Digital Storytelling for Cultural Heritage: a Modular, Multi-channel, Multi-scenario Approach

Digital Storytelling is emerging as “the” way to engage cultural heritage institutions’ visitors, both virtual and real. The wide spreading of media and devices have made stories the most natural way to talk about culture: a “traditional” webpage is distractedly read on the screen or (in the best of cases) printed for later reading; a multimedia story, instead, can be listened to in various situations: in front of a PC at home but also in the street, on a train, sitting at a café, while visiting a cultural venue, etc. This paper introduces a specific approach to digital storytelling that is modular (in the sense that the various content elements can be combined in different ways), multi-channel (in the sense that the “stories” can be delivered online and off-line over all modern channels and devices) and multi-scenario (in the sense that various user scenarios can be covered). All of this at a reasonable cost/effort. This approach is support by a tool, developed by HOC-LAB of Politecnico di Milano in cooperation with TEC-Lab of Italian Switzerland, called “1001stories”. 1001stories has been used to produce more than 30 professional stories, in the field of cultural heritage mainly.