COMMUNITY TELEVISION/ PARTICIPATORY VIDEO

What is participatory video?
Participatory Video is a set of techniques to involve a group or community in shaping and creating 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. 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. As such, PV can be a highly effective tool to engage and mobilize marginalized people and to help them implement their own forms of sustainable development based on local needs.

How does Participatory Video work? * Participants (men, women and youth) rapidly learn how to use video equipment through games and exercises. * Facilitators help groups to identify and analyse important issues in their community by adapting a range of Participatory Rural Apraisal (PRA)-type tools with participatory video techniques (for example, social mapping, action search, prioritising, etc. * Short videos and messages are directed and filmed by the participants. * Footage is shown to 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 to promote awareness and exchange between various different target groups. * Participatory video films or video messages can be used to strengthen both horizontal communication (e.g. communicating with other communities) and vertical communication (e.g. communicating with decision-makers).

THE FOGO PROCESS:

The inception of participatory video is credited to Donald Snowden, a Canadian academic who specialized in communication and rural development. In the late 1960s, he headed a team that made a series of films with the residents of the Fogo Islands, a group of remote fishing communities off the coast of Newfoundland. The islanders were dealing with increasing poverty and isolation, as modern commercial fisheries developed technology they could not compete with. When Snowden arrived on the island in 1967 more than 60% of the population was on welfare, and the Canadian government was planning to relocate the residents inland (Crocker, 2003). The films Snowden and his team made on the islands, and, more importantly, the method they developed while making them, became known as the
Fogo Process. Its principles form the basis of all participatory video projects today.
The Fogo Islanders suffered from not only economic poverty, but also what Snowden called a “poverty of information and organization” (Crocker, 203, p. 126). The islands are terribly remote, and at the time had little infrastructure or local media. Residents were scattered among settlements that were isolated by physical distance and historical differences. The population had no collective identity. This affected not just their social cohesion, but also their ability to represent themselves to policy makers in Ottawa.
After shooting for a few months, Snowden and his colleague, filmmaker Colin Low, thought it would be nice to show the community the footage. They received so much feedback after the screening, almost all of it positive, that they decided to organise a screening for the Canadian premier and his cabinet. The officials, in turn, were equally enthusiastic about the footage, and the Minister for Fisheries recorded a response for Snowden to bring back to Fogo. The films gave the citizens a voice they had not had before. As he later put it, film removes “the inherent threat in communicating with persons of authority” (Snowden, 1983,p.70).
Snowden and Low’s intent had been to make a conventional film documenting the poverty in Fogo, but after experiencing the feedback generated from these screenings their focus changed. Their film had opened up a channel of communication between citizens who had little contact with the government, and officials who were otherwise too busy to visit or offer much attention to the islands. Unlike a traditional film, theirs became less about the quality of the final product and more about the communication process that arose while making it (White, 2003).
Snowden wondered whether by holding regular screenings and discussion groups, he might help smooth out divisions between villages and make it clear to the residents that if they did not want to be relocated they were going to have to organise as a group. Low began to shoot short films that were centred on one interview with one individual, whose concern seemed representative of the community. He felt shooting this way gave an appropriate respect for the subject’s opinion. The interviewee would not feel as though his story were swallowed into part of a larger theme. As Low put it, when you edit interviews together into one film, “you get one person who is all wrong, one person who is partly right, and one person who is right. He becomes the smart guy, who puts others down. This putting down can harm people within a community” (Crocker, 2003, p. 129).
The discussion groups were a success. Snowden found that many people were uneasy raising grievances face‐to‐face, but were comfortable discussing an issue after it had been introduced in a filmed interview. Eventually, the islanders did band together and successfully resisted the government’s plans to resettle them. Snowden was always reluctant to credit his work directly with this achievement, saying that “films did not do these things, people did them.” But he did admit that “there is little doubt, however, that film created an awareness and self‐confidence that was needed for people‐advocated development to occur” (Snowden, 1983, p. 61).
Effects of participatory video
Snowden touches on an output of participatory video that is hard to define, but that practitioners argue is its most compelling quality. PV has consistently been shown to raise the confidence of participants, by increasing self‐awareness and tightening their bond with their community. There are no concrete explanations for how this happens, but it is thought that in seeing herself onscreen, a participant separates from her own perception of self, and temporarily sees herself through the eyes of the community. It gives the impression “that one’s own knowledge is important and it can be effectively communicated…[it shows people] that they can say and do things that they thought were not possible before”
(Snowden, 1983, p.71). The participant also recognizes that she is part of a larger group, and her experiences and thoughts that were captured on film belong not only to her, but to everyone watching as well. It creates a sense that her experiences are shared, even with people outside her immediate area. The academic Benedict Anderson (1991, p.35) calls this phenomenon an ‘imagined community’, and its effect is so powerful, he argues, that it built our concept of the modern nation state. Nationalism can be directly traced to the emergence of printed mass media: the newspaper reader, observing exact replicas of his own paper being consumed by his subway, barbershop, or residential neighbours, is continually reassured that [this] imagined world is visibly rooted in everyday life …creating that remarkable confidence of community in anonymity which is the hallmark of modern nations.
As Crocker puts it, ‘The nation is an imagined entity but one that is quite real, one of the few things, in fact, that people are willing to die for’ (Crocker, 2003, p.131). In even the most participatory PRA, as mentioned earlier, information is usually transformed by the facilitator before it is presented to the group for discussion. Video, however, “can enable under‐represented and non‐literate people to use their own visual languages and oral traditions to retrieve, debate, and record their own knowledge’” (Braden, 1998, p.19). It is a much more pure representation of the participants’ experience with their community, and reinforces the reality of the whole community. This community strengthening can lead to significant social change. Referring to a project in Brazil, in which the Kayapó tribe successfully resisted the construction of a dam that would have flooded their land, Dudley (2003, p.155) explains,
By engaging in a process of elaborating messages through video, the participants were forced to examine their social, economic and political locations to devise an approach that would allow them to influence the status quo. In each case, the process of developing their arguments proved to be extremely enlightening.
So participatory video can even create a bond that was otherwise impossible to imagine, as in the case of the Fogo islanders who were also close to losing their land. For people who feel marginalized, this communal experience can be revolutionary.

