NEDARC “Sparks” creativity during the 2019 EMSC All Grantee Meeting

Members of the NEDARC team led a four-hour pre-conference workshop focused on incorporating elements of storytelling when sharing information and the tools Adobe Spark Page and Adobe Spark Video.

Chris Hoffman began by going over the same information twice to illustrate to power of storytelling. First, Hoffman ran through a list of facts to demonstrate the importance of Pediatric Emergency Care Coordinators in the hospital setting. The second time, all the facts were presented through a story of a fictional pediatric patient visiting an emergency department. “You could tell the difference. The audience really wanted to know how the story ended so they paid attention to all the information.” said Hoffman. Next, Eduardo “Eddie” Zamora, explained the five elements of storytelling (introduction, Inciting Incident, rising action, climax, and conclusion) by using the fable of Red Riding Hood. “We used the story of Red Riding Hood because it’s so well-known participants didn’t need to concentrate on learning a new story along with the storytelling concepts.”

Later, the audience was tasked with creating a story using six random photos and the five elements of storytelling to practice their new skills. Stories included fisherman, magic music, and evil mannequins. After bringing participants back to reality, Hoffman and Andrea Genovesi demonstrated tutorials focused on creating mini-websites with Adobe Spark Page and showed a short informational video using Adobe Spark Video. Participants left with fully-functional and ready-to-post products specific to their agency, including contact information and logo.

Workshop feedback was very positive. NEDARC will host two TechTalk online webinars about advanced features of Adobe Spark products. The storyboards used to create the mini-websites and videos are available for download on the NEDARC website.