Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice | PNDP

The Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice (2010-2018) gives students the skills to explain the world around them to the people around them. The program teaches students to shape global issues into multimedia stories that are narrative and compelling.

Deep narrative storytelling is important in the age of information immediacy and the 24-hour news cycle. Students will be trained through immersive practice to identify specific stories that can reveal larger, complex issues. A genre with multiple layers and contexts, narrative storytelling can render the issues at hand more essential and compelling, less formal and constrained than conventional reporting.

The Program is not training journalism students. It is taking students interested in politics, history, economics, international relations, conflict resolution, technology and engineering ‒ students who wish to engage in the world with rigor and depth ‒ and teaching them storytelling and journalism. But this is a particular kind of story-telling, one that involves immersion in a subject and that produces captivating works through video, photography and writing.

The Program seeks to promote progressive change by amplifying relevant voices, breaking down barriers to understanding, advancing human dignity, and highlighting social injustices. The program seeks to engage audiences that are local, national, and international.

How It Works

The principle focus of the Program is practice underwritten by a sound understanding of theory. Through collaborative partnerships and extended fieldwork, the Program will teach, present and create narrative documentary work. Students will learn how to apply the craft of storytelling across a range of platforms and be encouraged to be innovative, taking into account the habits of consumers from the traditional printed form to digital delivery.

The Program will teach its students how to ask the right questions, encourage them to challenge their preconceptions and prejudices, and teach them strategies to look beyond those limitations.