Focus on creativity: Greek teenagers combine digital archiving and documentary making

Abstract

In Greece, Educational Radiotelevision, a department of the Ministry of Education, combines digital archiving and digital documentary making within the framework of a national competition for Greek secondary and high schools about local history. This article analyses the factors lying behind the creativity of 27 16-year-old students who created a digital archive and a digital documentary for this competition. Data were collected in the form of the teacher/researcher’s observation journal, student-participants’ completed pre- and post-project questionnaires, and the drafts and final products of their digital creations. The exploratory case study conducted offers qualitative data, analysed with the use of inductive thematic analysis, and draws upon social semiotics to interpret these themes through the application of textual and multimodal analysis. Data show that student-participants’ creativity is incited by their motivation to have their work recognised, and it is boosted by their chance to express their cultural memory, to contribute to its formation for future generations, and also to express their student, teenage and local identities.