Insights into participatory video:
A handbook for the field

Nick and Chris Lunch, 2006.
Insight U.K., 3 Maidcroft Road, Oxford, OX4 3EN, United Kingdom.
http://www.insightshare.org

 

This handbook is a practical guide to setting up and running participatory video projects, written for anyone who wishes to facilitate them, anywhere in the world. It is based on the experience of the authors and of Insight, a company based in the U.K. and France that focuses on developing participatory video methodologies. As it is the work of practitioners, and not academics, the authors hope it will further spread awareness of participatory video and its advantages, clarify how it is done, and encourage others to use it and to develop it further.

What is participatory video?
The first part of the guide presents participatory video as a set of techniques to involve a group or community in the process of sharing and creating their own film. This is seen as a very good way of bringing people together to explore a particular issue, to voice concern or to tell a story. “This process can be very empowering, enabling a group or community to take action to solve their own problems and also to communicate their needs and ideas to decision makers and/or other groups and communities.” In contrast to “regular” documentary films, in participatory video the subjects of the film are the ones who made it, shaping it according to their own sense of what is important and what needs to be said. This technique can be a powerful tool for documenting people’s experiences. It can initiate a process of analysis and change in which all members of a community have a say. “Participatory video gives a voice and a face to those who are normally not heard or seen.”

The PV process
The next section looks at the participatory video process, dividing it in seven main steps:

1. Setting up a PV project. Having decided on participatory video, the starting point is to visit the area and discuss the process and logistics with local representatives. Some research may be necessary, as well as some team building activities with facilitators, guides, translators and trainees.

2. Getting started. The second step relies on a series of games, using the camera to develop specific skills: how to work as a group, how to listen to others, and how to communicate one’s experience clearly. One of these, for example, is the “disappearing game”. The whole group of participants stands as if posing for a photo. The person filming records for three seconds and then stops, after which he asks one member of the group to leave. She films then again for three seconds and then stops again, repeating the process several times. The film is watched immediately afterwards; it looks as if people appear and disappear. The game “is good fun, it teaches to record and pause, ensuring everyone is able to perform this fundamental skill”.

3. Fieldwork: developing the techniques. Next comes a list of activities with which participants can start thinking about creating a story using the video. The objective is to build trust, confidence and group skills alongside the technical skills. These include, for example, the “show and tell exercise”, making a 2-minute film of a significant object, or the use of video for community mapping, drawing a map before members of the group go filming.

4. Interviewing tips. Asking questions to community members is one of the most common fieldwork activities. This section recommends using open questions, and provides a checklist to make sure the interviewing process works efficiently.

5. Reflection and analysis. This step presents exercises that encourage reflective responses and deeper levels of sharing among participants (such as “body maps”, or “visioning”). The video becomes a tool: through the lens, participants“have the opportunity to choose what to focus on, to reveal their environment and to reach to an outsider audience”.

6. Organising regular screening of footage. Screenings promote interest and raise awareness of the topics that are being focused on through the process. Most of the times it is fun, and it also helps analyse the material filmed. Playing back the footage that participants have filmed helps them improve their filming and interviewing techniques, and also builds confidence and self-esteem.

7. Editing footage. The participatory video process encourages participants to work together to plan and think what they want to film before they film it. A thorough preparation between the shots, instead of freestyle recording, can avoid hours of unnecessary footage. Unedited footage can thus be good enough for others to watch. Still, on different occasions it is necessary to edit the filmed material, something which can be done easily with simple computer programmes. Adding titles or music greatly improves the quality.

PV in action
The next sections present different tips, looking at the process itself (and considering issues such as prior preparation and how to proceed when working with translators) and also at ethical issues. It will always be necessary, for example, to “be aware of power”, and to try to involve participants in the editing process, reflecting a collective exercise. Next comes a series of technical tips.

The guide finishes by looking at the many applications which participatory video can have. It presents ideas of how it can best be used when working with marginalised groups, for participatory research, or when working with decision makers, for eample. These are all illustrated with different case studies, showing the work of Insight in many parts of the world.

 

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