Participatory video - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Participatory video is a form of participatory media

Participatory media

Participatory media include community media, blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging and social bookmarking, music-photo-video sharing, mashups, podcasts, participatory video projects and videoblogs...

in which a group or community creates their own film. The idea behind this is that making a video is easy and accessible, and is a great way of bringing people together to explore issues, voice concerns or simply to be creative and tell stories. It is therefore primarily about process, though high quality and accessible films (products) can be created using these methods if that is a desired outcome. This process can be very empowering, enabling a group or community to take their own action to solve their own problems, and also to communicate their needs and ideas to decision-makers and/or other groups and communities. As such, PV can be a highly effective tool to engage and mobilise marginalised people, and to help them to implement their own forms of sustainable development based on local needs.

How does participatory video differ from documentary filmmaking?

Whilst there are forms of documentary filmmaking that are able to sensitively represent the realities of their subjects' lives and even to voice their concerns, documentary films very much remain the authored products of a documentary filmmaker. As such, the subjects of documentaries rarely have any say (or sometimes have some limited say) in how they will ultimately be represented. By contrast, in PV the subjects make their own film in which they can shape issues according to their own sense of what is important, and they can also control how they will be represented. Additionally, documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

s are often expected to meet stringent aesthetic standards and are usually made with a large audience in mind. The PV process, on the other hand, is less concerned with appearance than with content, and the films are usually made with particular audiences and objectives in mind.

What are the origins of participatory video?

The first experiments in PV were the work of Don Snowden, a Canadian who pioneered the idea of using media to enable a people-centered community development approach. Then Director of the Extension Department at Memorial University of Newfoundland

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Memorial University of Newfoundland, is a comprehensive university located primarily in St...

, Snowden worked with filmmaker Colin Low

Colin Low (filmmaker)

Colin Archibald Low, CM, RCA is a Canadian animation and documentary filmmaker.Born in Cardston, Alberta, Low attended the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Calgary Institute of Technology, now known as the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology...

and the National Film Board of Canada

National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...

's Challenge for Change

Challenge for Change

Challenge for Change was a participatory film and video project created by the National Film Board of Canada in 1967, the Canadian Centennial...

program to apply his ideas in Fogo Island, Newfoundland, a small fishing community. By watching each other’s films, the different villagers on the island came to realise that they shared many of the same problems and that by working together they could solve some of them. the films were also shown to politicians who lived too far away and were too busy to actually visit the island. As a result of this dialogue, government policies and actions were changed. The techniques developed by Snowden became known as the Fogo process. Snowden went on to apply the Fogo process all over the world until his death in India in 1984.

The first community-made video in Canada was the 1969 Challenge for Change video VTR St-Jacques, filmed in a poor Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

neighbourhood. In order to make VTR St-Jacques, directors Dorothy Henault and Bonnie Sherr Klein

Bonnie Sherr Klein

Bonnie Sherr Klein is a feminist filmmaker, author, and disability rights activist.-Film-making career:Klein worked for the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal as a director and producer in the late 1960s. Between that time and the late 1980s, she made dozens of films there...

trained community members in video to represent their struggle for affordable and accessible medical care. VTR St-Jacques was shown across Canada and the U.S., inspiring other projects.

There has been no uniform movement to promote and practise PV but different individuals and groups have set up pockets of PV work, usually molding it to their particular needs and situations. PV has also grown with the increasing accessibility of home video equipment.

An early and significant book on participatory video was published in the UK in 1997 by Clive Robertson and Jackie Shaw, Directors of Real Time Video, and has informed many subsequent books and articles, including the book this article has drawn from. Real Time are an educational charity that pioneered many of the techniques and methodologies still used today, and have been working in the participatory video field since 1984.

How widespread are participatory video methods?

PV is used all over the world and has been applied in many different situations, from advocacy and enabling greater participation in development projects to providing a therapeutic and communicative environment for the mentally ill or disempowered. Methods vary from practitioner to practitioner, some choosing to keep the process more open, and others preferring to guide the subjects more, or even to wield the camera themselves. There is no fixed way in which PV has to be done, other than that it involves the authorship of the group itself and that it be carried out in a truly participative and democratic way. This quality of flexibility enables PV to be applied to many different situations.

Why use participatory video?

PV carried out in this way becomes a powerful means of documenting local people’s experiences, needs and hopes from their own perspectives. It initiates a process of analysis and change that celebrates local knowledge and practice, whilst stimulating creativity both within and beyond the community. PV gives a voice and a face to those who are normally not heard or seen, even in participatory programmes.

Applications of participatory video

In combination with other methodologies such as Participatory Learning in Action (PLA) techniques, Participatory Rural Appraisal

Participatory rural appraisal

Participatory rural appraisal is an approach used by non-governmental organizations and other agencies involved in international development...

and others. PV has been successfully applied to projects focussing on; community development

Community development

Community development is a broad term applied to the practices and academic disciplines of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens and professionals to improve various aspects of local communities....

; promoting local innovation and endogenous development; therapeutic work; a voice for marginalised groups; a catalyst for community-led action; a tool for communicating with policy makers; a means of involving users in their own research for example action research

Action research

Action research or participatory action research – is a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a "community of practice" to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. Action research is done simply by action,...

, participatory research, user-led research; also for programme monitoring and evaluation or Social impact assessment

Social impact assessment

Social impact assessment is a methodology to review the social effects of infrastructure projects and other development interventions.-Definition:...

...new possible applications are being continually developed.

Examples

Catcher Media http://www.catchermedia.co.uk
Children As Media Producers (CAMP) http://snscomm.uohyd.ernet.in/camp
China Villager Documentary Project, www.ccdworkstation.com
Deccan Development Society http://www.ddsindia.com/www/default.asp
InsightShare Participatory Video http://www.insightshare.org/
Participatory Documentary Center of the IFCHINA Original Studio, www.ifchinastudio.org, www.artisimple.com
Video Volunteers http://www.videovolunteers.org/
zaLab - video partecipativo e documentari www.zalab.org