Abstract
For those living in diaspora, memory connects the past, present, and future while sustaining cultural identity. Cherished objects preserve these memories and help recreate a sense of home in new environments. Participatory stop-motion enables participants to create stories by enlivening physical materials and objects, offering a tangible, imaginative, and accessible way for preserving personal narratives. This paper explores and evaluates participatory stop-motion as a method that supports memory expression in contexts of displacement. Two participatory stop-motion workshops were designed following an iterative design process, focusing on synchronous and asynchronous animation-making setups. We introduce the concept of micro-animations as short, independently created animations produced during the participatory workshops. Our contributions include how micro-animation making offers opportunities for embodied and individual expressions with collective reflection, the affordances of participatory stop-motion to support diaspora communities’ needs, and recommendations for designers aiming to support the expression of diaspora communities through participatory animation.
Keywords
animation; participatory design; stop-motion; diaspora communities
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.230
Citation
Eivazy, N., Peeters, J.P.,and Claes, S.(2025) Micro-animations: Supporting Personal Recollection in Displacement through Participatory Stop-Motion with Cherished Objects., IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taipei, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.230
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 6 - Co-creation
Micro-animations: Supporting Personal Recollection in Displacement through Participatory Stop-Motion with Cherished Objects
For those living in diaspora, memory connects the past, present, and future while sustaining cultural identity. Cherished objects preserve these memories and help recreate a sense of home in new environments. Participatory stop-motion enables participants to create stories by enlivening physical materials and objects, offering a tangible, imaginative, and accessible way for preserving personal narratives. This paper explores and evaluates participatory stop-motion as a method that supports memory expression in contexts of displacement. Two participatory stop-motion workshops were designed following an iterative design process, focusing on synchronous and asynchronous animation-making setups. We introduce the concept of micro-animations as short, independently created animations produced during the participatory workshops. Our contributions include how micro-animation making offers opportunities for embodied and individual expressions with collective reflection, the affordances of participatory stop-motion to support diaspora communities’ needs, and recommendations for designers aiming to support the expression of diaspora communities through participatory animation.