Even though the digital storytelling model is understood to be a humble and genuine form of sharing personal experience, digital stories about multicultural life are not necessarily telling us what we think they are or hope they might be. Their representations of ethnicity are significantly impacted by the performative force of whiteness, and the broader apparatus of security of multiculturalism. Nonetheless, there are always excesses that thwart the translation and ultimately provide clues to other migrant realities and possibilities. These clues are more frequent and easier to trace in digital stories that practice a greater degree of ‘genre bending’, swerving from the conventional digital storytelling methodology. Exemplifying this swerving is the digital storytelling work of Curious Works, which, alongside Big hART, has been instrumental in the development of collaborative digital storytelling formats in Australia. Their blending of the two dominant digital storytelling methodologies (individual and collaborative) robustly situates ethnicity, helping the ethnic body to become disentangled from race.

Curious Works is a not-for-profit organisation that works with Australian communities on art projects about ‘diverse Australia’. Like Big hART, Curious Works establishes itself within communities for months at a time, working with community members on a range of media arts projects. The organisation predominantly works in the Australian capital cities of Sydney/Eora, Melbourne/ Naarm and Hobart/nipaluna, though it has more recently expanded into regional Australian towns. Under the direction of Shakthi Sivanathan, Curious Works began with broader arts media in its scope, most prominently, theatre and dance. However, since its inception, it has become increasingly associated with digital media platforms.