In 2021, I attended the 10 Days on the Island festival in lutruwita/Tasmania as part of a research project exploring the social impact of the creative arts in Regional Australia. On my second day at the festival, I went to a small workshop Reaching Global Audiences with Local Storytelling led by Catherine Pettman from Rummin Productions and Rebecca Thompson. After an hour, it was clear that these two filmmakers were creating, producing and sharing some of the most interesting and community-led stories I had seen in a very long time. Their approach to respecting the communities and individuals they are collaborating with is centred on meeting participants where they are: emotionally, creatively and physically. This was challenged in 2020, and their extraordinary film There is No ‘I’ in Island demonstrates their innovative solution to enforced isolation. This short documentary series weaves the fears, dreams, reflections, and songs of the island community of lutruwita/Tasmania into a fantastical, animated landscape. Every voice heard in the series was self-recorded in May 2020, during Tasmania’s COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, and reflects in a personal way on the experience. Catherine Pettman reflects below on the process of collaborative storytelling and its potential to create change.

Tell us a bit about who you are and how you came to be working in film and documentary filmmaking?

In the southeast of lutruwita/Tasmania there’s a unique meeting of two saltwater bays, divided by a narrow isthmus with high coastal mountains that dip their wooded toes into the icy Southern waters. It was a remote place to grow up and our family activities were completely dictated by the climate and what needed to be caught or grown for the dinner table. I played in the ocean, and on the ocean. I walked through the temperate rainforest to find the waterfalls. Mostly, I rode for hours on my single speed bike, travelling here and there, exploring every nook and cranny. They were fearless years full of freedom and adventure. teralina/Eaglehawk Neck was a magical environment, which hosted a complement of curious visitors and unique local characters full of news of their adventures out there in the wilds. Listening to these storytellers, particularly my parents, was a wonderful way to spend the time. Perhaps this is where my love of story began.

I left home in my late teens. Not an unusual occurrence as we tend to leave the Island early on. It’s a migration really. For me, it was to gain higher education in the Dramatic Arts and beyond, and traveling and exploring other cultures. Journeying through the Northern Territory and then living and working with the Yolngu community in NE Arnhem Land had a huge impact on my life, and for which I will always be grateful. Filmmaking started on the other side of the camera as through my performance studies I saw myself as an actor and theatre maker. Eventually, my heart brought me home to Tasmania where I began crewing on commercial productions, gaining experience through a variety of roles, and eventually began to produce my own content for the screen. I’ve particularly loved documenting stories of exemplary people sharing their life’s passion. Oftentimes, there are themes that relate to the wicked issues that we face as a society. Funnily enough, there’s a collective interest in making and sharing these kinds of stories that build community capacity, and quite a few of my shorter documentaries have resonated in places far removed from our little island at the bottom of the world. 

How would you describe your approach to finding the stories you want to tell?

I have a strong suspicion that stories find me. At least it often feels that way. I hear or read about something intriguing, or a colleague shares an experience or an idea, and, suddenly, we’ve been talking for an hour together, building on what’s fascinating or why it’s compelling and how badly we need to capture it, and share it with others. If activities within the story are time critical then there’s extra pressure to try and solve the puzzle of how to develop the idea, how to finance the production, and how to find a pathway to an audience. That was certainly the case with There Is No ‘I’ In Island. It was developed in response to our COVID-19 lockdown and the reality of not having capacity to film live interviews. Hence, the idea to ask participants to self-record their responses was born. 

All of a sudden, we found ourselves pouring over hours of intimate stories, which we collated into story threads for our five episodes. It was a humbling experience, opening each recording full of stories gifted to us during such a poignant moment in time. There are hours of stories I’d love to share but there’s not enough time to make them all into films. Although this creates tension, I also recognise it’s a privileged position to be in. Overall, the stories that rise to the surface are more often than not those that have a strong community of collaborators and supporters all the way along. There’s an authenticity within the story, the process and the community of storytellers, which eventually translates to an authentic film that hopefully connects with the intended audience. Authenticity is probably the most fundamental aspect in choosing the story I want to tell. Truth mirrored back through story has the power to challenge our values and beliefs and, just possibly, transform the way we see the world – perhaps even offering up a renewed perspective on how we can be better citizens within it. We can but try.

