Hello All,

My name is Michele Burton-Oatis. I am a participant in the Video Voice Collective in New Orleans. The reason I’m sending you all this e-mail, is to address my concerns about the editing process of the documentary. It is my understanding, that the editing will primarily take place outside of New Orleans. And that we the participants are to identify parts of the films that we have shot and state what we would like to see. At that point, Anthony will then take our selections, edit them together and then submit the film’s rough edit for our approval. If my assessment of the editing component of the project is correct, I must express my concerns. The best way for me to do this is to use what I have read from your web site.

“Train them to produce their own media around health and resilience issues that are important to them and their neighborhoods in which they live.”

If this quote is true, then editing is a major component in the process. Each participant has taken the time to go out into the community and shoot things that were important and sometimes very dear to them. This gives you the VIDEO. The editing is how we will express our VOICES. By not fully investing the time to teach us the techniques as stated in your proposal and allowing this film to truly reflect what we have learned would be an insult to our commitment.

“Forming a partnership among these disparate groups is a community-building process that results in collective envisioning, filming, editing, and dissemination of films.”

If this is no longer a goal in this project, are we not just test subjects. If that is the case, than I see little that makes this project and the film any different than the others of New Orleans.

“Freire argued that every individual, no matter how “ignorant” or consumed in the “culture of silence”, is capable of looking critically at the world through collective dialogue with others.”

This statement is very powerful. I truly thank all of you for this project. Because of my involvement, I view the rebirth of my city very differently. I am invested in this project and my community. That is why I along with any other participant who desires, deserves to have every opportunity to gain the knowledge and hands on experience to complete what we have set out to accomplish.

I ask you to consider the most important part of this project if you all are truly interested in hearing our voices.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Michele J. Burton-Oatis

Map of Central City, New Orleans

Tons of community-based participatory research (CBPR) authors and practitioners raise the issue of defining community in CBPR. Several authors in Minkler’s edited book Community-Based Participatory Research for Health speak to the centrality of recognizing and defining community (2003). In Lawrence Green and colleagues’ “Guidelines for Participatory Research in Health Promotion”, they argue that the first question that must be asked of CBPR practitioners is: “Is the community of interest clearly described or defined?” Israel and colleagues write that the first key principle of CBPR is “CBPR recognizes community as a unit of identity”. So, what is community in the New Orleans VideoVoice project? Sometimes I know and sometimes I don’t.

As we walk through the process of recruitment for our project, I realize just how complex the idea of community really is. For example, when we began, it seemed as if this was a pretty cut and dry case of neighborhood = community. In fact, one of the rare pleasures of doing CBPR work in New Orleans, as far as I’ve experienced it, is that many people really do identify strongly with the neighborhoods where they live. Many have lived in the same home, some for several generations. People seem to know the people who live around them, to go to church with them, to have attended high school with them, and many even attend regular neighborhood committee meetings. Well, that was, until Katrina. So, it’s complicated.

When we began recruitment, we decided that “community” meant people who live and work in Central City. We have a map of the general boundaries, so we were looking for folks inside of these boundaries. As we made contact with more and more people, we began to realize that there are many people who have significant relationships with the Central City community but do not actually live or work there right now. Here are several examples of how the definition of community is simple on paper, but challenging in action.

After the city was evacuated and after enormous stretches of housing, particularly low-income housing, were destroyed, many of the neighborhood’s residents were forced to scatter across the Gulf States and even across the United States. Trusted institutions, community centers, and places of communion like parks and streets have been ruined and abandoned. So, our definition is time sensitive because so many were forced to leave and are still unable to come back. Do we include people who were a part of the neighborhood before? If so, how do we find these folks?

At Larry’s Church, Israelite Baptist Church, there are a lot of people in the congregation that have been long-time members of the community, but neither live nor work here. Some have ancient connections to the neighborhood. This is where they’ve been going to church since they were kids. This is where many generations of their family grew up, but they do not actually live or work in the neighborhood now and have not for a while. So, what do you do?

