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The My Jewellery My Story (MJMS) Placement was an exciting project that explored local people’s connection to jewellery, having been inspired by a beautiful Bronze Age necklace discovered in the small village of Cossington in Leicestershire. In the context of a placement within MJMS, four students from the University of Nottingham contributed distinctive digital stories that formed a part of the artefacts that were featured in the MJMS Exhibition at Charnwood Museum in Loughborough.

Background to the My Jewellery, My Story (MJMS) Placement

Culture Leicestershire, which comprises Heritage, Libraries, Collections, Learning and Participation Services at Leicestershire County Council, supports outreach within local communities and works with them to share their unique heritage and culture. MJMS was part of Culture Leicestershire’s audience development work at Charnwood Museum in Loughborough — in collaboration with the University of Nottingham.

Culture Leicestershire was very keen to have students' voices represented. Four students took up the invitation to join MJMS to create two-minute digital stories that were featured in the MJMS Exhibition in Charnwood Museum on display from January – June 2025. Over the course of twelve weeks (December 2024 – February 2025), the four students attended three Digital Storytelling workshops run by Alison Mott as the Lead Artist — and a writer, storyteller and freelance creative practitioner. During the workshop sessions, the students shared personal stories about jewellery around a heritage theme in a cordial, friendly and safe small-group environment and learnt about Digital Storytelling.

About Digital Storytelling

The students learnt that Digital Storytelling is an interdisciplinary research method that challenges the hierarchy of knowledge-gathering. It enables the ‘grass-roots’ sharing of personal memories and experiences, resulting in the co-creation of the stories of local communities. Students learnt further that Digital Storytelling is a particularly useful tool for the heritage sector but has applications in many other sectors of our story-centric world for those who know how to use it.

What the MJMS Placement Involved

MJMS was an exciting creative and heritage collaboration between the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham and Culture Leicestershire. The four students:

  • learnt about Digital Storytelling as a creative method developed by the world-leading StoryCenter;
  • participated in three workshops to create a digital story on ‘jewellery’ on and around a heritage theme; 
  • crafted their stories into 150-word voiceover scripts;
  • recorded the voiceover and selected images to support their stories; 
  • worked collaboratively and independently to source appropriate images, photographs and other audio-visual content to develop their stories into a film using simple online video editing software;
  • enhanced their storytelling and digital skills, including (a) creating effective stories, and (b) developing crucial competencies in image selection, voice-over recording, and film-making — all of which are valuable transferable skills that are coveted by employers;
  • learnt how to stage Digital Storytelling sessions for the heritage sector and elsewhere;
  • took up an invitation to attend the private launch of the My Jewellery, My Story (MJMS) Exhibition at Charnwood Museum (Loughborough) in February 2025; and
  • participated in bespoke, highly informative, career-enhancing interactions with museum and heritage industry professionals.

One of the students wonderfully summed up the MJMS placement experience in their blog post as follows:

[Between December 2024 – February 2025] we had learnt so much, we had gained an insight into the heritage sector, the technique of Digital Storytelling, and the developing role of technology in the sector. It was a great placement, and we were all fortunate to have had such an opportunity.

MJMS was facilitated by the following committed, expert and nurturing placement team:

  • Daniel H. Mutibwa (Associate Professor of Creative Industries and Digital Culture, University of Nottingham);
  • Jemma Atkin-Barrett (Community Participation Worker, Culture Leicestershire, Leicestershire County Council);
  • Esther Shaw (Community Participation Worker, Culture Leicestershire, Leicestershire County Council); 
  • Amanda Hanton (Cultural Participation Team Manager, Leicestershire County Council);
  • Alison Mott (Writer, Storyteller, Freelance Creative Practitioner and Associate of Loughborough University's Storytelling Academy);
  • Alison Clague (Senior Curator, Leicestershire Museum Collections, Leicestershire County Council); and
  • Richard Knox (Access and Heritage Interpretation Manager, Leicestershire Museum Collections, Leicestershire County Council)