What innovations in the ways that community stories can be made and shared are most exciting for you?

The There Is No ‘I’ In Island series was a break away from the conventional, and I suppose we considered it innovative as it was new ground for us as creatives. Myself and co-creator Rebecca Thomson prompted experiential responses from the community by asking specific questions around a particular subject, and participants self-recorded their answers rather than having a filmmaker present to guide the narrative – quite an untraditional method. By doing this, the authority transferred across to the individual and already we can see the impact of community ownership of their ‘voices’ in the way There Is No ‘I’ In Island  has been embraced and joyously shared through physical space and online. The production most likely felt innovative as it occurred during a very uncertain time during lockdown when we were all unsure how production could continue. It became this very nimble and explorative way that we could keep producing content and share human experiences and stories from our own community, with community participation being at the core of the process. 

Everything about the project made perfect sense and the community responded in kind with openness and enthusiasm. We could sense that the community were feeling ‘seen’ and ‘heard’, which gave their stories even more weight as it was clear how valued they felt being involved. It was hugely exciting to develop from the ground up using this pool of natural, charming, exotic, and relatable characters who were completely anonymous to us, yet who also became extraordinarily familiar throughout our production process. 

As There Is No ‘I’ In Island was conceived during lockdown in May 2020, it was also designed so that we could pair five visual artists each with an experienced animator.

It was hugely satisfying to match these creative teams with an episode that best suited their tone and style, creating a rich and valuable opportunity to build their skills, push themselves creatively and to form new professional collaborations. This network of participants and creatives has resulted in a multi-faceted cross-section of community participants, artistic collaborators, supporters and viewers.  

Do you think stories can create change?

One of the most beautiful things about stories is they have the power to open us up to new perspectives. The question I tend to ponder is how exactly is the story creating change in a person? Is it conscious? Or are these archetypal themes resonating with our subconscious selves, shifting our deepest values and beliefs in a new direction? What happens when new concepts and ideas settle in and relax our learned perspectives and prejudices? Do stories somehow deliver intangible meanings that nurture us and provide sustenance for personal growth? Stories deliver such rich meaning to our lives, they connect us to higher ideals whilst, at the same time, they also connect us to our own hearts. 

Stories have the capacity to make us care deeply about the world and the wicked issues that we face in society. Stories help us understand how to tackle the challenges around us, they inspire us, and remind us we are not alone. Stories provide a pathway to express our emotions and our dreams, which is the perfect combination when you think about it. When stories create change in people, they become empowered to make change. A story that communicates a call to action is probably the most powerful tool in making change. We need to get active to see the changes we want beyond talking, listening and sharing as these activities aren’t enough by themselves. But they are a fantastic start to the conversation towards meaningful action.

Which are your favourite or most impactful projects and why?

Doing it Scared was one of the most beautiful projects I’ve produced, it was a deeply meaningful story featuring rock climbing legend Paul Pritchard and his attempt to finally conquer the ‘Totem Pole’, a “fearsome sea-stack”, which 18 years prior had almost cost Paul his life. Paul was one of the world’s leading climbers and mountaineers of the 1980s and 90s, renowned for his hard and extremely bold first ascents. In 1998, Paul was abseiling in to climb the Totem Pole in Southeast Tasmania when he dislodged a rock, which hit him on the head, causing a severe head injury that he was lucky to survive. The aftermath of the accident left him with hemiplegia, which means he has little feeling or movement in the right side of his body. Despite this disability, Paul continues to live a life filled with adventure. So much so that when Paul decided to return to the Totem pole to finish the climb and asked us to film this extraordinary attempt, we leapt at the chance to support his ambition and help document the final chapter of this remarkable story. 

The resulting edge-of-your-seat film is just 12 minutes in length. It has been seen all over the world in every major outdoor adventure festival, and still continues to screen in cities throughout Europe, China and the US. Paul has been invited to speak at many of these festivals and uses the film within his own presentations to large NFP and Governmental organisations, and within smaller classroom settings, sharing his story and demonstrating his physical and spiritual experience of life through leading practical activities with a goal of breaking down prejudice with empathy, education and inspiration. 

