creating immersive and educational worlds – a key element in storytelling for youth.

The program will offer opportunities to work with editor faculty, and with an illustrator to highlight parts of participants’ stories to focus on for animation. Participants will work with digital media to determine what elements of their stories could be enhanced by animation. 

Who should apply?

Enrolment to this program is for individuals of Indigenous descent (status, non-status, Inuit, and Metis) only. This program is an ideal fit for emerging to established Indigenous writers and illustrators of narrative fiction and/or poetry for young readers. Applicants should be writers in any young reader genre with a strong interest in digital storytelling techniques, although previous experience with digital media is not necessary.

Successful applicants should plan to arrive at the program with a completed work or work in progress to be brought to life through technology.

Dates: May 21 - June 10, 2019