Video is a powerful medium. It can strongly affect viewers and producers alike. Video has the potential to deeply shape how viewers see themselves and their world. Yet is also has the power to influence, transform, and empower those who produce it. Participatory video focuses on who is communicating, on who produces the images. The reason for this is that the people who construct the images and create the messages also shape their content, presentation, and perspective.

Participatory video has been utilized by many groups and communities all over the world for various reasons and purposes. Indigenous peoples, grass roots organizations, marginalized women, youth, children have turned to participatory video to shape how they are presented to others, to preserve indigenous knowledge and culture, to raise issues, to uncover abuses, to give visibility to disenfranchised people, to present alternative perspectives about our world – in short, to empower themselves. The common thread that can be found in all participatory video experiences around the globe is that more importance is placed upon the process itself than on the product.

THE GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF PARTICIPATORY VIDEO

The historical roots of the development of participatory video can be traced to the Challenge for Change program initiated in 1967 by the National Film Board of Canada. Two people are credited for the pioneering work, namely Colin Low, who headed the Challenge for Change program, and Don Snowden, who was at that time the director of the Extension Department at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada.

Colin Low and Don Snowden began their experimental work in an island called Fogo. The island was chosen because “apart from material poverty, Fogo… suffered from what Snowden had termed the poverty of information and organization, 5000 people lived in 10 communities in relative isolation from each other, further divided by religious denomination.” The main aim of Low and Snowden was to give the people of Fogo island the opportunity to define themselves and voice out their collective social problems through film. But instead of using the inhabitants of Fogo as resources for the film, Low and Snowden utilized the camera as a tool for community participation and empowerment. And thus the Fogo Process was born.

Together Low and Snowden made more than 25 short films with the people of Fogo. A quick look at the titles will give one an idea as to the content and main message of each short film: Tom Best on co-operatives, thoughts on Fogo and Norway, the songs of Chris Cobb, some problems on Fogo, the McGraths at home and fishing, introduction to Fogo Island, fishermen’s meeting, Dan Roberts on fishing, Andrew Britt at Shoal Bay, the Mercer family, a memo from Fogo, Joe Kinsella on education, Jim Decker’s party, Jim Decker builds a longliner, founding of the Co-operatives, the Fogo Island Improvement Committee, discussion on welfare, the children of Fogo Island, Brian Earle on merchants and welfare, Billy Crane moves away, the winds of Fogo, William Wells talks about the island, when I go–that’s it!, a wedding and party, two cabinet ministers, a woman’s place, Fogo’s expatriates, citizen discussions, the story of the Up Top, and the merchant and the teacher.

Even if Colin Low was credited as director for all the films produced, the Fogo islanders themselves were involved in the different stages of the film production. They were taught how to use the camera, watched the raw footages, and gave feedbacks before the films were finalized. In short, the people of Fogo had control over the production and the final presentation of the films. The stories in the film were presented from the perspective of the islanders themselves. The positive effect of this process was that the people of Fogo were able to voice out their concerns to the decision makers in their government and eventually improved communications “both among island communities, and between the island and government”.

The innovations introduced by Don Snowden, Colin Low and the people of Fogo themselves that became the hallmark of the Fogo process are the following:

a. The process of filmmaking itself is more important than the films produced

b. Since the aims are participation and empowerment, the film should not only “be about the poor but by them as well”

c. The degree of community participation and empowerment have a direct effect on the kind and quality of films produced

d. Each context is unique and each member of the community is important

MAIN SOURCES

Stephen CROCKER, The Fogo process. Participatory communication in a globalizing world, in Shirley WHITE (Ed.), Participatory video. Images that transform and empower, London, Sage Publications, 2003.

McLaughlin Library, Audiovisual materials about Don Snowden and Fogo Island, in <<Don Snowden Program for Development Communication>> http://www2.uoguelph.ca/snowden/resources.htm.

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