Focus on creativity: Greek teenagers combine digital archiving and documentary making

Cultural memory expression

According to Straub (2008), cultural memory is a community’s organised and coherent conception of its past culture. So, by creating this digital archive and digital documentary, the student-participants contributed in their own amateur way to the creation of future generations’ cultural memory. The films created by the students will be kept on a digital platform of the Greek Ministry of Education, and will become archive objects themselves, available to future generations and to the collective cultural memory. In this sense, the students have acted as local historians, unearthing the secret histories of their localities, and preserving them through creative digital means. In a sense, and without realising it, the students were playing their own, small part in the formation of their ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983) and its cultural memory, acting as representatives of the inhabitants of their locality. As one of the participants, Amy, stated: ‘It is important that we have the chance to present our town in our way.’

Students’ contribution to the creation of both the digital archive and the digital documentary can also be seen as a collection of ‘hypomnemata’, in Foucault’s (1997) terms. They are digital artefacts, material products, which will last in time, and they can be revisited by their creators and the potential audience for information and reflection whenever they want or need to refer to them. In Derrida’s (1995) words, the students chose what to save from amnesia, and thus selected the material they wished to preserve in time through this archivisation process. In relation to that, one of the participants, Christopher, stated: ‘I learned many things about local history I was not aware of.’ This highlights the fact that through this project, the student-participants themselves became more familiar with their local history, and what they created served as hypomnemata to themselves, who learned about and may need to revisit aspects of their school and town, and thus of their own history. Furthermore, the student-participants were aiming for their audience’s approval and appreciation of their work, because the better the quality of their archive and documentary, the more chances they had to win a prize in the competition. Thus, they wished to create hypomnemata that would serve their whole imagined community, all the people interested in the history of Smyrna and Nea Smyrni now and in the future, who will visit their archive and watch their documentary and, hopefully, find them useful and informative. In this way, they saved the memory of the objects from death, and prevented them from falling into oblivion. Although they could never, of course, truly know the past, as they had not experienced it (Derrida, 1995), their curation and creative reimagining of the past gives us an insight into what they think is valuable, and worth retaining.

The project data show that the concept of cultural memory is three-fold. First, students learned and remembered events concerning local history and culture from the vernacular discourse of people in their community, that is, their older relatives, speakers at public events and on radio or television, or even priests in the church, concerning local religious history. This is the kind of memory with which students came to class, and it was complemented by the memory that was developed at school, through the research and study of official sources and a more systematic approach to the past (Arnaouti, 2014). The coexistence of these two kinds of cultural memory becomes apparent in Christopher’s statement, ‘I learned many things about local history I was not aware of.’ He implied that his former knowledge of local history was complemented by formal education. These two aspects of remembering – from vernacular discourse and from education – are followed by forgetting and recovery, which is the kind of cultural memory that the project participants served. There are aspects of local history that had been forgotten in students’ personal environment. By learning about them through formal education, they contributed to the recovery of their memory by including them in their digital creations.

In order to create their digital artefacts, students saw their structure as a hybrid of bricolage, taxonomy and narrative. They began by searching in books and websites, and contacted school alumni to find material – information and photographs – which could prove useful for the development of their documentary content. The archives they searched are both objects of formal institutions (for example, the school library and municipality publications and website), and archives as parts of the informal culture and oral tradition (for example, personal narrations and personal objects such as photographs). The double-faceted character of the students’ conception of the archive created a tension that their work sought to reconcile in the bringing together of different and diverse elements that were attributed a new meaning when combined in new thematic digital products, called ‘bricolage’ (Barker, 2004: 17). As an extension of that, bricolage in the case of the documentary can also be seen as a semiotic process, which includes the orchestration of various modes to create a new audiovisual whole (Poepsel, n.d.). In support of this, one of the participants, Mary, stated: ‘I expect to be creative by collecting different types of information and editing it.’ The gerunds ‘collecting’ and ‘editing’ include the concepts of the video’s ‘representational’ and ‘organisational’ functions (Burn and Parker, 2003), given that the student considered here how she wished to represent her local history by choosing and archiving material that she found to be important to the project, and then, the editing concept was concerned with the way this material would be organised to create a meaningful media text.