You can find There is No ‘I’ in Island here:

www.rummin.com

https://www.facebook.com/rumminproductions

https://www.facebook.com/TasmanianVoices

2020  and 2021 have left all of us (except, perhaps, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos) living with more uncertainty and vulnerability than we have allowed ourselves to admit previously. Like many, I have the very strong sense that a veil has been lifted, and we are in the midst of a series of societal reckonings that reveal how broken many of the systems we rely on are and that change is needed on a large scale. In 2014, I wrote two pieces about transmedia storytelling and activism for The Writing Platform. One outlined the form and processes and one put forward some examples of projects I thought were especially inspiring and innovative. Over the past seven years, technology has advanced exponentially and profound social movements have emerged across the globe. It feels like time to revisit the role and relevance of transmedia storytelling in activism, advocacy and social change, and to consider the ways traditionally under-represented cohorts have innovated the form of transmedia storytelling to create inclusive stories to agitate for change.

A lot of predication and claims have been made about transmedia storytelling since it first appeared on the media studies scene via Henry Jenkins’ blog in 2003. However, in my effort to update my previous articles it became clear that there has been a stagnation in the field of transmedia storytelling, and perhaps a lack of impact in regard to transmedia activism, at least in the mainstream understanding and discussion of transmedia. Outside the mainstream, transmedia storytelling still has the potential to create profound projects that seek to challenge the status quo. These projects use the capabilities of transmedia to amplify under-represented voices and make stories that suggest a more inclusive future, and consequently contemporary transmedia activism looks much more diffuse and diverse than it did seven years ago. 

An often overlooked aspect of transmedia storytelling that is most potent is its capacity to illuminate the relationships between people, places and practices that can influence social change, which is precisely what creators and activists have continued to strive to harness in projects. As we grapple with issues of representation of under-represented groups and environments across all forms of media, the question of how transmedia storytelling can continue to evolve in ways that are inclusive and ethical continues to be relevant. One of the issues that could hold transmedia back is that still so little of what is written about transmedia explores the subjects, the content of the stories, the place and the purpose of the story. The focus continues to be the purpose of the platform, the design or the fan interaction, rather than the purpose of the story itself: who is the story about and who is telling it? Why are they telling this story and where are they telling it from? Do the media and platforms chosen reveal new aspects of the story? Are they authentic and meaningful for the subjects and creators of the story? Does place, not simply location, contribute something profound to the story? Is the story being told from the outside, about someone else? Or is it one of the rare stories that is told from inside a place, rather than about the people whose story it is? What unique contributions can transmedia make to the futures of storytelling? 

We cannot afford to continue tinkering around the edges. With that in mind, I reviewed the projects I presented as examples in 2014 and sought out new examples. What became clear is that place has become a central element to successfully crafting stories that might just be able to shift our perspectives. How place might be used and embedded in transmedia storytelling requires other ways of thinking about storytelling which are not necessarily common in the fields that currently inform transmedia storytelling, such as media studies, games studies, narratology or film studies. As an element of transmedia storytelling, place is best understood through the lived experiences of those who inhabit it.

The interactive, transmedia project Hollow, from 2013, continues to exemplify what is possible in transmedia storytelling to promote social change and was an early leader of how to centre place and voice in the story. The multiple methods that are deployed to create the environment in which the project is set are examples of not only the impact that attention to cultural, physical and economic environment can have on non-fiction projects, but also the consideration of how particular media and platforms can be used to best portray particular aspects of that world. Perhaps the greatest achievement of Hollow is the ways it has captured the ‘feel’ of McDowell County while also telling a universal story. At the centre of the project are around 30 stories made about and by the residents of McDowell, using video, stills, text and voiceover that are reminiscent of traditional digital stories. McMillion claims that ‘the stories are encountered within this landscape so that the people featured emerge from a context of place and community’ (Rose, Mandy. 2013 “American futures: Hollow & question bridge” Collabdocs, July 1).

This approach is also used in the current outstanding transmedia story Neo Learning created between 2010 and 2020 by Big hART.  Big hART is an Australian arts media and social change company that works intensively in marginalised communities to co-create multifaceted arts events that reflect the stories and the creativity of the participants, and raises awareness about the urgent social issues facing these communities. Both Hollow and NEO-Learning are multi-year projects that relied on multiple media and forms to extensively represent communities and to connect with as large an audience as possible. These projects foreground story and the lived experiences and expertise of the communities as the cohering element. Further, all aspects of the projects and Hollow and NEO-Learning privileged the communities ahead of audiences. Instead of asking what audiences want to see, they asked the communities what was not being amplified or shared about them? What counter-narratives were there to the dominant stories about these places and the people who call it home? What frameworks needed to be used to facilitate the community being able to lead the storytelling? 

