Photovoice is an action research method that integrates community-based photography into social change efforts. Project organizers hand cameras over to marginalized people so that they can self-represent their vision of the present and future. Community photographers critically analyze their images, deeply explore their priorities, and communicate their visions of the future to outside audiences. Photovoice is an evocative tool for exploring paths of social change and for advancing advocacy efforts.
Explore how a photovoice project would enhance their organization or community’s efforts to realize sustainable and broad-based social change. The first session serves as an introduction to the method and issues inherent to this participatory approach. During the second session participants will use their own photographs, relating to a social issue, to apply the approach in a mock-photovoice experience. Minimal photography experience and any digital camera helpful, but not required.
Who Should Attend?
- Individuals and organizations including: nonprofits, community and youth groups, and civil society and advocacy organizations seeking to enhance their public engagement effectiveness
- Teachers seeking classroom tools to build social awareness
- Students interested in alternative qualitative research methodologies
- Photographers
Topics:
- Basics of the photovoice method
- Uses of photovoice in your organization or community
- Ethical concerns of participatory photography (privacy, ownership and power)
- Using participant-generated photographs to devise change-oriented action plans
- Reaching policy makers and change agents with your photovoice project
- Advocacy uses of photovoice results
Learning Outcomes:
- Plan, organize, and execute a photovoice project for their community or organization
- Evaluate the opportunities offered by this method, including its usefulness at engaging diverse participants in a collaborative process to advocate for and self-realize social change
- Learn the ethical and legal responsibilities that must be respected in such projects
- Learn how to balance the need for structure with the need to provide project participants with the flexibility to explore their world creatively
- Learn group facilitation techniques that will assist in using photographs to initiate critical assessments of social issues
Facilitator: Gregory Spira holds a Masters in Professional Communication from Royal Roads University. Principal and Communication Consultant at Co-Imagen Consulting, he specializes in the use of communication methods to increase public engagement and realize social change. In 2007 he ventured off to the highlands of Bolivia where he designed and facilitated a CIDA funded Photovoice project that involved all members of a politically marginalized community in using photography to create a visual blueprint for community development. He is also a professional photographer and the published author of several articles in newspapers, magazines, and academic journals dealing with international development-related issues.