More Than A Story: Creating New Channels For Research
What stories might be hiding in the numbers?
What comes to mind when you think about the word “research”? Do you get excited about new ideas? Do you see spreadsheets, charts, and data sorting? Perhaps when you hear “research,” it feels distant, technical, academic, and generally disconnected from your life?
In this month’s blog, we’re exploring how digital stories can impact research—and perhaps offer a new perspective on the information being gathered through research all over the world.
When Research Becomes Personal
In 1953, Dr. John Gibbon performed the first successful open-heart surgery using a heart-lung machine, opening a new pathway in cardiac medicine. Decades later, advances like these would help make it possible to save my newborn child's life.
I wasn’t thinking about Dr. John Gibbon’s research the day I took my child to the hospital to board a medical plane to travel to surgery. I was scared of what might happen. My friend drove us, and in the car seat behind me sat her toddler, chattering away like toddlers do. A few years earlier, that child had also undergone open-heart surgery. As I sat there facing the unknown, I could see the story of what was possible sitting right there behind me.
That moment has stayed with me. Research had given us facts. Medical science had given my child an opportunity. But another family's lived experience gave those facts meaning—and, in a very tangible way, gave me hope.
One Story, One Question, A New Research Project
Digital storytelling is often used to help people tell and share their own experiences. But what happens after the story is created? Could a shared story create space for people to recognize their own experience, reflect on what they’ve been through, and find meaning together?
Sometimes a story doesn't just communicate an experience—it opens the door to a new question. That was the case for Melody Williamson when she invited her friend, Jackie Sillner, to co-create a digital story about her experience of losing her child, Bryanne, to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). While this story helped to support Jackie's healing, it also grew into a much larger healing conversation. After sharing Jackie's story with the SIDS Calgary Society Board, several members attended the Common Language Story Slam in 2025, where Jackie's story was shared with a live audience. It was after they experienced the meaningful conversations that arose in the audience because of Jackie's story that they asked Melody to co-create another five digital stories.
As Melody became more involved with SIDS Calgary, conversations about their support for research and their work with bereaved parents led to a new question: What happens when people with a shared lived experience watch and discuss someone else's digital story?
Melody brought the idea to her mentor and Common Language founder, Dr. Mike Lang, and a new research project was born.
In March 2026, SIDS Calgary Society approved funding for the study, Shared Stories, Shared Strength: Therapeutic Film Screenings as Interpretive, Relational, and Meaning-Making Practice in SIDS Bereavement. Under Dr. Lang's guidance, Melody will lead therapeutic discussions as part of the study.
There is growing research on the benefits of creating and sharing digital stories. Less is known about what happens when people with similar lived experiences come together to watch, reflect on, and discuss another person's story. This project opens a new pathway for exploring how digital storytelling might contribute to grief support. More than that, it demonstrates something important about the relationship between storytelling and research.
One story started the conversation. The conversation opened a new channel for research.
Digital Storytelling in Community-Based Research: Co-Created Podcast Highlight
In Episode 60 of the Co-Created podcast, Carolyn Brandly describes research as “an interesting lever to trial innovations and to see if we can make some positive change.”
Carolyn has worked with older adults and people living with dementia for more than 20 years in care and community settings. Her work in health promotion, community development, knowledge translation, quality improvement, and research has led her to explore how digital storytelling can bring lived experience, dignity, autonomy, and human connection into conversations about health and social systems.
Carolyn’s current work offers another example of how digital storytelling can create new pathways for research. She is working with people living with dementia to create digital stories that share their experiences and perspectives—bringing those stories into spaces where they can be viewed, reflected on, and discussed.
What happens when research creates new ways of listening?
Listen to Episode 60: Community-Based Research with Carolyn Brandly to hear more about her work and what becomes possible when lived experience and research meet.
What Comes to Mind When You Reconsider The Word “Research”?
I've been thinking about research lately—not just as facts and medical advances, but as the beginning of a story. As you journeyed through these stories, what aspects of digital storytelling in research resonated with you? When you think of the word “research,” do new ideas come to mind?
As always, the Common Language collaborative of digital storytellers would love to help you discover more about how digital stories create new channels of change.
One story can start a conversation. A conversation can open a new channel for research. Research can create new pathways—but lived experience helps us understand where those pathways lead.