AFTER FOGO:

Donald Snowden continued to use film and video in rural community development projects until his untimely death in 1984, but the process didn’t start to catch on with larger development organizations until portable, affordable video equipment emerged in the 1990s. PV remains a process that is being studied and refined, but successful, well‐known projects have taken place all over the world. In particular, PV has proven to be an especially effective tool for empowering marginalised women. Sara Kindon (2002) claims that the participatory process subverts the asymmetrical power dynamic inherent in traditional filmmaking. This power structure, known in film theory as the camera’s ‘gaze’, appropriates any power from the subject being photographed and transfers it to the person in control of the camera. The cameraperson has the active role, while the subject is entirely passive. It is usually accepted that the camera gaze comes from a male perspective, and that the subject is feminine, objectified to the point of fascination or even fetishisation. Kindon (2002, p.143) likens the male camera gaze to the ‘colonialist’ relationship inherent in traditional researcher/researched practice. She argues that “participatory video may offer a feminist practice of ‘looking alongside’ rather than ‘looking at’ research subjects’”.
An excellent example of this is a 2006 venture sponsored by the American Refugee
Committee, with Liberian refugees living in the Lainé camp in Guinea. Named ‘Through Our
Eyes’, the project addressed gender‐based violence from the perspective of its victims. The group made more than 20 documentary and dramatic videos with titles like ‘Rape is a Bad
Thing’ and ‘Wife Beating Is Not Good’. The project was conceived as an empowerment exercise for the camp’s women, who took the leading roles. They coordinated the films, conducted interviews, and also appeared on camera. But Lowen (2008, p.35) notes that the whole community took an interest. Although the films articulated women’s voices, ‘”lured by the opportunity to use technology, men [were] also eager to become involved in the production process.” The project ended up being so positive for the community that USAID sponsored its expansion to Rwanda, Southern Sudan, and Uganda.
Through Our Eyes is especially representative of good PV practice because its output –to raise awareness and discussion about a specific issue– was clear. Gender based violence, “often shrouded in secrecy…can be particularly difficult to combat in these settings because cultural traditions place the social stigma and shame on the victims” (Lowen, 2008, p. 34).
Like the Fogo Islanders, the women of Lainé felt comfortable speaking about difficult experiences in a structured and facilitated environment. For many women, “choosing to tell their stories on camera [became] an important part of the healing process” (Lowen, 2008, p. 35). Other women, uncomfortable speaking publicly about their experiences, were able to contribute to the project from behind the camera. Communication for Change, the New York‐based organization that trained the Liberian staff, noted that the communication skills developed during the PV process linger after the project is over. “Young women [became] better communicators with or without the video camera and they are growing stronger and willing to take on tough issues such as rape and STDs” (C4C, 2008, online). “Because the videos are made by members of the community, told in a local dialect and with respect for local customs, they have a big impact. People can’t dismiss the stories as happening somewhere else” (Lowen, 2008, p. 34). As Dudley (2003, p. 148) puts it, in reference to a similar project addressing sexual abuse among domestic workers in Colombia, ‘the public response to questions being recorded on a video camera brought a taboo topic out into the open, and in so doing provided a window for the women to begin to establish a public dialogue to address the issue.” For instance, after a community screening of a video about rape, the ARC field staff in Liberia reported an immediate increase in women seeking their counselling services.
Television was rare in the Lainé camp, and screenings of the Through Our Eyes videos attracted large audiences. For participants with low literacy levels, video offers these opportunities to clearly articulate their thoughts in a public arena, which can be especially satisfying. PV is also widely used in projects with marginalized communities to document and swap information that they otherwise do not have a means of sharing, similar to the initiatives started by the FAO in the 1970s. Insight, the Oxford‐based participatory video group, commonly works with rural people documenting local practices for posterity, such as traditional harvesting techniques. Often these videos are passed along to nearby tribes, to share and exchange information. “Visual documentation of local innovation through PV provides material in a form that is easily understood. [In such a context] this gives PV a decided advantage over the written word” (Lunch, 2006, p.14). These videos can also give researchers and policy‐makers insight into a poor community’s cultural richness and knowledge, such as what the Fogo films showed the Canadian officials. In Manila, the members of Breastfeeding Patrol felt confident and experienced with the educational work that they did, but they wanted to communicate more often and more effectively with their community and officials. They therefore chose to make a documentation‐type video, to supplement their work training new mothers and to increase their public profile with the local government.

