Looking for a Space to Breathe

This contribution explores two projects that have addressed urban toponymy by building counter-narratives that challenge dominant historical narratives. It does so through audio-visual materials and draws on biographies as well as intimate gazes. The first section explores the Rome-based Tezeta collective’s Harnet Streets project, where memories and family histories of subjects belonging to the Eritrean diasporas1 become the centre of a new counter-storytelling that starts from the toponymy of the African neighbourhood. The second section focuses on the city of Padova, looking at how some colonial streets have been re-appropriated by the bodies, voices and gazes of six Italian Afro-descendants who took part in a participatory video, re-signifying urban traces of colonialism in a creative way. The teaching and research experience of the Visual Research Methods Lab (University of Padova, Fall 2020) allowed us to question worldviews and social hierarchies that made it possible to celebrate/forget the racist and sexist violence of colonialism.

Participatory video from a distance: co-producing knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic using smartphones

In this paper, I outline an innovative remote participatory video (PV) methodology that makes use of participants’ smartphones. It was developed as an alternative to co-production research and can be employed when face-to-face contact is impossible or undesirable. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face research interactions have been disrupted or become impossible. Yet it is vital to reach those who are most affected by emergencies and to include their voices. The research reported here was a collaboration between women in Medellín, Colombia, and a team of filmmakers and researchers. We developed an innovative remote PV methodology using participants’ smartphones, researching how women from poorer neighbourhoods were affected by the pandemic in their everyday lives. Here, I reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the remote PV methodology, arguing that it offers new avenues for participants to take control of the filming and editing process, and builds technical skills and capacities that have value beyond the timeframe of the project. I conclude that the remote PV method has great potential as a stand-alone method, moving the landscape of co-production research away from a requirement for geographical co-presence and potentially shifting power and ownership towards local co-researchers and participants.

Participatory Video Influenced Behaviour and Social Environment of Ghanaian Female Adolescent Learners: A Most Significant Change Evaluation

Objectives Assess the perceived influence and value of a participatory video intervention among beneficiaries. Methods A 2019 cluster randomized control trial (clinicaltrials.gov NCT03704649) randomly selected 20 schools in one Ghanaian rural district and enrolled adolescent girls, 13–16 y old. All schools received a curriculum about adolescent nutrition. The 181 girls in the 10 intervention schools also received participatory video workshops to increase nutrition literacy. The Most Significant Change (MSC) method was used to involve adolescents in the intervention arm and local stakeholders to identify and evaluate the value of the participatory video experience. Project staff collected 116 stories of change from adolescents. The stories described shifts in 4 domains: participant, peer, and family behavior and structural changes in the school/community. The lead researcher and project staff developed and used a selection rubric to identify stories that reflected heightened nutrition literacy; 14 stories were chosen. Project staff then conducted in-depth interviews with the 14 adolescents to elaborate on story details and perceived resonance. Finally, a panel of local stakeholders reviewed and assessed the 14 stories and chose four MSC stories, one for each domain. A separate thematic analysis by the lead researcher identified emerging patterns of motivation and action across the 14 interviews. Results The 4 MSC stories revealed how an adolescent: 1) raised and saved money to buy herself iron-rich foods when parents would not comply, 2) encouraged neighbours to eat iron-rich foods 3) taught a father to weed around iron-rich foods on the farm, and 4) encouraged a sister to sell diverse foods at her school. Local stakeholders valued stories that addressed common community nutrition issues in a creative and sustainable way, whereas adolescents prioritized stories that showed a change in health outcomes. Conclusions Participatory evaluation highlights valuation of local stakeholders and beneficiaries, perceptions that are vital to better understand the influence and reach of interventions. The MSC technique can reveal unexpected benefits of an intervention. Funding Sources The Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship, funded by IDRC and SSHRC

See me, hear me, talk to me, exploring the transformative potential of participatory video with street involved youth

Very few interdisciplinary participatory video research projects have critically assessed how an individual first engages and then continues Freire's "conscientization" or the transformative process toward civic agency, and the role participatory video plays in this process. See Me. Hear Me. Talk To Me. is a participatory video research project that aimed to break new ground in professional participatory video practice by focusing on the individual transformative processes of a small group of at-risk, street involved youth engaged in a participatory action research (PAR) video project. This participatory video research project aimed to gain a small, but specific insight into the transformative processes of at-risk, street involved youth by exploring their experiences and personal perspectives before, during and after the project. In doing so, it intended to add to the current, but very limited research in participatory video projects with street involved youth in order to encourage further interdisciplinary study, as well as the development of some preliminary reference tools to help governments, non-profits and other interested organizations critically engage street involved youth today. -- Page 8