Search results

Creative writing for life design

In response to a rapidly changing, increasingly insecure and complex labor market, career counselors and researchers are developing methods that can meet the needs of individuals who would navigate this new terrain. In the last two or three decades, narrative career counseling practices (Cochran, 1997; McMahon & Watson, 2012; Reid & West, 2011; Savickas, 2012) have been developed to promote career adaptability (Savickas, 2011) and career resilience (Lyons, Schweitzer & Ng, 2015). Narrative counseling (i.e. career construction) is founded on the idea that in order to survive and thrive on the labor market of the 21st century, individuals must reflexively construct their identities in a process of meaning making, where identity is co-constructed in the form of a narrative: a story about who one is that provides both meaning and direction (Wijers & Meijers, 1996). LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/

Narrative identity

We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed way. Creative, expressive and reflective writing practices are described and parallels are drawn between these and existing practices and theories in narrative career counselling. Key exercises in graduate courses for writing for personal development are discussed and a theoretical explanation is given as to why a particular order of approaches and exercises works best to promote career learning.

Challenges and choices of cultural tourism ‘Becoming Vincent’: a narrative concept for Van Gogh’s heritage sites in the Netherlands (online; invited speaker)

Exploring narrative novelties in VR.

Initial expectations about the interactive affordances of VR were often inspired by science fiction and technological fantasies rather than based on actual technical possibilities. In these futuristic accounts of VR, interactors would have the opportunity to fully engage with the characters that inhabit the story world, in ways that would feel so natural that it would be indistinguishable from reality. In ‘real’ reality however, the actual production of VR has turned out to be considerably more complicated. To provide a realistic impression of the actual possibilities of VR, this study presents four widely acclaimed contemporary VR experiences (Wolves in the Walls, The Line, Down the Rabbit Hole and A Fisherman’s Tale) and reviews them from a media theory and communication science perspective. We discuss whether and how the concepts identification, parasocial interaction, ‘breaking the fourth wall’ and spatial and narrative presence can still be applied to these VR case studies, eventually aiming to contribute some rudimentary insights into the range of possible media conventions that narrative VR may contain.

Empowerment from a narrative perspective

The exploration of the narrative nature of local memory websites in relation to empowerment theory produces new insights in the nested levels of analysis of both. Empowerment’s value orientation calls for a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses and, as such, requires specific language that accommodates the conviction that resources are locally available, instead of scarce. Consequently, empowerment theory describes resources as being present in processes and outcomes on interdependent psychological, organizational and communal levels. The application of the empowerment framework’s components to the theoretical outcomes and processes of local memory websites illuminates the connecting roles local narratives play as resources in empowerment. First of all, personal stories, community narratives and dominant cultural narratives influence and support each other across levels. Secondly, narratives spread local knowledge which leads to shared values and common believes for collectives on various levels. And thirdly, the sharing of narratives happens through social networks that manifest themselves on different levels, which, as such, facilitate sharing other resources. Based on these perspectives, we offer a simplified model for empowerment with a focus on the interdependencies between levels of networks. Against this background, we discuss relevant analytical perspectives as a departure point for the empirical exploration of unstudied relations between empowerment and local memory websites.

Bringing a master narrative to its knees

For the ‘Rotterdam Project’, a large amount of historical data on patrons of Rotterdam’s main theatres during the ‘long’ 19th century (1773–1914)was collected, digitally registered and statistically analysed. The data was gathered from the theatre archives of the city of Rotterdam and included data on such specifics as ticket sales, repertoire and featured performers. The database holds prosopography information on over 16,000 patrons and almost 15,000registered ticket sales to these patrons. This dataset (https:// doi.org/doi:10.21943/auas.7381127) can be used to make comparisons to the datasets of similarly sized cities in other countries during the same period and for broader re- search on 19th-century cultural history. So far, the data has been mainly applied to empirically test the master narrative of theatre historiography on the social composi- tion of theatre audiences. The analyses based on the data show that this narrative must, for the most part, be rejected.