What is in the storytelling toolbox that the average citizen needs to be able to communicate effectively? FIND led a two-week multi-media workshop at the Maraya Art Center in Sharjah to tackle this question.

The February workshop was an intense hands-on experience that required participants to research, write, record audio, shoot, and edit their stories. I designed the workshop to be a collaborative effort, and I asked each participant to rotate through different roles on the crew.

The primary goal of the “Chef Here, Chef Home” workshop was to create portraits of chefs who fuse cultures through their cuisines. To create these portraits, FIND created multimedia kits that included:

• DSLR camera with professional optics

• iPad device with a wireless keyboard and media creation software such as Photoshop Touch and an audio editing application

• Zoom Sound recorder with onboard microphone and headset

FIND aimed to empower each student to accomplish a series of learning objectives. These goals included:

• Develop visual storytelling skills

• Develop pre-production planning & research skills

• Locate the central idea of a story

• Learn proper sound recording techniques, including microphone placement

• Operate DSLR cameras with different optics

• Learn fundamentals of composition

• Understand the importance of and implement basic editing techniques

• Learn, execute, and improve upon interview techniques

Participants worked at a fast-paced professional level, moving from story concept to a completed multimedia story within a two-week timeframe. Each participant came out of the workshop with a project that developed his/her visual storytelling skills and captured the diverse cultural landscape of the UAE. We will post examples of the students’ work within the FIND Notebook in the coming weeks.