StoryLab Research Network: An Ethnomediaology Approach to Story-Development

The StoryLab Research Network was a collaborative research project funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. StoryLab is an international film development research network of practice-led researchers from Australia, Malaysia, Ghana, Colombia and the UK. Establishing and utilising an ethnomediaology approach, the project conducted workshops with around 15 emerging independent filmmakers in each of the three developing countries of Malaysia, Ghana and Colombia between June and October 2017, during which each participant developed a screen-based story idea. The underlying question the StoryLab Research Networked sought to explore was: if the digital age has democratised the means of filmmaking and film dissemination, thereby enabling new voices to emerge outside of the dominant Western production centres, then what are the stories filmmakers in emerging economies want to tell and how are these stories reflecting a different perspective on living in an increasingly globalised world? This article is a report on the research project. It will introduce the StoryLab Research Network and its methodology of ethnomediaology. It will then present an overview of stories developed in the three workshops, demonstrating that these stories have strong personal impulses, discuss local socio-political matters and attempt to challenge the dominance of global and national production centres in the shaping of screen realities. I will end the report with a discussion around the workshops’ impact and future plans of the StoryLab Network. Information on StoryLab can be found at: www.storylabnetwork.com.