It strikes me that I've been so busy submitting funding applications that I haven't actually spelt out the nature of 'the project'...
This blog is 'Stage One'. Then there's digital storytelling workshops. And a documentary. And hopefully, finally, a fully-fledged interactive website, complete with complementary game.
In a few weeks I'll be running a 3 day workshop in Adelaide helping parents and kids from the 'Pink Parents' community here shape their family stories into little 1 - 2 minute digi-docs. Eventually they'll feature on a 'Family Values' website - as clickable leaves on a rainbow family tree. If you can't get to a workshop, the site will host all the software and resources to make your own little digi-doc. Upload some stills, record a voice-over narration, drag and drop some music, sound effects and visual motifs into a time-line... et voila!
The digi-docs serve 2 purposes - viewing a diversity of other stories can help us and our kids break down the sense of 'poor fit' that we've all experienced from time to time... and sharing these stories with the wider community (maybe ambivalent members of your extended family, maybe homo-hostile or homo-ignorant members of parliament or the press) can erode conservative social assumptions and moral judgements.
Meanwhile, the linear documentary will follow me (at my self-absorbed and narcissistic best) as I facilitate these workshops and the 'seeding' of the on-line community... Hopefully, somewhere on that time-line, my tummy is also growing fatter and I'm mending bridges with my biological family in anticipation of having a baby...
Does it sound like something you might be interested in watching? Or talking about at the 'water-cooler'?
Stop right there - too passive! Does it sound like something you might like to actually get involved in? Maybe help your kid/donor/grandparent tell the story of how they came to part of a ‘rainbow family’? Maybe share your strategies for overcoming the many obstacles to conception and ‘rainbow family life’?
Well… get active! Subscribe! Post a comment here… then send the blog link to anyone you think might be interested… or anyone who needs a reality check when they talk about ‘family values’…
By the way, I found a great stat - less than 25% of Americans live in a ‘conventional nuclear family’ (consisting of a married heterosexual couple living under the same roof with their biological children).
Williams, Brian; Stacey C. Sawyer, Carl M. Wahlstrom (2005). Marriages, Families & Intimate Relationships. Boston, MA: Pearson. 0-205-36674-0.
So who says we can’t have the family of our heart’s desire?
stills from ‘Rainbow Kids Disco’ @ FEAST 2006