Co-Created

A single well-told story can do what a stack of reports cannot: make someone feel the reality of living in a body, a system, or a diagnosis they’ve never had. We sit down with Carolyn, a newly trained Common Language Digital Storytelling facilitator and PhD student, to unpack how digital storytelling becomes a practical tool for health research, quality improvement, and stigma-breaking conversatio...

A three-minute film can do what a 30-slide deck can’t: make a room full of clinicians feel the lived reality behind the diagnosis. We’re joined by Dr. Tricia Williams, a neuropsychologist at SickKids and a leader in outcomes-focused, family-informed innovation, to talk about why digital storytelling can change the way clinicians learn, listen, and care, especially when families are navigating cong...

A few years ago, we were still explaining to healthcare providers why stories mattered. Now we’re watching digital storytelling get built into a nursing curriculum, shape research plans, and gather real communities around hard conversations. I’m joined by Dr. Mike Lang, founder of Common Language Digital Storytelling and assistant professor in the University of Calgary Faculty of Nursing, for a ca...

Digital storytelling can move a room to honesty in minutes, creating space for real talk about burnout, shame, and the human side of medicine. This episode we connect with Dr. Katharine Smart and reflect on how short films can help clinicians and families feel seen as whole people and how stories can fuel better care and stronger advocacy. We talk through what it looks like when digital stories sh...

On this episode of Co-Created we're joined by Amina Mohamed, the Founder and Executive Director of Cameras For Girls, to talk about what happens when a founder story becomes a digital story and why that format can reveal the “three-dimensional” truth you can’t always reach in a talk, a webinar, or a standard nonprofit promo. Amina takes us from her family’s refugee journey from Uganda to Canada, t...

Cameras off. Quiet chat. A stack of slides. Then a short digital story plays and suddenly the room wakes up. That flip from passive listening to real connection is what we’re chasing, and it’s why we keep coming back to digital storytelling as a tool for healing, community building, and change. We’re joined by Melody Williamson, a Level 3 digital storytelling facilitator, trainer, and longtime col...

Catch up with Dr. Becky McCall after she defends her PhD and unpack what it takes to research digital storytelling inside a biomedical topic like antimicrobial resistance. We also get real about what stories can and cannot do on their own, then zoom out to targeting, dissemination, and new projects that translate stories into health system change. Episode Key Messages finishing a seven-year PhD an...

Fear of childbirth does not always look like panic. Sometimes it shows up as silence, stoicism, anger, or a private sense that you have lost control of your own body and your own story. We sit down with nurse, midwife, and researcher Jonathan Dominguez Hernandez to talk about how digital storytelling in healthcare can help people make meaning from vulnerable moments, and why the process needs stro...

One gesture can keep a patient in care. That’s the charge running through our conversation with Jack Bones, a transgender cancer survivor whose digital story takes us from a tense biopsy room to a stage where an audience of clinicians wiped away tears and leaned into hard, necessary dialogue. We walk through how a politicized identity collided with late-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma, how bias nearly cl...

What if a two-minute story could change how a care team sees you? We dive into the power of short, first-person narratives to bring dignity, clarity, and warmth back into healthcare, especially in dementia care where behaviour, memory, and language can obscure the person beneath the chart. Lisa Joworski returns to share how Capturing Essence For Care has evolved from interviews into a connector hu...

Pull up a chair at our Common Language Kitchen Table Takeover and hear how stories can turn clinical facts into lived wisdom. We bring together three CHD parents and leaders from WCCHN and Conquering CHD to explore the neurodevelopment side of congenital heart disease—speech, executive function, school, mental health, and the quiet weight caregivers carry. You’ll leave with language to use, questi...

Shame can feel like quicksand in medicine—silent, isolating, and relentless—yet it can also be a bridge that pulls us back to each other. We sit down with Dr. Will Bynum, family physician, researcher, and co-founder of The Shame Lab , and returning guest Dr. Daisy Dulay to unpack how shame shows up in training, practice, and leadership, and how storytelling turns private pain into collective insig...

