About Chronicle
Chronicle believes in the value of personal life stories to support personal well-being, bring families and local communities together, and to preserve local heritage.
We work with families, friends communities and organisations on projects that capture, preserve and celebrated personal stories.
At the center of our work are voices, therefore most of our work is audio focused. We feel that a person's voice reflects the essence of who they are and therefore we focus upon capturing first-person audio narratives; typically creating short clips of 2-4 minutes duration with photos.
An example of a digital story created in a Chronicle workshop (By Laurie Evans)
Our Story
Chronicle can trace its roots back to Western Australia when two talented film makers and a tech entrepreneur came together on a local place-making project for a coastal community. The project involved collecting memories from local people in their own voices.
As a result of our early work, we recognised the value of personal stories in terms of capturing the essence of place. We also recognised the positive impact on well-being of the people who shared their stories with us. Since these early beginnings we have delivered many other projects across themes of place, history, mental health, immigration and aboriginal culture.
Now based in Suffolk in the UK, Chronicle continues to expand our range of innovative projects with local communities. We work with the latest technologies to assist in our work and have developed a suite of tools that we can tailor to our client needs.
Ultimately, Chronicle believes that people should be empowered to preserve their personal stories and, when they are willing to share them, their stories are an authentic way to articulate the essence of places.
Our Structure
Chronicle consists of two sister companies:
Chronicle Digital Storytelling Ltd - an early stage commercial company that works with clients on a fee-for-service basis and helps to develop storytelling technology platforms and services.
Chronicle Community Storytelling Projects CIC - a not-for-profit community interest company (limited by guarantee) that enables us to deliver our own community based projects. You can read our community interest statement here.
We are part of BT's Innovation Martlesham Tech Cluster based at Adastral Park in Suffolk, UK.
Who we work with
Chronicle works with a wide range of organisations and individuals. Some of our clients include:
Local Authorities: We work with local authorities on tourism, place-making and community development projects.
Not-for-profit Organisations: Storytelling can be a great way to advocate the services and outcomes for a not-for-profit organisation or charity. We have previously worked with NFP organisations across mental health, arts, heritage, and migration topics.
Corporate Clients: Storytelling can be used for a number of purposes with corporate clients. We have worked with a range of clients to create a record of major construction and restoration projects, preserve company heritage and for other Corporate Social Responsibility community based projects.
Individuals: Our activities help to reduce isolation and encourage positive mental health. We work with individuals to preserve family history and to support positive family relationships.
Our Innovative Thinking
We believe in leveraging new thinking and innovative technologies in the delivery of our services. That said, we also recognise the need to align technology to the needs of our clients so we always look for ways where technology can make digital storytelling more accessible to people.
Here's a few examples of our work:
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Dial-a-story: We repurposed some vintage 1980's rotary phones to enable people to dial an audio story.
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Our digital Walking Trails App: We have developed a smartphone app to help us develop self-guided digital walking trails.
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Other innovative technologies we are developing include storytelling apps - both for creating stories and for exploring them.
Chronicle's innovative thinking has been recognised by the company winning a competition focused upon the Internet of Things and our vision for the internet of things to be used in a social context with storytelling.
Please contact us on email here or call 07752 191710