LABORATORI

SARSAN VIDEO_LAB

What is PV (Participatory Video) ?

Participatory video is a form of participatory media in which a group or community creates 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. It is therefore primarily about process, though high quality and accessible films (products) can be created using these methods if that is a desired outcome. This process can be very empowering, enabling a group or community to take their own 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 mobilise marginalised people, and to help them to implement their own forms of sustainable development based on local needs.

PV?

Participatory Video (PV) 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.

http://insightshare.org

Where has it been developed and which projects?

My experience comes from the production of documentaries regarding migrant communities in Italy and from direct participation in grassroots organizations in video making and video training processes, in Italy, Ecuador and Colombia.

The Sarsan experience

http://alleporte.blogspot.it

A participatory video process regarding Roma children and youngsters.

Questions:

Who am I?

How do i see myself?

How do others see me?

How would I like to be seen by others?

Febbruary 2012 _ June 2012

First part of the Sarsan videolab was focused on building a community with the participants, girls on their teens. The group work was intended to create a sense of belonging to a larger process of self narrating and collaborative creativity. The goal was to encourage the acquisition of skills on how to use video to tell simple statements, and be familiar with this set of tools. Some of the questions asked were: who I am, where do I come from.

The challenging part was to make every girl participate in the process, since some of them have very difficult learning paths and personal situations that make it hard to come to the cultural center.

We have gone through the first steps of video making, how to use the video camera, creating coherent footage, telling a story with photography and video, making interviews and how to start editing.

We have used HD video cameras and Final Cut Pro video editing program, in order to break the walls of technology immediately and bring the participants closer to the instruments and possibilities of the media we use.

Some of the material produced was already shared during the World Urban Forum in Naples, on september 2012, and was also socialized with the families of the participants.

September 2012_December 2012

On the second part of the videolab we are beginning to explore the building of a story board for micro documentaries, based on the fantasy and willingness of the participants.

The self narration process on the other hand has gone a step forward: the girls have taken the cameras to their homes and made a photo diary describing moments of their lives in their own environment in one day: home, school, families. We will edit and print some of this photos as an exercise of post production.

The participants have also learned how to make interviews, some exercised have been made: interviews during the making of the urban communitary garden, interviews to other youngsters at the cultural center, interviews during a public event on Roma Rights. This material will be edited and included in the final documentary.

CHALLENGES

Sarsan is a project whose main challenge is to approach through creativity the difficulties related to the Roma population in Rome and Italy, and transform the image production that portrays the consequences of this difficulties on a group of children and adolescents belonging to this community.