COMMUNITY MEDIA: PERSPECTIVES AND PURPOSE

The theoretical discourse regarding Community Media has been diverse. One of the pioneering work on Community Media by Frances.J. Berrigan describes community media as
““ …adaptations of media, for use by the community, for whatever purposes the community decides. They are media to which members of the community have access, for information, education, entertainment, when they want access. They are media in which the community participates, as planners, producers, performers. They are the means of expression of the community, rather than for the community.”
This approach owes its roots to Paulo Freire’s ideas of participative education and development.
Unlike the other two paradigms of development communication, namely Modernization
Paradigm and Dependency Theory, the participatory paradigm advocates for a two-way communication system. Participatory communication not only speaks of access to information, but lays stress on participation and finally leading to self-management.
The participatory approach was thus a radical departure from traditional approaches and sought community self-determination. Thus, for the first time communication was not looked not as a method of information dissemination, but rather as a ‘conscientization’ and facilitative process for building ‘articulation’ skills of individual and community. Thus participatory communications accounted for community based actions and interactive relationship between people and government resulting in more responsive political and institutional structures.
Audio-Visual became a tool of participatory media, way back in 1967 under the Fogo Process. In Fogo Island, Canada, Video was used to create public discourse and take actions on issues affecting their lives. The importance was laid on the process of making films rather than the end-product. “In many ways the uniqueness of the events that transpired on Fogo was that the process of filmmaking became more important than the actual films produced. What was empowering or emancipating was the sense of community and cooperation necessary to make films. In fact, it is clear that the importance of the process of community involvement and empowerment had a direct effect on the kinds of films that were produced.” (Crocker 2003)
After the Fogo Process, Video came to be recognised as an involving and viable option of community communications. Many initiatives on the lines of Fogo followed later. In the late nineties WITNESS and INSIGHT (Nick and Chris Lunch) were two pioneer organisations in popularizing the Participatory Video Model. Through their trainings, designing easy-to-use training manuals and on field experimentation the video model started to be recognized globally. With the digital revolution in the 90’s and later in the new millennium, video became an even cheaper, cost-effective and sustainable option.
After the Fogo Process, Video came to be recognised as an involving and viable option of community communications. Many initiatives on the lines of Fogo followed later. In the late nineties WITNESS and INSIGHT (Nick and Chris Lunch) were two pioneer organisations in popularizing the Participatory Video Model. Through their trainings, designing easy-to-use training manuals and on field experimentation the video model started to be recognized globally. With the digital revolution in the 90’s and later in the new millennium, video became an even cheaper, cost-effective and sustainable option.