There is a high school just beyond the border of Central City. A small group, including a teacher and a few students that are 18 years plus, would like to join our effort. Seems to make sense, but it is outside the boarders and high schools tend to be discrete communities. But, so far, it has been hard for us to recruit young people, given our age requirements, and introducing this diversity to our group could be a significant addition. Maybe this is an opportunity to link these high school students to the community and although they may or may not have a significant relationship with Central City now, they probably will by the end of the project.

To Larry, the answer seemed obvious: he just knows. He has a sense for identifying people with a significant relationship to the neighborhood. It reminds me of the concept Malcolm Gladwell brings up in Blink. Sometimes our instincts are made up of an infinitely complex set of knowledge, much of it unconscious, which tells us in an instant what we are dealing with. This sense is so refined that we don’t even need to consciously or verbally delibaerate about it, we just know. Larry just knows because he has spent most of his life working and residing and organizing in the neighborhood. He knows nearly automatically, what it looks and seems and sounds like when someone has a significant relationship with the community. But, for me, an outside researcher, I can’t tell where this new boundary lies. Does it include the high school students or not? Does it include the guy that cooks at a bordering restaurant that seemed really interested in participating? It would be hard for me to explain this recruitment choice to academic colleagues, particularly when so much of this decision is based on the judgment of people who just know.

So, what does the literature tell us that might be helpful? Isreal and colleagues write that “Community is characterized by a sense of identification and emotional connection to other members, common symbol systems, shared values and norms, mutual (although not necessarily equal) influence, common interests, and commitment to meeting shared needs” (Isreal et al, In: Minkler Ed, 2003, pp 55). To me, a key aspect of this very very inclusive definition of community is the term “emotional connection”. I agree. But, how do we determine if this emotional connection exists? Is the Larry Campbell test ok? Or, is there some way that a person with less intimate understanding of the community can also make this determination? My gut tells me that there isn’t. That as I work and live and play more in Central City, maybe I too can develop a little bit of Larry-sense. Until then, I will have to rely on our community partners to know.

Upcoming opportunities and deadlines:

* February 12 – Nominations Due for CCPH Annual Award. The award recognizes exemplary partnerships between communities and higher educational institutions that improve higher education, civic engagement, and the overall health of communities. The complete “Call for Nominations” is available at http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/awards.html.

* March 17 – Applications Due for Community-Engaged Scholarship Faculty Development Charrette, May 28-30 in Chapel Hill, NC. We are seeking teams from 20 diverse colleges and universities across the U.S. to participate in a charrette to facilitate development of innovative campus-wide mechanisms for preparing and supporting community-engaged faculty. The complete “Call for Applications” is available at http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/faculty-engaged.html.

* April 4 – Early Bird Deadline for CUexpo Conference, May 4-7 in Victoria, BC, Canada. In lieu of our own major conference this year, CCPH is delighted to be a core sponsor of the third Community-University Exposition, “Community-University Research Partnerships: Connecting for Change.” We encourage CCPH members to adopt the CUexpo conference “as their own” and fully participate in it. The CCPH annual award will be presented at the conference and a CCPH member meeting is scheduled for Monday May 5th. For more information, visit http://www.cuexpo08.ca/index.html.

* April 10 – Applications Due for 11th Summer Service-Learning Institute, July 25-28 in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Gain the knowledge, skills and strategies to incorporate service-learning into the health professions curriculum! We encourage early applications as past years’ institutes have had wait lists. See details at http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/servicelearning.html.