Regarding the taxonomic aspect of their digital creations, students saw both their digital archive and their digital documentary as the results of a series of actions to be taken in a specific order, a kind of ‘archivisation’ (Derrida, 1995). For instance, participant Cleopatra commented, ‘It is interesting and we do learn things by searching, reading, selecting and making something of our own.’ Cleopatra’s listing corresponds to the stages of Potter’s (2012) curatorship actions: ‘searching’, ‘reading’ and ‘selecting’ stand for collecting appropriate material, which also includes the action of interpreting, while ‘making’ can stand for the actions of cataloguing, arranging and assembling for exhibition, which can apply both to archiving and film-making. At the same time, this student’s statement includes all the functions of media texts according to Burn and Parker (2003): the representational, as students chose their material according to the messages they wanted to put across, and the organisational and orientational, as they organised their material into a whole for making their digital creations, in order to address their audience.

Another way of thinking through their digital creations concerns their narrativising tendencies (Nygren, 2014; Rosinbum, 2017). Both the digital archive and the digital documentary have to tell a story in a coherent and cohesive way, by reconstructing the past (Derrida, 1995) and relating it to the present. Therefore, the selected material and the various modes combined have to be put in a meaningful order to transmit a message to the audience, that is, to narrate the history of each one of the three buildings throughout time. Therefore, since the archive content had to be used for the creation of the documentary, inevitably there was a parallel consideration of the two by the students. In relation to that, Jonas expressed his concern about the photographs of Agia Foteini that he had to take: ‘Miss, I must take pictures of specific parts of the church, parts we will focus on in our documentary narration. First, we have to discuss what we will mention there.’ His statement makes clear that in this project, the archiving and documentary making were intertwined and, although the research stage took place first, students were constantly reflecting on the usage of the archive material collected for the narrative of the documentary. Regarding the narrative aspect of their digital creations, Cleopatra discussed the role of music in film-making: ‘Music plays an important role in making the narration flow and captures the spectator’s attention.’ So, students took the audience into consideration, and thus served the ‘orientational function’ (Burn and Parker, 2003: 6) of their media production, aiming to create an illusion of reality for them, through the use of the widely adopted ‘continuity editing’ (Bordwell and Thompson, 2010: 234), which is a basic film-making rule.

As for the rules that students followed in order to create their artefacts, they mainly focused on formal theory, due to the strict guidelines of the competition, but there were cases of constant play (Jenkins et al., 2010) as well. As Burn and Durran (2007) claim, the creative function of media literacy has to do with the ‘selective tradition’ (Williams, 1961: 66). In this case, then, students were provided with the official theory of making archives and documentaries, but when it came to film-making, they also made choices under the influence of popular culture, which they sought to legitimise in the context of formal education (Arnaouti, 2014).

Students’ compliance with formal documentary-making theory is shown when studying the documentary itself, where in most scenes there is close correspondence between image and narration in terms of fact exhibition, followed by ‘complementary’ (Burn and Parker, 2003: 25) sound. Rose’s soundtrack, which runs throughout the documentary, is a classical tune with increases and decreases in the volume according to the content, which creates cohesion between the various modes orchestrated for the effective narration of local history. Moreover, the choice of a classical tune is itself dictated by the rules of formal theory, and belongs to the ‘selective tradition’ (Williams, 1961: 66), as it is a highly approved kind of music for historical documentaries. As Rose stated: ‘The music I will compose should have a classical tune, since it will be the soundtrack for a documentary about local history. What else could I make?’ Students’ conscious and willing application of the formal theory as a major part of their learning process shows that they followed the selective tradition, as promoted by their teachers and the education system, and mainly used their resources according to the competition guidelines to create digital artefacts that would make them prize-winners, as a result of their ‘critical creativity’ (Burn and Durran, 2007: 67).

Nevertheless, the landscape is more complex, since there is proof of students’ playful tendency and the influences of popular culture throughout the project. When students lacked the appropriate image that supported their narration, they resorted to the mash-up technique (Lange and Ito, 2007), deviated from formal theory, and depicted their narration with a similar image that belonged to a different historical period. Therefore, the ‘representational function’ (Burn and Durran, 2007) of the media text was served with the use of the semiotic tools of photographs with similar, but not the exact, content of the narrated event, which is evidence of their play with the resources throughout the project, and of their bricolage way of working on the documentary.