Indian Context –
The Community Video Movement has never taken the shape of a policy advocacy. It has usedchannels like screenings, cable casting, etc to create a foothold. The first experiment of Community TV was conducted by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) under its Kheda TV project. This experiment started in 1979, used participatory methods to generate relevant content for the targeted community. This initiative was the first such effort, but being in government control it never went the distance of allowing communities to take management control. This experiment thankfully triggered off a few other participatory video initiatives like one relatively less known from an organisation called CENDIT, Video SEWA in Gujarat, and DDS Video in Andhra Pradesh. DRISHTI started its Community Video Initiative in 2003-04. It was in 2005-06 that DRISHTI started establishing its first Video Units in a partnership mode with other Grassroot Organisations. DRISHTI is right now the only organization in INDIA to have partnered with various grassroot organizations in INDIA to have set-up 14 Community Video Units.
In Video there’s a long way to go, in terms of exploring possibilities of Community Based Broadcasting through Satcom, RF transmissions and cable casting. Policy advocacy needs to be taken up strongly to pave the way for Community Video Transmissions on a larger scale.
Apart from KCP, one of the earliest community video/participatory video initiatives in India dates back to 1984 when Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) launched the Video Sewa project. Since then women members in this under-developed region of Gujarat have been producing videos that educate, inform and motivate other women into action.
In early 2000, Deccan Development Society launched a participatory video project focusing on local, traditional, sustainable farming practices with about 10 Dalit women wielding the camera. Around the same time Byrraju Foundation also launched the ‘Finding a Voice’ PV project that focussed on basic issues such as health, literacy, education, livelihoods etc in two districts of Andhra Pradesh. They tied up with the local cable so that 69 more villages could watch programmes made by members of the communities. The other notable initiative has been Video Volunteers (2009) which has rapidly grown to be a formidable community video experiment across the country. Through its projects such as India Unheard, VV seeks to train community video producers “to produce videos that effect positive change through social action”. The videos are distributed through the internet and several videos have been telecast by national and regional television channels. Digital Greens is yet another initiative that has been launched recently in many parts of the country. Focussing mainly on agriculture, Digital Greens has community producers (farmers themselves) who share their agricultural practices and experiences with other farmers in the region.Children As Media Producers (CAMP) is an initiative of the UNESCO Chair on Community Media that seeks to build capacities of children and adolescent/youth in participatory media to tell stories of the world they see from their perspective. Videoshaala by Drishti, WAVE (Women as Video bloggers for Empowerment) among others are making their presence felt through their experiments.

Identity (de)construction in Colombia Latin America is the continent where probably the most video projects have taken place (Riano 1994). Inspired by Freireian Pedagogy (Freire 1970) many grassroots media initiatives have emerged as a counterstatement to state-controlled mass media. They stand as a proof that TV screens can show other things than telenovelas4 all day long. Rodriguez (1994), to take just one of the many examples, gives an account of Colombian women producing video stories. For these women living in marginal areas of Bogota the first step was to learn that making video did not mean copying what they saw on television every day. Rodriguez (1994: 155) picks out one woman’s statement aptly describing the initial discomfort: ”But we are not pretty; how can we be television actresses?” Only after a while did the women realise that they were given the chance to present their own reality, their houses, families, friends, their own city, etc. and not someone else’s reality. The video fostered a process of finding their individual and collective identity; after having shared their views they were inspired to take collective action. Culture preservation in Brazil The Kayapo Indians of Brazil have used video to preserve their cultural traditions for succeeding generations (Ogan 1989). In the middle of the 1980s a few anthropologists stayed with the Kayapo in order to produce a ‘conventional documentation’ of Kayapo culture on video. The Kayapo, however, realised that they could use video for their own purposes, too. They borrowed video equipment from the anthropologists and started recording on their own. They found that video was a handy medium to preserve their customs and knowledge for future generations. (The elder Kayapo feared the loss of their local knowledge since the Kayapo youth were not interested in those customs at the time.) Terence Turner, an anthropologist, commented on the emerging electronic library of the Kayapo, ”Though most of the Kayapo are illiterate (…), they have developed incredible skill with the camcorder” (Ogan 1989: 3). This kind of surprise is often stated in accounts on video projects. But this case is a good example demonstrating that video is not too sophisticated a technology for marginalised rural people. The Kayapo quickly realised what the medium was good for and handled it without the ‘interference’ of a development communicator . Video letters in Nepal To improve communication between women in a remote rural village and the centrally located development and governmental organisations was the goal of a project in Nepal. The women of the village recorded questions concerning legal problems related to domestic violence or divorce on video and sent them to the Women’s Legal Service Project in the capital, Kathmandu. From Kathmandu they received videotaped solutions in return. In that way video helped women to obtain information on their legal position and mobilised them to protect their rights. In the further course of the project the women realised that they needed to fight for a place in the male-dominated community meetings, where many legal issues were dealt with. Inspired and empowered by the video experience, they managed to get a place in them (Ogan 1989). Contributing to policy development in Tanzania In Northern Tanzania, the opinion of pastoralists towards a new management plan for the Ngorongoro Conservation Area was recorded on video. Ngorongoro is a ‘multi-purpose area’. It is a haven of biodiversity, a famous safari destination, an important source of income for the government, and also home for about 40,000 Maasai pastoralists (Taylor and Johansson 1996). The new management plan included a declared commitment to participation and, on its completion in 1995, its supporters as well as a subsequent evaluation reported that all was well with the planning process. However, when members of the FTPP6 (one of them was Lars Johansson) visited Maasai residents in the area, they heard nothing but complaints about the management plan. The FTPP members recorded the complaints on video and edited the material into a tape, which was shown to the responsible planners. The video revealed that the Maasai had not at all the feeling that they had been sufficiently involved in the planning process. They criticised both the unparticipative nature of the planning process and the content of the management plan (Lane nd). The video project widened the gap between the different groups in the planning process. Some conservationists, donor representatives, scientists and local leaders claimed that the video project was biased and irresponsible. Others saw strong evidence for the Maasais’ arguments and supported a rewriting of the plan. In retrospect, the Maasai did not achieve much, but according to Johansson (pers. com.) they would have been even worse off if the video project had not taken place.