NEO-Learning is many things – storytelling, a learning resource, comic, a platform, training, an expression of culture, a reclaiming of place, and an imagining of futures. It is one big project, with discrete parts that can be enjoyed (by audiences, creators and community) on their own but has a particular purpose as a large project. There are a number of elements that make up the NEO-Learning project: NEOMAD comic, Future Dreaming VR film and the educational platform for teachers. NEO-Learning as a suite of educational tools began development in 2018, but was preceded and inspired by the award-winning sci-fi comic NEOMAD, also created in collaboration with Big hart. The NEOMAD comic was co-created with over 40 young people in the Roebourne community, through workshops in scriptwriting, literacy, Photoshop, filmmaking and sound recording. 

The result is an entirely original and innovative view of Indigenous young people, who are so often represented across the commercial media in Australia in negative and racist ways. As a transmedia project, NEO-Learning is a tantalising glimpse of what is possible: 

• each element is  unique and purposeful; each aspect amplifies the strengths, the creativity of the participants; 
• the technology is used to support and share traditional knowledges;
• representation is determined by the people being represented and reveals complex and creative ways to share approaches to positive representation between marginalised groups.

 As an educational tool, it is focused on what non-Indigenous Australians can learn and benefit from Indigenous culture and people and is grounded in strength rather than focusing on any challenges the community may face. The community owns the project, and it is about how they see themselves and what they want to communicate about themselves in the ways they want to communicate. 

Our world is made up of stories, and transmedia storytelling has a real and important role to play in creating a world that is made up of different stories, because it has become frighteningly clear that the same old stories, the same old voices and the same old ways of communicating have little to offer when the world falls apart.

The Writing Platform offers a unique environment to publish writing that focuses on non-traditional.

We publish at the intersection between technology and writing and support sharing knowledge that is underrepresented in traditional academic publishing.  TWP connects you with your community of artists, scholars, and publishers and provides the capacity for high impact publishing.

Contributors include well-known writers and thinkers such as Margaret Atwood, Philip Hensher, and Naomi Alderman, and industry heavyweights like Porter Anderson and Richard Nash.

Take a look at this short video with our editors who explain who we are, what we are doing and what we would like to achieve.

We welcome pitches for articles, with a word length between 1000 and 2500.  If you are interested in submitting a paper for us to consider for our ‘Experience’ section, please contact hello at thewritingplatform.com with a short description or abstract. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

The Writing Platform offers a unique environment to publish academic writing that focuses on non-traditional research outputs and non-traditional research methods.

We publish at the intersection between technology and writing and support sharing knowledge that is underrepresented in traditional academic publishing.  TWP connects you with your community of scholars and provides the capacity for high impact publishing outside academia.  Contributors include well-known writers and thinkers such as Margaret Atwood, Philip Hensher and Naomi Alderman, and industry heavyweights like Porter Anderson and Richard Nash.

Take a look at this short video with our editors who explain who we are, what we are doing and what we would like to achieve.

We welcome pitches for articles based on your own research, short critical essays on theoretical developments in the field and reflexive praxis, with a word length between 1000 and 2500.  If you are interested in submitting a paper for us to consider for this Research page, please contact hello at thewritingplatform.com with a short description or abstract. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

The Writing Platform offers a unique environment to publish academic writing that focuses on non-traditional research outputs and non-traditional research methods.

We publish at intersection between technology and writing and support sharing knowledge that is underrepresented in traditional academic publishing.  TWP connects you with your community of scholars and provides the capacity for high impact publishing outside academia.  Contributors include well-known writers and thinkers such as Margaret Atwood, Philip Hensher and Naomi Alderman, and industry heavyweights like Porter Anderson and Richard Nash.

Academic publishing is competitive; it’s an environment which does not tend to support works in progress or papers about creative practice and practice-based research. Publishing with TWP  facilitates  finding new collaborators or developing articles for further significant scholarship. The Editors of TWP encourage the submission of short academic research papers that are accessible to a more general audience of writers and artists, across a broad range of subject areas where practice intersects with digital technologies.

