Local Content Producers: Co-Creating Communal Stories and Community in the Big Stories, Small Towns Participatory Documentary Project

Big Stories, Small Towns is a transmedia participatory documentary series that commenced production in 2008 and has facilitated the telling, recording, archiving and dissemination of more than 500 auto/biographical narratives in Australia, Cambodia, Hungary, West Papua, Malaysia and Indonesia across thirteen towns. Big Stories is based around professional media makers living in a town, as filmmakers-in-residence, and creating stories with local people. This chapter reflects on, from the perspective of a practitioner, the processes of working with small communities and non-professional media makers to facilitate creative documentary work and key theories and practices that have supported this work. There will also be a discussion of theoretical and practice-based developments of participatory modes of engagement with the media, examining production processes in the light of culture and technology, in particular projects that have influenced the multi-year, multi-site Big Stories, Small Towns project. Through case studies from Big Stories, Small Towns this chapter will explore the process of professional and non-professional media makers co-creating stories.