Women’s empowerment in India-The experiences of Video SEWA (Stuart 1989) are among the most often cited examples of participatory video in the literature. SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) was established in 1972 in India with the purpose of organising poor and self-employed urban women. Since its establishment it has organised women into trade unions and co-operatives, supported legal protection for women, improved women’s access to markets, etc. In 1984, Martha Stuart, a participatory video pioneer, held a video production workshop at SEWA. The women attending the workshop, many of whom could not read and write and never before had they seen a video camera, were deeply impressed by the possibilities of video. This inspired them to form a co-operative named Video SEWA. Since then video has become an integral part of SEWA’s activities. Video is used to spread information, to raise awareness about social or economic issues, to reach decision-makers and as a training tool. In one concrete example, video was used to prepare bidi workers (women who roll the indigenous cigarettes) for a court case against unfair rejection of their work and subsequent pay cuts by their contractor. A mock court with a judge, witnesses, defence lawyers and court audience was set up. The cross-examination was recorded and then watched and reviewed by the women who had to testify. A SEWA lawyer discussed the video with the women. This experience effectively helped the women to prepare and gain confidence for the court hearing (Video SEWA nd).

Community Television: The way forward
While a couple of initiatives in countries like India seem to be doing well, most others are still at the experimental stage, struggling for funding and sustaining them. Distribution of the already produced content still remains in the community-screening mode, internet or an occasional pact with a regional channel. Television in India today has terrestrial, satellite and cable, DTH as the main distribution modes, although other avenues such as VoD etc are yet to take off. Same is the case with IPTV given the low internet penetration and abysmal bandwidths even where present.
Nepal already has a vibrant community television sector. Bazlur Rahman of Bangladesh NGOs
Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) is optimistic that the policy will be in place by early 2015. Recently in the UK, OfCom has recently started issuing licenses for local community television, with about 19 across the country already in operation. India sure has lessons to learn from them.
As Dr. Ankuran Dutta (CEMCA) pointed out, CV initiatives in India may want to exploit the internet with the government expressing keen interest in providing decent bandwidth to all the village panchayats in the next couple of years. India may want to look at the following recommendations to ensure a vibrant community television in the country.
 More participatory video initiatives and experiments with technologies need to be encouraged and promoted in the country with state or funding from multi-lateral agencies.
 The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which has taken up the task of supporting the CR sector could look at community video as an emerging tool for democratization and support initiatives both for seeding and sustenance.
 Community video/ participatory video initiatives across the country need to network and form alliances to strengthen the movement, share experiences and provide their expertise to other initiatives.
 There is an immediate need for the civil society/NGO sector to partner with other movements and foreground freedom of expression to push for policy level changes.
Advocates may want to take lessons from the CR experience and push for policy changes to coincide with the announcement of a policy given the growing presence of CV/PV initiatives across the country.
 Policy level advocacy could include one or all of the following:
a) Free access for communities on state-run regional channels.
b) An amendment to the Cable TV Regulation Act including a ‘must carry’ clause for community produced videos
c) Declare CTV as a third tier and provide a channel at the regional level. Doordarshan has a narrowcasting division (NCD) that can be suitably used by local communities to produce relevant programming. Right now NCD only produces agriculture-based programmes for a limited number of hours.
d) Providing subsidized internet access to communities involved in community video initiatives.
e) Tax exemptions to communities that initiate community video practice.
f) Begin work on a draft policy drawn from experiences of neighboring countries like
Nepal where CTV has already taken root and Bangladesh where it is in the process of taking shape.