Identity expression

Through their creative digital work, student-participants also expressed the local, student and teenage aspects of their identity, which were intertwined. To start with, students saw their town as their ‘heimat’ (Blickle, 2002), which is the place where they felt at home and to whose imagined community they belonged. This place is Nea Smyrni, which they acknowledged as the continuation of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. Therefore, even the project theme itself gave them the chance to express their local identity. By presenting, among other things, their school history, they presented in a way their own cultural heritage, which is connected with who they were as students and Nea Smyrni inhabitants.

Since they belonged to this school community, their own student and local identities were projected. This becomes evident in both the opening (‘Evangeliki Model High School of Smyrna presents’) and the closing titles (‘The students of Evangeliki Model High School of Smyrna’), where they appeared as representatives of their whole school. This is supported by participant Jonathan’s statement that ‘it will be very important for our small community to win the competition’. The word ‘community’ referred to their class, who worked on the project, and also to the school in a broader sense. So, in this case, the student-participants represented their school in a national school competition, which involves both the representational and the orientational functions of media production (Burn and Parker, 2003). On the one hand, it shows the way in which they chose to represent reality, in this case who the film-makers were, and to express their identity as students of this historic school. On the other hand, it stresses the way in which they addressed their audience, and how they wished them to receive and interpret this short documentary: as an artefact related to their school, of which they felt proud. This fact also raises the issue of the students’ identity: they projected themselves as members of this school community, as well as of the wider local community.

Additionally, the fact that the opening titles appeared over an old picture of Smyrna and the closing titles appeared over a still photograph of the modern school with the students’ names listed, accompanied by an old still photograph of Nea Smyrni central square with the material sources listed, shows the importance of, and also the continuity of, history in these two places. The choice of old stills can be seen as a way to stress the historicity of both places and the documentary focus, while the modern school still with the students’ names projects the creators’ student identity. As Giddens (1991) claims, modern identity is formed by which aspects of their personality people choose to project. All these choices complied with the rules of formal theory, and served the ‘representational function’ (Burn and Parker, 2003) of the media text.

Furthermore, when the documentary focus changed from the history of the school, which was the students’ initial choice, to the history of the three most important buildings of the town, students pursued a more holistic approach to local history. Since they decided to work on the three buildings representing the intellectual (school), religious (church) and cultural (cultural centre) traditions of their town, their approach lay in the ‘selective tradition’ (Williams, 1961: 66), as they expressed their creativity while working on themes highly appreciated by the educational institutions, that is, the school, the Ministry of Education and the competition organisers. In fact, the importance of this historic school, and the sense of pride that it gives to the students, were highlighted by Amy, who stated: ‘These details matter to show the historicity of the school.’ Students’ wish to project their local identity was also stressed by their will to study local history in depth before working on their digital artefacts. As Jonathan stated, ‘I expect to learn about the cultural heritage of the town I live in.’ So, the students’ focus was on their ‘heimat’ (Blickle, 2002), which was unique and special to them, their local history, and the desire to do justice to the place and its history through the representational function of documentary.

Apart from expressing their local identity, student-participants also had the chance to project their teenage and student identities. This became evident from the very beginning of the project. The first people they approached when they started looking for archival material were their families, and, especially, school alumni, who belong to the wider school community. Then, in the opening titles of the documentary, students showed their connection with Evangeliki Model High School of Smyrna and, in the first scene, they showed four students heading to school before the narrative started; therefore, they made a visual statement concerning their age (adolescence) and their identity as high-school students through the acting in the film’s opening. The narration discussing the history of the buildings, accompanied by relevant stills, followed, and the film concludes with a scene showing the students in the position in which they were left at the end of the first scene. In this way, the documentary started and finished with them, stressing their multifaceted identity as teenagers, students of this historic school, and inhabitants of this historic municipality. The students’ desire to express themselves, and thus their identity, also became evident in participant Nikiforos’s statement: ‘My team and I are responsible for how the video will look, and we can do it in our own way.’ The students also had the freedom to make artefacts that reflected who they were, and thus their identity (‘in our own way’). As Giddens (1991) puts it, the way in which people choose to use material goods and the activities they undertake contribute to the projection of their identity. In support of that, other students also showed their need to express themselves through their work. Rose, in her turn, stated, ‘I’ve composed a tune on my own, inspired, of course, by the documentary theme’, putting an emphasis on the expression of herself within the project framework. The student-participants’ engagement with the project ultimately animated a number of previously identified ways of thinking about identity, and the representation of identity through creative practice, albeit within the restrictions and limitations provided by the project’s guidelines. This self-expression was achieved through a mix of play, professional identity projection (wanting to be an actor or a musician) and communal identity projection, as well as through the curatorial desire to best represent, and preserve, aspects of their community through the documentary form.

