The story. It’s vital to our overarching goal: Communicating Lentara’s work in community. The studio’s discussion mostly aligned with the ShowerCaravan project, but the principles can be applied to many projects, including my team’s task of acquiring and promoting the Lentara Identity.  The communicable story, in our case the Identity, needs to be an amalgamation of information gathered from the stories from different stakeholders. When we get out to the field, we need to use the stories of people to then create the identity story. We need to interview, research and form a broad, unisolated understanding of Lentara. Management will have visions of identity and personality, yet staff, supporters, community members may see it differently. For us to develop a sense of identity, we must know the people involved. Acquiring a sense of the life in the day or week of the homeless was an example to create story elements for the ShowerBus. This, or similar, is labelled as character profiling, a necessary step in learning about the type of people in question. To relate this to the identity crisis, would be to profile the various stakeholders mentioned above within Lentara, to create an overall understanding of the organisation, not solely the beneficiaries of services. All this can then be combined into the Identity. Knowing and profiling the audience as well as the product is just as important, so that initiatives can effectively and efficiently be communicated, branded and promoted as desired. By understanding audience interaction with media, we can then move forward in determining the best methods to positively portray the true Lentara identity to the target audience. Furthermore, the branding isn’t required possess a huge presence, more importantly it should be engaging to the target markets. Keep in mind, we (and all organisations) must always account audience sensitivities, being aware of our tone and content.

So, how should we get the story? Or how should we acquire info that collates into the story?

In the creative fields, interview methods don’t have to always be QnA. My eyes were opened to additional methods; drawing, making things, seeing how the interviewee operates, to add depth to their story. In the case of the underprivileged, circumstances or language barriers may not allow for clear verbal interaction, so other options may be considered. A task such as ‘draw what Lentara means to you/does for you’, would be extremely applicable as an element in the Moodboard. As media students, using media to articulate and distribute the design/brand/strategy/stories is imperative, however, as Seth highlighted, its incorporation should be from the beginning, taking advantage of our skills to get information and enhance the project development.

Recently, I like to end with a sentence or two of summary. We need to understand the story before we try to begin communicating it, and the individual stories combine to form the bigger picture. Don’t rush too quickly to think about the end product, but use the information gained, know the audience, and re-assess along the way.