Join us for a presentation on participatory video and human rights in New Orleans at the 2008 Human Rights Center Conference!

Conference, November 6, 2008, 10AM to 5PM
Alumni House, UC Berkeley

Health, Human Rights and Vulnerable Communities - 10:00 AM to 12 Noon (Toll Room)

Faculty Discussant: Cheri Pies, School of Public Health

• Caricia Catalani, School of Public Health, Berkeley, Participatory Video in New Orleans, USA

Abstract
Billions of people worldwide have gained access to the Internet, digital recording devices, and other new media tools.  More and more, these new media tools are used as innovative solutions to enduring human rights struggles, however often without critical understanding of their potential strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  To begin to understand these aspects of new media more thoroughly, this evaluation of the New Orleans Videovoice Project describes the processes and outcomes associated with a particular participatory video methodology: videovoice.

Like its predecessor photovoice, videovoice involves partnering with communities to research health and human rights situations by putting digital cameras in the hands of everyday people.  The New Orleans Videovoice Project took place in Central City, an underserved nieghborhood that was hit hard in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Those who have returned from displacement have faced a difficult recovery period involving loss of family and friends, loss of housing and possessions, closures of primary sources of health care, marginalization by government and its recovery programs, and the ongoing stress of piecing one’s life and the community back together.

The New Orleans Videovoice Project arose out of a need to organize around human rights and health concerns at this critical time.  By building a partnership of diverse community members from the Central City neighborhood, public health researchers, filmmakers, and human rights advocates, the project has produced several participatory documentary videos.  The videos describe the neighborhood’s historical and current struggle for human rights, and their own solutions for a better future.  Beyond videos, this highly participatory project has resulted in other critical outcomes, such as increased capacity to produce media, understanding of community strengths and concerns, individual empowerment, and engagement in community action.

• Krista Kshatriya, School of Law, Berkeley, World Health Organization/Southeast Asia Regional Office, India
• Miranda Ritterman, School of Public Health, Berkeley, Christian Children’s Fund, Angola
• Nobuko Mizoguchi, Demography, Berkeley, Global Health Access Project, Thai-Burma border

Lunch Break - 12 noon to 1:30 PM

World premiere screenings, followed by dinner reception and filmmaker discussion session.

• Friday, August 22, 7:pm at Ashe Cultural Center, New Orleans
• Saturday, August 23, 5:pm (previously scheduled 3:pm screening has been changed) at Zeitgeist Multimedia Arts Center, New Orleans

What would New Orleans look like if it were home to the nation’s top urban public school system?

Executive Producer Matt Wisdom and Digital Filmmaker Tim Ryan hope to help convey that vision in a new short Internet documentary about recent successes within New Orleans public charter schools. In addition to an insiders look into what makes public Charter schools successful, the short film addresses the impact current public school reform will have on the future of New Orleans.

Aug 15 Deadline: Apply for the Sundance Institute’s $1.2 million Doc Funding Initiative

The Sundance Institute announces the opening of a Request for Proposals for Stories of Change: Social Entrepreneurship in Focus Through Documentary. If you are creating a documentary film that frames, examines and amplifies social entrepreneurship as an innovative approach to the central questions of our time, read on to see how you can apply.

July 17-20: Netroots Nation Conference; Austin, TX

From electing candidates to fact-checking the traditional media, people-powered politics is become increasingly influential thanks largly to growing online communities. Find out how you can attend the Netroots Nation Conference this month to exchange ideas with like-minded individuals and learn how to become more effective in using technology to engage in the public debate.

Howard Rheingold, a brilliant lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford and author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution is a major influence in our thinking about what internet-mediated video can do for public health research and advocacy. Howard Rheingold writes, and I completely agree, about the salience of this historical moment in technological and social change.

“If print culture shaped the environment in which the Enlightenment blossomed and set the scene for the Industrial Revolution, participatory media might similarly shape the cognitive and social environments in which twenty-first-century life will take place (a shift in the way our culture operates)” (Rheingold, 2008, pp 99-100)

His talk at the TED conference — viewable here — encapsulates some of the thrilling possibilities for democracy, collaboration, and (in my mind) health promotion in our century.