What happens when a veterinary technician, end‑of‑life doula, and legacy specialist decides to put story at the centre of care and education? We sit down with Angie Turner to explore how digital storytelling can build resilience, clarify identity, and spark brave conversations in veterinary medicine. Angie shares her path into facilitation through Common Language training, including the craft and...

A preemie parent and digital storytelling facilitator, who just happens to also host the Co-Created podcast, Kristy Wolfe, shares how a simple bedtime ritual became a lens for resilience, advocacy, and neurodevelopmental care, weaving Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) experience into digital stories that move clinicians and empower families. We show how short f...

If you’re a parent navigating loss, a health professional seeking empathy-building tools, or a changemaker curious about narrative practices, you’ll find practical insights on peer support, ritual, and the craft of story in our conversation with Gillian Hatto. Gillian is mom to Hazel, Elliot, Lily, and Olive and she opens up about how sudden child loss upended her world and how she found her way t...

Stories don’t just inform us, they reshape how we care. We sit down with Dr. Mike Lang to trace how a single digital story and grows into workshops, screenings, and a culture that centres lived experience in health and wellness. From young caregivers supporting parents with ALS to adults navigating head and neck cancer, Mike shows how these short, voice-driven films become practical tools that can...

Heather Alicia Knox combines her skills as a photographer, writer, and digital storytelling facilitator to help people capture their most meaningful moments and share them with the world. Her journey reveals how storytelling methodologies can complement each other beautifully. Trained as a Common Language DST facilitator and a Guided Autobiography instructor , Heather now helps people transform th...

Sibling life is never just one role. It’s caretaker, advocate, friend, guardian...and it shifts with every season. We sit down with Dr. Linda Nguyen and sibling-advocate Samantha Bellefeuille to explore how those fluid roles come into focus when siblings lead the narrative and how digital storytelling can turn lived experience into lasting change in health care, research, and community programs. E...

Jen Siran returns to discuss her journey from creating her first digital story to becoming a Common Language Digital Storytelling facilitator helping others tell their stories. She shares how persistence in seeking funding eventually led to success for her Caregiver's Corner project supporting heart families across Canada. Episode Key Messages Jen created three digital stories focused on experienc...

Tom Lee's life took an unexpected turn when his colon cancer progressed to stage four metastatic status. Rather than retreating, this former engineering professor discovered a remarkable talent for pastel drawing that became the subject of his powerful digital story with the Canadian Cancer Society . Episode Key Messages When diagnosed with terminal cancer, Tom turned to art as a meaningful way to...

The most compelling marketing doesn't come from slick campaigns or catchy slogans—it emerges from authentic personal narratives that reveal why we do what we do. Mindfulness teacher and keynote speaker Trish Tutton joins us to explore how digital storytelling captured the pivotal moment that shaped her life's purpose. Discover how your authentic narrative might become your most powerful tool for r...

What happens when a simple four-minute digital story manages to capture the essence of a centuries-old military band tradition? For Katlyn Lamont, a registered psychotherapist and newly-trained digital storytelling facilitator, the answer came in the form of tough military veterans moved to tears. Katlyn's journey with Common Language Digital Storytelling began unexpectedly when her youth addictio...

When Laryssa Lamrock created her digital story "Enveloped," she never anticipated how profoundly a four-minute video would transform her advocacy work with military families. As the National Strategic Advisor for Families at the Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families , Laryssa brings her lived experience as a military spouse, daughter, and mother to her work supporting those affected by service...

The power of digital storytelling lies in its ability to capture what textbooks and lectures cannot - the raw, human experience of navigating life's most challenging moments. In this deeply moving conversation with Kathy Cortes-Miller and Keri-Lyn Durant, co-hosts of the Disrupting Death podcast , we explore how digital storytelling creates transformative spaces for processing grief and sharing ex...

What happens when personal trauma transforms into powerful advocacy? Fabiana Bacchini, Executive Director of the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation , takes us on a journey through her evolution from NICU parent to healthcare changemaker through the lens of digital storytelling. The conversation reveals the unique power of digital stories to transcend traditional limitations. Unlike presentations...