We welcome pitches for articles based on your own research, short critical essays on theoretical developments in the field and reflexive praxis, with a word length between 1000 and 2500.  If you are interested in submitting a paper for us to consider for this Research page, please contact hello at thewritingplatform.com with a short description or abstract. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Australia is a big country. Queensland is a big state in a big country, one that is particularly geographically dispersed and politically fractured. It is also home to some of the poorest areas in Australia that experience many barriers to accessing for arts and cultural activities. 

Government regional arts programs have the potential to develop and deliver arts content, activities and events in and to remote, rural and regional areas that build community, develop skills and celebrate creativity. However, the reality of arts policy and programs has been vastly different to the potential. Funding is too often focused on providing one-off performances of metropolitan shows or replicas of city festivals delivered as satellite events in regional towns. Importantly, local arts organisations are under-funded and under supported to create sustainable long term arts programs.

After three years of making stories across Queensland using post it notes, pens and paper, smart phones and open source storytelling software I have learned a few things about the role of the arts in regional Queensland and the disconnect sometimes between urban and rural areas.

1. Regional areas are filled with passionate creative people. Each town we visited had a vibrant arts culture that was part of the every-day workings of the community, and the creative events put on by locals were crucial to the fabric of the town. Libraries often function as home to the writer’s group, art group, silver smiths and pottery club. These small self-organising entities are dynamic and crucial to well-being of the town.
2. Arts events in Roma or Bundaberg aren’t the same as arts events in Brisbane. Regional events combine different activities and different parts of the community. For example, an art exhibition might find the local gallery teaming up with the bowls club to promote the opening of the art show followed by barefoot bowls and a BBQ. The overwhelming message from regional areas was that they want to share and contribute cultural content not just receive it.
3. Rural towns aren’t intimidated by technology. Remote communities are familiar with using new technology as part of their way of life to combat isolation. Initiatives such as School of the Air, tele and e health and robotics being deployed in agriculture mean that residents of rural areas less intimidated by digital technology than most city workshops I’ve conducted.
4. Lastly and most importantly: regional areas do not feel heard by the cities, and the consequences of this disenfranchisement affect everyone.

In this video I discuss these issues with Matt Finch (Creative in Residence State Library Queensland) and Tyler Wellensiek (Strategic Projects Officer, Regional Access & Public Libraries) both of whom have worked extensively in remote Queensland.  We also manage to touch on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian futures and the rise of right wing populist politics in western democracies!

2016 Story+ retured to Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF) for its fourth year with internationally renowned award winning writer and digital creator Kate Pullinger and Google Creative Labs Director Tea Uglow  in conversation with Dr Donna Hancox about the Future of Literature at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.

This signature event offered the audiences a chance to explore our digital futures with two of the most innovative thinkers in the world as they talked about their own recent projects and broader ideas about literature.

STORY+ attracted an audience of about 100 people filling the room and since the event was live-streamed a larger audience from around regional Queensland, were invited to join the conversation online.

Now, also The Writing Platform Readers are given the opportunity to watch the conversation by clicking here. Enjoy!

The avenues through which communities and community organisations raise awareness about the issues they face and how they agitate for change have developed rapidly in the past ten years; and digital technology has provided community activists with the means to quickly create and widely disseminate stories.  Perhaps the most influential and wide reaching of recent innovations in storytelling has been transmedia storytelling. The term transmedia storytelling first came into prominence via Henry Jenkins; he used it to describe a particular approach to storytelling that made use of the emerging media platforms being utilised more frequently by everyday consumers.  Jenkins’ concept of transmedia storytelling, which remains the generally accepted definition – albeit oft revised and somewhat fluid – was first introduced in his Technology Review column in 2003 stating ‘a transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole’. The practice of transmedia storytelling, in turn, has expanded the possible modes and styles through and in which stories are told, and the opportunities for storytellers to connect with audiences.

