Plush, T. (2009) Amplifying
children’s voices on climate change: the role of participatory video. Participation Learning and Action [online]
60 Dec 119-128. Available from: < http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/14573IIED.pdf>
[Accessed on 30 April 2014].
In
the above, Plush (2009) outlines a community education and action-research
project using participatory video with children in Nepal to explore climate
change and their adaptation needs. Within the project, workshops were held both
to train local adults as ‘participatory video facilitators’ and provide
children with information. Children then worked with adult facilitators to
co-create questions for filmed interviews with children and adults in their
community. The children were also supported to develop a film storyboard
highlighting a chosen aspect of climate change and its impact on their lives. The
final product was a report (available here) and a video.
Plush
(2009) advocates this use of participatory video from a rights-based
perspective as a child-led process able to empower children and give them a
means ‘to speak for themselves’ (Plush, 2009: 126) on issues important to them.
The product can also be a powerful catalyst for change – In the case study
presented, the video contributed to a successful application for funds to build
a bridge over a river that regularly flooded. Plush (2009) also feels that
participatory video gave the children a ‘sense of ownership’ (125) which
improved the quality of the findings, and in turn improved awareness of climate
change and encouraged community action to protect against its negative effects.
Beazley
et al. (2009) also advocate participatory and rights-based research. They argue
that working from this framework gives voice to the perspectives of the ’90.8%
muted majority of children’ (366) living out-with industrialised areas.
Participatory video tools seem to give the Nepalese children in Plush’s (2009)
project the tools to reflect their local and situated perspectives, hence
offering them ‘the right to be properly researched’ (Beazley, 2009: 370). It
does feel like this methodology is on the right track!
However,
in contrast Buckingham (2009) argues that the use of creative methods such as
participatory video can be naïve, and that claims that these are ‘inherently
‘empowering’ tends to obfuscate pressing ethical issues’ (648). Arguments that
visual methods enable children ‘to speak for themselves’ can neglect the
implications of children’s understanding of the aims of the research and of the
context inherent in the media itself (Buckingham, 2009). They can also ignore
the steering role that research aims and researchers – however remote – will
inevitably have, by misrepresenting visual methods as necessarily able to
faithfully capture viewpoints.
Plush
(2009) does acknowledge the importance of considering the context of using
video equipment where this might be ‘novel’, and the power imbalances within
communities that participatory video methods are not able to address. However,
Plush (2009) does not attend to the impact that the perceived purpose of the
end product might have, or the steering effect of preparatory work with adult
facilitators and children. Nor does Plush (2009) consider any perceptions the
children might have about the ultimate audience or ideas about what makes a
‘good video’.
All
of these aspects come with the territory and need to be more closely considered
in all research applying creative methods.
REFERENCES
Beazley,
H., Bessell S., Ennew, J., & Waterson, R. (2009) The right to be properly
researched: research with children in a messy, real world. Children’s Georaphies 7 (4) Nov 365-378.
Buckingham,
D. (2009) ‘Creative’ visual methods in media research: possibilities, problems
and proposals. Media Culture Society
31 (4) July 633-652.
Plush,
T. (2009) Amplifying children’s voices on climate change: the role of
participatory video. Participation
Learning and Action [online] 60 Dec 119-128. Available from: < http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/14573IIED.pdf>
[Accessed on 30 April 2014].
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