The Review Methods That I Used

The review began with a broad search for peer-reviewed and public health oriented literature that discusses participatory production of photography or video as an approach to community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects. I used the following keywords and phrases in my search: participatory video, participatory film, photovoice, photo novella, participatory research AND photography OR photo, and participatory research AND video OR film. My initial search included the following databases: Proquest, PubMed/Medline, ISI Web of Science, and CSA Illumina’s PsycINFO. All searches were limited to English-language literature that was published before January 2008. This preliminary search resulted in 135 individual publications appearing in 86 journals, newspapers, magazines, and books.
Limiting the results to peer-reviewed journals eliminated 52 publications, approximately half of which (24) were masters’ theses or doctoral dissertations. Upon further inspection of these articles, I found that the preponderance of this work was relevant to my topic of research. However, given my choice to include only peer-reviewed articles, it was necessary to exclude them from this review. The elimination of so many articles is perhaps a hint, also confirmed by Google searches, that these practices are more common than the peer-reviewed literature portends.

Next, I limited my results to only articles that dealt with participatory production of photographs and video. This eliminated 24 articles, all of which dealt with the consumption, but not production, of video or photo in participatory research efforts. Finally, because of my focus on public health literature, I eliminated any article that was not either published within a journal or article that included health as a key issue or word. This final refinement resulted in the exclusion of 7 articles. There are a total of 51 articles that qualified to be included in my literature review, 3 of which dealt with participatory video and 48 of which dealt with participatory photography.

What I found out

The three peer-reviewed articles identified through my search use participatory production of video in a very different manner. The first article by Chavez et al is based on a specific participatory video methodology, however the following articles by Freudenthal et al and Chandra and Batada do not allude to a specific video methodology or practice. They simply incorporate the tool as they saw fit.

In “A Bridge Between Communities: Video-Making Using Principles of Community-Based Participatory Research”, authors Chavez, Israel, and colleagues from the University of Michigan, and the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center partnered in the production of a participatory video (Chavez et al., 2004). As Chavez et al describe it, “The video examines the complexity of the concept of community, reviews the principles of CBPR, and documents the emergence of a partnership whose members work together to solve problems and develop solutions to health issues in their communities.” In this way, the video is a meta product: a participatory video about participatory research. The authors used the principles of CBPR in the video production process, following these six steps:

1. Engage the stakeholders
2. Solicit funding and informed consent
3. Create shared ownership
4. Build cross-cultural collaborations
5. Write the script together
6. Pull it all together – identify key themes, edit, and select music, quote, and still photographs.

Chavez et al found that the fusion of CBPR with video technology was an asset for inquiry as well as an exciting tool for publishing and disseminating findings.
Although this article is based on a single case study, and additional case studies could add validity to their how-to recommendations, it is the first to present a sophisticated exploration of the intersections in the practices of CBPR and participatory video production. In it, they present some of the opportunities and limitations in the use of video within CBPR projects. The authors propose that participatory video is a creative asset for inquiry in research and evaluation, a tool to publish results and disseminate findings to audiences not consistently acknowledged by research publications and/or the mass media. Chavez et al also warn that there are serious limitations, which also deserve further exploration, including: the invasion of participant privacy, the challenge of building participant trust and comfort with the video camera, the intensive time and cost requirements of video projects, confronting the ethics of omission and submission in the editing process, and overcoming the effects of the existing digital divide.

In their study of an effective school-based schistosomiasis prevention program in Tanzania, Freudenthal et al used an action research approach (2000). Through collaboration with educators, parents, and community members, the team created a set of educational interventions to reduce the transmission of schistosomiasis. One of the educational tools was video-recorded dramas, performed by 6th and 7th graders, and played for other community teens throughout the intervention. Freudenthal et al explain:

“Drama techniques, including role-plays, storytelling, dance, poetry and song are part of a performance tradition that has existed in African for a long time… Video-recording the dramas added another dimension as it provided an opportunity to the actors to see themselves perform and, equally important, it gave the actors and other audiences an opportunity to reflect and discuss issues related to schistosomiasis.” (pp 82).

