PlaceStories supports the storytelling, networking and digital communication needs of community organisations, government agencies and others who work with communities (particularly those which cover rural and regional areas).

The project is supported by the Australia Council, Arts Queensland and the Westpac Foundation and it began in June 2009.

The QRWN is one of the project's program partners, and we oversee the Rural Voices section of the PlaceStories community.

Using special software developed by Feral Arts, QRWN members are able to assemble multi-media presentations incorporating photos, video, sound and text to tell stories about their communities, and then post those stories online.

Membership of the PlaceStories project is completely free and finished PlaceStories can be uploaded to a dedicated website set up especially for the purpose of displaying them to the world.

You can view the QRWN Rural Voices PlaceStories website by clicking here

Want to get involved in this QRWN project or find out more information? Email the QRWN by clicking here.

The Rural Broadband Campaign aims to lobby the Federal Government to introduce super-fast broadband into rural and regional Australia more quickly than it may have initially planned to do. And the method it's using to do this is to create electronic postcards through the PlaceStories system.

Feral Arts have created an online e-postcards site that you can see by clicking here (you may need to enlarge the map to see Queensland up close).

They're using this e-postcards map as a focus for the Rural Broadband Campaign.

And to attach an e-postcard of your own to this map, all you need to do is find a picture of your local area and then send it in an email along with a brief message of your own - a process that should take you no longer than a couple of minutes.

You can get a one-page PDF which explains the whole process and the simple steps you need to follow to add your own e-postcard to the map by clicking here.

But if you find the URLs too tricky to type, just go to the Rural Broadband Campaign page and click the link that says "Click here to create your own postcard". An email form will pop up with all those tricky addresses already filled in for you!

Most QRWN members live in areas that are poorly serviced by any kind of broadband at the present time and which may have to wait years for the new super-fast broadband network unless we agitate. But with the current hung parliament, there's probably never been a better time for it!

So we encourage all our members to stand up for their communities and join us in this campaign by spending just a few minutes of your time to put your own e-postcard on the map.