Motivation: a major factor of creativity

Motivation emerged as another recurrent theme related to students’ creativity. Although students’ motivation was connected to a variety of factors that incited their creativity, the most dominant one was concerned with recognition of their work. Since the project was realised in the framework of a Panhellenic competition, being viewable across Greece, students were very much concerned about a successful final result, and about the recognition of their work. Amy, for example, was enthusiastic about the project from its beginning, and she stated in relation to its viability, ‘our documentary will be on a digital platform forever. It is worth it!’, and ‘We’ll become famous!’ The longevity of the final film, being preserved on a national digital platform ‘forever’, and the idea of becoming ‘famous’, reflect Amy’s, and the other student-participants’, desire to make a lasting impact via their creative practice, and to begin, perhaps, to burnish a reputation as young creative professionals.

As the project progressed, and students dedicated time and energy to it, they felt more involved in the process, and thus their motivation to see the value of their work recognised became higher. Amy wanted their ‘individual names’ to be mentioned in the end titles, and she made it clear that only those who contributed to the class project should be rewarded. These students’ reactions were related to Potter’s (2012) ‘displaying’ aspect of film-making, and the final stage of projecting their film for the audience, and anticipating their reactions, related to the audience’s ‘interpreting’ action, which is how they perceive and interpret its content, and how they are affected by it. Moreover, students’ reactions are also concerned with the orientational function of film-making (Burn and Parker, 2003), as we see their concern about the recognition of their work by their potential audience, which made them competitive even among themselves.

Furthermore, students’ motivation is also related to the fact that their school project was to address not only the competition critics, but also the wider public, and thus, it connected their in-school world with the out-of-school world, the importance of which is stressed by Buckingham (2003). Jonathan’s statement that ‘it will be very important for our small community that we win the competition’ highlights the desire to bring fame to their school, and to prove that a small school, in terms of numbers, can be great in terms of achievements.

In this sense, we could say that the creativity expressed by the teenage students in producing a widely acceptable artefact is the result of a structured process that uses the semiotic tools available, in this case the digital production tools, to create two products, according to the competition guidelines and the formal theory of archiving and documentary making. Therefore, since students cared for their success in the competition, they mainly, but not completely, compromised with a more rational way of creating, in which they left playfulness behind for the sake of a more formal method of production (Vygotsky, 1998, 2004), as analysed above.

The fact that the existence of a real audience played a positive role in the students’ motivation to creatively engage with the project is also suggested by Goodman (2003). In the post-project questionnaire, all students referred to their potential audience and the reactions they expected. Annie was typical in stating, ‘We possibly expect positive reactions from people of all ages, from both the ones who are going to judge our project and the other viewers as well.’ She distinguished between the competition critics and the rest of the audience, and hoped for ‘positive reactions’, a recurrent phrase in the students’ responses. Another case consists of the students who expected to make the audience interested in local history, and thus were motivated to produce the best possible documentary. As Amy stated, ‘People should realise that some buildings in our town are jewels.’ Here, Amy’s desire to inform the audience about a subject of importance to the film-makers relates to one of the central purposes of the documentary film genre (Nichols, 2010). Last but not least, some students considered the audience’s affective engagement desirable, as they referred to the feeling of pride that a documentary about local history could give to the inhabitants of the locality, who belonged to the same ‘imagined community’ as they did (Anderson, 1983).

Research ethics statement

The author conducted the research reported in this article in accordance with British Educational Research Association and Institute of Educational Policy standards.

Consent for publication statement

The author declares that research participants’ informed consent to publication of findings – including photos, videos and any personal or identifiable information – was secured prior to publication.