The pervasive examples of transmedia storytelling that have emerged over the past ten years are big budget, mainstream film and television franchises that roll out their marketing campaigns disguised as story or narrative over a number of distinct media platforms, such as Lost, Prometheus and Avatar.  However, over the last three years other types of independent, stand alone projects like Lizzy Bennett Diaries and Granny’s Dancing on the Table have become more commonplace. These projects utilise recognisable conventions of transmedia storytelling and borrow elements from other forms of storytelling that predate transmedia, such as digital storytelling and documentary film making.  In addition to being hybrid in form these projects are independent and solely focused on raising awareness about particular social issues or telling the stories of marginalized groups, who otherwise do not have a voice in the public sphere. These types of projects have re-worked and re-purposed some of the conventions of transmedia storytelling to suit their intentions, and have much in common with the notion of transmedia activism. Lina Srivastava has defined transmedia activism as ‘creating social impact by using storytelling by a number of decentralised authors who share assets, create content for distribution across multiple forms of media to raise awareness and influence action’.

Transmedia activism challenges a great deal of what we understand to be transmedia storytelling.  Much of what has been identified as transmedia storytelling fetishes mainstream, franchise based stories (and even in the instances where fans have to an extent taken control of the story it is still always in the interest of the large corporations at the heart of the project) or what James Bridle calls ‘sleek black box, corporate controlled objects, platforms or services’. Without dismissing or diminishing these mainstream projects or the ways in which they are considered, the aim of redefining transmedia is to open up the field to encompass other works that instead champion what Bridle describes as ‘open source, hackable, comprehensible and sharable alternatives’.

The kind of activism illustrated in projects such as 18 Days in Egypt, Highrise and The Hollow are inclusive in their approach and focused on illuminating hitherto unexamined aspects of an issue, particularly the experiences of the people involved, to create alternative media representations and express alternative political possibilities. 18 Days in Egypt, Highrise and The Hollow clearly show how potent storytelling can be in this space, and it is useful to explore the ways these kinds of projects re-define our understanding of transmedia as an evolving concept.

Highrise is described as ‘a multi-year and many-media collaborative documentary experiment funded by the National Film Board of Canada’. The online project is comprised of two main components – Out my Window and One Millionth Tower, and the aim is to ‘see how the documentary process can drive and participate in social innovation rather than just to document it’ . One Millionth Tower was released in August 2012 and tells the story of one Canadian high rise in a 3 D immersive documentary powered entirely by HTML5, WebGL and other open source JavaScript libraries. The residents of the crumbling tower block collaborated with a group of architects, animators and web developers to create the three dimensional documentary.

18 Days in Egypt is a group storytelling project that encourages a dynamic and dialogic method of storytelling via the use of many contemporary storytelling tools such as tweets, Facebook updates and mobile phone footage and uploading them to the purpose built 18 Days in Egypt site. Egyptians were encouraged to contribute stories they had from Tahrir Square and then invite family and friends to contribute to the story uploaded by adding their own perspective on the events.

The Hollow is a ‘community participatory’ project and interactive documentary that explores the social and economic devastation of rural towns in America through the story of McDowell County in West Virginia.  It brings together personal digital stories, photography, sounds, interactive data and grassroots mapping on an HTML5 website which was designed to ‘discuss the many stereotypes associated with the area, population loss and potential for the future’. At the centre of the project are around thirty stories made about and by the residents of McDowall using video, stills, text and voiceover that are reminiscent of traditional digital stories.  The director of The Hollow, Elaine McMillion, states that when she arrived at McDowell County she found ‘really phenomenal stories of pride and hope’ and realised that ‘she wasn’t comfortable editing those into 75 minute form and putting a title slide saying “The End”.

Similarly in Highrise the vision of the creators was to see how ‘the documentary process can drive and participate in social innovation rather than just to document it; and to help re-invent what it means to be an urban species in the 21^st century’ rather than to document and implicitly claiming objectivity while simultaneously authoring the work on behalf of the participants.  18 Days in Egypt is described as a ‘collaborative documentary’ that aims to capture the days in Tahrir Square leading up to the ousting of President Murbarak on the 11^th February 2011. The use of the word ‘capture’ rather than to ‘document’ or ‘report’ is important; and suggests that unlike traditional documentary this type of group storytelling offers a more authentic and representative picture of the Egyptian revolution.

The kind of activism demonstrated in 18 days in Egypt, The Hollow and Highrise highlights a fundamental belief in the dignity of the subjects and strives to convey the complexities of the lives and issues by taking advantage of the technology available to challenge audiences to enter, experience and interact with the stories in new ways.