Participatory Video

Participatory Video = Collective filming and editing, controlled by communities

Definition

"Participatory Video enhances research and development activity by handing over control to the target communities from project conception through to implementation, monitoring and evaluation. We believe that opening communication channels for project recipients is the key to developing successful participant-led projects with sustainable and far-reaching impacts.

Participatory Video in a Nutshell

• Participants rapidly learn how to use video equipment through games & exercises.

• Facilitators help groups identify & analyse important issues in their community by adapting a range of PRA-type tools with Participatory Video techniques.

• Short videos & messages are directed & filmed by participants.

• Footage is shared with the wider community at daily screenings.

• A dynamic process of community-led learning, sharing and exchange is set in motion.

• Completed films can be used for horizontal and vertical communication"

(http://www.insightshare.org/)

Examples

The I Witness project, see http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002519.html

More Information

"Insights into Participatory Video: A handbook for the field" , at http://www.insightshare.org/

"The UK/France-based Insight has just released a field guide to participatory video (PV). The guide lays out instructions through text, illustration and photography to assist amateur videographers in setting up PV projects regardless of their location.

Insight's work focuses on empowering individuals and communities to give voice to their experience by learning about the tools and processes required to direct, film, and produce videos. Much of their work involves applying video techniques to Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) practices, which encompass a broad range of local, collaborative methods for assessment and planning in communities both rural and urban.

This of course runs quite parallel to the work of Witness and other efforts to expose injustice through local, participatory video. While Insight's work goes more in-depth on the entire video-making process, their globally-applicable handbook may prove informative even for capturing more on-the-fly footage through developments such as Witness's mobile phone project, which enables citizens to document human rights violations through cameraphone recordings, as well as environmental data documentation, as Jamais mentioned with the idea of Earth Witness." (http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004244.html)