Co-Creation in Community-based Storytelling
Authors: Segar Augustus 
Published: June 2023

The emergence of immersive media and new technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) has contributed to the shift in interactive documentary and community-based storytelling practices. Under the umbrella term known as Extended Reality (XR), the new technologies intervene with and provide the author with a space to negotiate authorship of interactive documentaries in a co-creation setting with the Salako community in Malaysia.
Malaysia is a country in the Southeast Asia region. It occupies the Malay Peninsula and part of the Island of Borneo. There are over 120 different communities in Malaysia, and Sarawak, the largest state, has the most diverse communities. The Salako community migrated from West Kalimantan Province of the Indonesian Borneo to Pueh, Sarawak, in the 1870s due to political and geographical reasons. Today, the Salako community members are still involved in farming, and they perform various rituals to seek blessings to avoid harm to their crops.
This study investigates the Salako community's storytelling practices in Pueh, Sarawak. It focuses on the co-creation of an interactive documentary storytelling of the paddy farming rituals among the community. Furthermore, it also aims to understand the dynamic relationship negotiated by the author and the community members. Therefore, the questions guiding the study can be framed as follows: How can practice-based research be used in negotiating collaboration with the Salako community? What insights can the author learn from the Salako community that contributes to the creative research practice?
The study considers the concept of rhizome, introduced by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as an approach to decolonising storytelling structure in the co-creation of community-based storytelling with the Salako community. The conceptual and theoretical framework bring together recent studies on community-based storytelling and empirical evidence on interactive documentaries and co-creation with a focus on community storytelling practices.
The author engages practice-based research as the creative research practice in this study. In the interactive documentary titled Listening to the Salako: Voices of the Paddy and Human, the author will share the creative research process involved in the initial phase of the study. Highlighting the observations and perspectives drawn from the interactive documentary storytelling project with the Salako community, the article offers insights into understanding the nexus of care, collaboration and craft. In addition, it also looks at how practice-based research is used in community engagement and the negotiation of authorship through a participatory design process with the Salako community in Malaysia.
In this study, the author argues that while practice-based research is central to navigating the layers of complexity in community engagement, the element of care, collaboration and craft present additional dimensions that can further unpack and contribute to the understanding of creative research practice. The article ends with a discussion of the impact and implications of practice-based research in empowering both the author and the Salako community in negotiating collaboration in the co-creation of the interactive documentary, Listening to the Salako: Voices of the Paddy and Human.