Building stories from behind a screen: managing the design of story-based strategies remotely.

In the contemporary mediascape, storytelling emerges as a strategic asset in several fields, resulting in what Fisher [1] defined the ‘narrative paradigm’: the aptitude of people in communicating via storytelling and comprehending social interaction through a narrative logic. Relying on the ability of narrative to trigger emotions, memories, engagement and action taking, we have explored the role of design in developing narrative systems that are capable of creating an impact on real life. The focus of this article is work conducted by the ImagisLab research group (Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano) that aimed at activating processes of co-design, participatory video and collaborative story construction in which the distribution of story-based strategies allows stakeholders to interpret and participate in the narratives with which we are all surrounded. Throughout the paper we will refer to the ongoing project ACTS—A Chance Through Sport, that involves a prison inmate population, prison officers and public audience. As the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted both research and design practice, we aim to elaborate on the ongoing project ACTS, offering some reflections on how we should maintain and integrate the applied processes, tools and platforms within the story-design field, into day-to-day work in the postpandemic era.