Living Cultural Storybases

CAPTURING the CULTURAL CAPITAL of INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES
http://www.storybases.org
One half of the intellectual heritage of humanity is now slated to disappear within one generation.
Of the planet's ~6,900 documented languages, the greater part are spoken by fewer than 5% of its people- the precious mosaic of indigenous and marginalized traditional cultures. One language already dies with its last speaker every ten days, taking with it the accumulated history and knowledge of that culture’s reciprocal relationship with the land, diversity of art and beliefs. These languages carry oral traditions, knowledge of the environment, systems for mental and physical health and experience about the human condition that leave few traces. We - all of humanity - increasingly need this living resource of alternative knowledge systems and especially, their examples of cooperative social models, rather than the unsustainable competitive Western model that increases the gap between the rich and poor and threatens our planet.

Stories are the essence of any culture. Sustainable community empowerment whilst retaining biocultural diversity, means that cultural expression, values and knowledge transmission across the generations are key - traditional narratives are the carriers. In today’s globalization, digital technology captivates the youth but should not drive them to abandon their own heritage or language, rather the young can become the agents, capturing their culture from their elders, exploiting new channels and digital media to express their proud identity and voice in the connected world.

Among people around the world troubled by this accelerating global catastrophe is Paul Rankin, a former Research Fellow at Philips Electronics who brings his technical expertise, previous experience as a social entrepreneur and organisational vision to the non-profit, Living Cultural Storybases (LCS). Co-founded with another social entrepreneur and internationally-awarded photographer Nicolas Villaume, they head an international team of experts working to help empower local communities and foster their oral traditions by encouraging their enthusiasm for turning appropriate digital media to their advantage.

LCS mobilizes a variety of resources, including the combined efforts of various university staff, volunteers, and teams on the ground. A major thrust, however, is the design of handheld digital devices that enable indigenous and other marginalized communities to record their own stories and images and use them to compile radio broadcasts, photography exhibits, and other elements of cultural capital. Many of these opportunities are based on Paul's Stanford-incubated major win-win social enterprise, Voices in Your Hand' that piloted with 3 million euro investment in a Brazilian shantytown, see http://voices.stanford.edu

By providing simple yet novel, cost-effective technological tools in conjunction with methodological and educational support, LCS enables dialogue between generations, reconnection with a culture's urban Diaspora and fosters pride in the traditions and values that keep minority cultures alive. In their words: “Anthropologists have collected tribal stories to preserve for outsiders. We aim further: to support living networks of spoken stories and songs for the communities themselves to celebrate, share and re-interpret their cultural knowledge in the changing world.”

Convincing results from two years of LCS pilot projects, among the Quechua mountain people in Peru and the Tuareg nomads in Mali, have heartily validated this strategy, encouraging efforts by indigenous people to deploy appropriate digital technologies. LCS now wishes to develop, scale up and apply their technological prototypes and the lessons learned for other communities eg in Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea and British Columbia, while extending their ongoing efforts in Peru and Mali.

*** NB In particular, at the Copenhagen Summit at the end of 2009 we demonstrated a very general and powerful way to use QR barcodes on any object, product or trade goods to directly connect the consumer via a mobile phone to multimedia about the object or its creators, or to communicate via phone/email with anyone on the value chain. Many hybrid, sustainable for-profit + non-profit business models are possible! We seek business modellers and social venture capital to develop the potential. ***

This is a unique opportunity to learn from traditional cultures, whose traditional custody of the biodiversity of the planet and paradigms of cooperative societies the world increasingly needs. We combine innovation with proven results for the sustainability of cultural diversity, but seek advisors, partners and investors, or volunteers with a range of skills, to help develop and scale up our exciting and globally-crucial work.

Please visit www.storybases.org for more information and many downloadable documents.
For a taste of on-going LCS activities, please see and listen to some community blogs:
MALI: Tuareg
http://storybases-tamacheq.blogspot.com
PERU: Quechua
http://tambobamba-lcsandes.blogspot.com/
http://urpay-lcsandes.blogspot.com/
http://ccatcca-lcsandes.blogspot.com/

We hope you will join us on this mission: nurturing the oral heritage of minority cultures in a digital world.

Much gratitude is due to the Christensen Fund for their financial support of our 501c(3) since 2007, see http://www.christensenfund.org/