1. Beth Cullen Participatory Video for communicating local knowledge kmc4CRPs Workshop ILRI campus, Addis Ababa 19th October 2012

2. What is Participatory Video (PV)? Communication tool regardless of formal literacy levels- enables communities to take control! Process : empower communities and act as a catalyst for action & change. Product: c ommunity driven film that conveys issues, knowledge & perspectives

3. Collaborative rather than extractive Addresses research fatigue Influence decision makers Community analysis Represents Indigenous Knowledge Skills development and empowerment Peer-to-peer knowledge sharing Catalyst for action & change

4. PV for research ► PV can be used to involve community members in research processes, community participation helps to ensure relevance & legitimacy of research ► Makes different types of knowledge accessible to different audiences- starting point for dialogue and knowledge sharing and developing a common understanding ► Breaks down ‘knowledge hierarchies’ where only scientific knowledge is valorized Collaborative versus Top-down Excludes views of those being researched/‘developed’ Communicates grassroots perspectives & knowledge

5. Examples ► InsightShare- Identifying research requirements for sustainable integrated mountain development, Himalayas (www.insightshare.org)www.insightshare.org ► NBDC- Increasing community representation in local Innovation Platforms, Ethiopia (www.nilebdc.org)www.nilebdc.org ► Digital Green- Knowledge dissemination and training, global application (www.digitalgreen.org)www.digitalgreen.org

6. Challenges No method is a ‘magic bullet’. Must acknowledge and critically analyze strengths and weaknesses: ► Danger of raising expectations: consider long term sustainability ► Takes time: rushing can result in token efforts at ‘community participation’ which repeat or reaffirm existing paradigms ► Incentives: facilitators should ensure participants get something from the process ► Can be hijacked by more powerful actors whilst appearing to represent grassroots reality: requires awareness of local power dynamics ► People may not want to represent their knowledge/reality/point of view to others, for good reasons! ► In certain contexts (i.e. politically restrictive environments) it may do more harm than good. Source: InsightShare, 2006

7. ► Community identification of key issues, challenges and solutions- e.g. at the start of a project so objectives are driven by local agendas ► Communicate community perspectives to higher level stakeholders and researchers- for example in Innovation Platform processes ► Encourage local innovation and take research into implementation- can act as a catalyst for action research and collective action ► Monitoring and evaluation- can be used throughout the project life cycle for participatory M&E ► Encourage farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing- dissemination of ideas and ‘best practice’, link to scaling up processes Potential uses

8. 10 How could PV could be utilized in the CRPs? What are the potential challenges involved in using PV? What support is needed to utilize PV as a tool for research?