In conclusion, the research team found that the educational attributes of the video contributed to an overall reduction in schistosomiasis rates. The authors argue that the participatory production of the film was a key factor in this impact, stating “To see members of ones own community addressing the problem of schistosomiasis has most likely a larger impact than to see complete strangers from another part of the world performing on video (Freudenthal, 2000).”

Chandra and Batada’s article explores stress and coping among 26 African American adolescents in Baltimore (2006). The group used a youth-driven and mixed-method approach to research and engaged in research translation and action through the youth-led production of a video for health promotion among teens. They explain, “The youth created the entire video—from script writing to film editing—and led discussions with groups of local community members, parents, and health advocates.” (pp 8). The article does not evaluate the video production process or impacts, but includes a web resource for researchers interested in engaging youth in participatory approaches to translation of their study findings.

The mission of this unique network is to encourage involvement in community, promote participatory social action research, and endorse community leadership that is mindful of cultural diversity and welcomes the opportunity that this diversity brings.

The University-Community Partnership for Social Action Research Network is planning on advancing multimedia efforts by partnering with organizations like ours that are dedicated to building video and photo partnerships.

Two of my favorite things about this network is that it is multinational and multilingual, building a bridge between communities and scholars throughout the globe.

We are looking forward to attending the launching event in March and more!

Although we just turned in our protocol in yesterday, and we are still waiting to hear what the committee says, here are some tips that I have learned so far:

1. The community videographers that we work with can be considered “staff” and therefore the protection of these subjects is not under the authority of the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. Of course, it is still REALLY important to ensure informed consent and the protection of rights, as an ethical imperative, but the IRB application is much simplified by this distinction.
2. At Berkeley, at least, only University staff/students need to undergo a human subjects training. This means that, unless your grant requires it (NIH for example), you don’t have to make every single community participant go through the tedious process of understanding federal regulation on the protection of research subjects. Again, an ethics and safety training is essential to the VideoVoice process, as far as we see it, but this is different from a regulated training on HIPAA and other institutional concerns.

So… now we just need to cross our fingers.

If this subject is of interest to you, look for updates on the main website where we will be posting our consent forms as samples.

Here is an excerpt by Lisa Pickoff-White from our Participatory Media Guidebook, which I describe in the last blog, explaining what bookmarking is and how to use it to make your life easier.

Definition
Bookmarking is a system where people work together to bring together articles and works throughout the Internet by tagging them. For example, people can vote on something if it is informative as a suggestion for others to read it, or add it to a list of articles on the same topic.

My Favorite Examples
Del.icio.us, Digg

Why use it?
Sites such as Digg receive about 20 million hits a month. People who find something via social bookmarking are also more likely to trust the source, because it has been pre-approved by a human, instead of a list generated by a search engine. It’s also any easy way for people to check out what their friends are reading, and stumble across your site that way.

Sites such as Del.icio.us can be really helpful in saving, organizing, managing, and categorizing all of the websites that you want to remember. It’s easy to share tags through digg and find key websites by looking at others’ use of the same tag. Del.icio.us also allows you to see all of your bookmarks online, so you can access them and add to them from any computer.

Use Cases: Videovoice Example
Check out Caricia’s del.icio.us tag on all of the websites on “videovoice” that she has come across during the last 5 months. Here is a tag cloud of all her tags, including videovoice and dozens more, that she has used.

How to use
Sign up of an account at one of the social bookmarking sites above. Most of them will insert a toolbar, so whenever you see something relevant to your organization, tag-it!

Helpful/Interesting Links

• A general review of Social Bookmarking Tools (from D-Lib Magazine)
• Digg’s failing democracy (from the Download Squad)

For an introduction to the toolkit and its components, please click here. An introductory webconference on the toolkit was held on October 13, 2005. To access, the powerpoint slides and audiorecording from the event, click here.

The navigation bar at the top of this page will take you directly to the different sections of the toolkit. PDF documents are available for the entire toolkit and each unit. Access these documents in the Toolkit Site Index.