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Digital Storytellers, Ultra Red and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire

Patrick Ohslund, Author

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Digital Storytellers films interpreted through Freire's pedagogy

Participants in Digital Storytellers programs are high school students who are conducting inquiry through the medium of spoken word poetry. Spoken word poetry has traditionally been an art form utilized by oppressed populations as a means to speak personal truth in an empowered manner for the purposes of manifesting personal liberation and promoting social justice. The poems in this project are created and performed by students in this Digital Storytellers program who are from a marginalized demographic, attend an underfunded school and live in a predominantly low income city. This is all to say that these young people are familiar with systematic oppression. Spoken word poetry serves as a manifestation of Freire's pedagogy in the following ways:


1) Poets who have conducted inquiry and honed their word have named their world and hence attained perspective of themselves as subjects within a system that would have them as oppressed objects. Through this perspective, in regards to Freire's pedagogy they exist as revolutionary leaders.

2) At first glance a spoken word poetry event may appear to be non-dialogical, with poets ranting at the submissive audience. With deeper consideration the spoken word event consists of a rich three part dialog:

        A) Prior to the event poets and audience engage in conversation.

        B) During performance lively response from, and interaction with the audience is necessary for the event to be considered successful.

              B2) In the case of the poetry slam, the audience responds to poems at the end of each poet's performance through numerical scores which are then interpreted and responded to by later poets.

        C) After the performances a successful spoken word poetry event will include lengthy and often emotional informal dialog between audience and poets in regards to the performed pieces.

3) Spoken word performances take place in public venues (such as bars, cafes, libraries, performance venues and outside) that allow for contact and dialog between performers (revolutionary leaders) and the audience (the people).  


Critical to dialog in Freire's pedagogy is the concept of generative themes, which are topics of direct relevance to, and interest of participants; through focus and conversation these themes generate rich insight into people's lives. Freire expresses his thoughts on the application of generative themes when he states, "The methodology of that investigation must be dialogical, affording the opportunity both to discover generative themes and to stimulate peoples awareness in regard to these themes" (Freire, 1970 p. 97). Ultra Red and Digital Storytellers are both fundamentally designed to provide participants with the opportunity to explore, express and understand their generative themes. Through the public performance of spoken word poetry, Digital Storytellers is able to surpass Ultra Red through the fulfillment of Freire's condition of 'stimulating peoples awareness'. The following mash up of poems created by Digital Storytellers participants illustrates this presentation of multiple generative themes and the peoples response to them.   



Freire's following thought describes the relationship between the leaders and people in terms of the poets and the audience: "The more sophisticated knowledge of the leaders (poets) is remade in the empirical knowledge (scores) of the people (Audience), while the latter is refined by the former" [Italics added] (Freire 1970, p181). In this sense the poets and audience are co-creating each others perspectives through the forge of the poetry event.
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