How it went;
- Team building exercise: concentration with photos
- Larger group discussion led by Rodrigo
Reflections;
- Large group discussion
: It was led by Rodrigo, and very helpful in that it helped participants to get more ideas about what makes good photography explaining, for example, why background is important, how we can make images more powerful using literal signs in them, etc. It was also good that Rodrigo showed some photos from participants as samples and encouraged people.
Also, we brainstormed any words or statements from themes of racism & poverty on the chalkboard. Participants started speaking out lots of words related to those issues, so it was very helpful for them to have clearer ideas about our project and what to take.
We also talked about how we could visualize those brainstormed words & themes using photography, and Rodrigo talked about statement photography which he gave participants as homework for next week.
In general, this session was great and actually it should've been earlier in this project.... because we think some participants still don't have clear ideas about what to take with their cameras. Anyway, Better late than Never.
One more thing is... we think it would've been better to have some creative & fun activities according to the theme of Rodrigo's lecture. It's always important to let people experience and exercise themselves what they hear in class. We know it's not easy to find good exercises, but it would be good to find some OR invent some. :)
Because it took more time than we expected, we couldn't do the small group discussion this time.
- Late comers!
: It's hard to get the session started on time because of some late comers. We set the ground rules from the beginning, so we think we need to remind them our rules which is essential for running the sessions....!
- No camera
: Today, five persons didn't bring their cameras... which means there were no photos from them.. which also means it's no good for the project. We really should encourage participants to take more photos, but HOW? It's different from what we experienced in Kenya in this issue because kids in Kenya always wanted to take more & more photos. We know the two projects are totally different in many ways, but we still feel bad about people's less enthusiasm about their own photographs.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
3rd Session on Apr 9
How it went;
# Ice-breaker: Mohamed led an exercise called 'coin introduction' which was quite interesting. Everyone picks a coin from a bag, and talks about any significant event which happend in the year of her/his coin. The event can be personal or historical. However, it took quite a lot of time because we had 15 persons and a woman actually talked like a 5 mins. We should've allotted fixed time to each person. Anyway, it was a good exercise to know someone further.
# Photovoice presentation by Sarah Flickers: Sarah finally showed up for this session, and gave a good presentation on photovoice and using photography for research. We think it helped people to get some general ideas on why they are photographing their community and what they should have in their mind while photographing. Sarah showed some powerful and also controversial photo examples from her previous projects.
# Small group discussion: We made four small groups by four persons + one facilitator. Each facilitator showed two photos from the last week, and talked about them using SHOWeD questions altogether. Facilitators wrote notes and answers from what group members said. We also gave titles to photos.
# Intro to photography by Rodrigo: It was about general explanation about taking photos. Because of time contraints, Rodrigo couldn't give all the technical instructions, so he told people to always carry small manuals with them when they take photos. He also talked about framing photos a little bit.
# Giving homework: Ruth printed out a paper which includes the research question, and she asked people to think about the questions and how they would be able to visualize the questions for the next photo-shooting.
Reflections;
# Showing changes: One of good things about Sarah's presentation was that it showed people some changes photovoice projects made. (i.e. lighting issues, building toilets in South Africa) In this way, people can get ideas of how photovoice can actually make a social change. Our experience in Kenya doesn't really show that visibla & tangible change because it was not aimed at that way (it's more of empowerment), but we thought it would be good to introduce other examples with visible outcome at the end in order to show how photovoice can be powerful tool for community development and social change.
# Small group discussion: Jiha led one group. She showed two photos both of which were not from any members of the group, so it was not easy for people to talk about the photos which are not theirs. We had this photo which shows garbage, and it was kind of common photo that almost everybody took. However, the other photo was showing a big tree and a parking lot which people couldn't really understand the intention of the photo. So they were guessing. To talk about others' photos is good, but we think it would be better for people to talk about their own photos with their own intentions and stories.
Also, we thought that it would be good if people can lead a discussion one by one because we found that people had quite good stories to tell. Besides, to lead with SHOWeD questions would be helpful for people to have more critical perspectives when they see the photos and take photographs.
In Jiha's group, there was a Karen man who didn't really talk much during discussion because of language problem. Ruth told that there would be a translator for Karen refugees next time.
# Still Few photos: Jiha asked people how many photos they took, and most of them told that they took less than 10 photos which is still not many. Some even said that they were afraid to take photos because of consent forms. Maybe some of them are still not familiar with their cameras. Moses didn't know how to take photos with digital cameras so she took photos with video mode. Particularly for older people, it would be critical to give them enough instruction on using camera.
# Giving homework: We couldn't have much time to talk about homework for next week. It was about visualizing the research question, but it might not be easy to some people to understand the question and how to take photos according to the question. We do need more time to talk about homework to help people better understand what they should take. Or we might need to have a big group discussion to debrief what the small discussions got.
# Other exercise: Sarah suggested an exercise with photos. We also have some exercises that we talked about earlier with Rabea, such as community mapping, generating themes using stickys.
# Ice-breaker: Mohamed led an exercise called 'coin introduction' which was quite interesting. Everyone picks a coin from a bag, and talks about any significant event which happend in the year of her/his coin. The event can be personal or historical. However, it took quite a lot of time because we had 15 persons and a woman actually talked like a 5 mins. We should've allotted fixed time to each person. Anyway, it was a good exercise to know someone further.
# Photovoice presentation by Sarah Flickers: Sarah finally showed up for this session, and gave a good presentation on photovoice and using photography for research. We think it helped people to get some general ideas on why they are photographing their community and what they should have in their mind while photographing. Sarah showed some powerful and also controversial photo examples from her previous projects.
# Small group discussion: We made four small groups by four persons + one facilitator. Each facilitator showed two photos from the last week, and talked about them using SHOWeD questions altogether. Facilitators wrote notes and answers from what group members said. We also gave titles to photos.
# Intro to photography by Rodrigo: It was about general explanation about taking photos. Because of time contraints, Rodrigo couldn't give all the technical instructions, so he told people to always carry small manuals with them when they take photos. He also talked about framing photos a little bit.
# Giving homework: Ruth printed out a paper which includes the research question, and she asked people to think about the questions and how they would be able to visualize the questions for the next photo-shooting.
Reflections;
# Showing changes: One of good things about Sarah's presentation was that it showed people some changes photovoice projects made. (i.e. lighting issues, building toilets in South Africa) In this way, people can get ideas of how photovoice can actually make a social change. Our experience in Kenya doesn't really show that visibla & tangible change because it was not aimed at that way (it's more of empowerment), but we thought it would be good to introduce other examples with visible outcome at the end in order to show how photovoice can be powerful tool for community development and social change.
# Some points: Sarah also gave some good points in using photovoice. 1) We should be ethical, thoughtful, and careful when we take photographs. 2) Photography as a research method has the process of listening - dialogue - action. So we have lots of dialogue before we take any action. 3) Photovoice provides power to shape how others think about certain issues.
# Staged photo: Sarah showed a photo which was staged to show violence. A boy was holding a gun (which was said to be fony, but it looked like a real one!) and aiming at audience. We could recognize the boy's face, which can be very controversial and it actually was. This staged photo could give quite an impact, but there is an issue about anonymity. It gave us some room to think about how we could use staged photos in the project, esp research project.
# Small group discussion: Jiha led one group. She showed two photos both of which were not from any members of the group, so it was not easy for people to talk about the photos which are not theirs. We had this photo which shows garbage, and it was kind of common photo that almost everybody took. However, the other photo was showing a big tree and a parking lot which people couldn't really understand the intention of the photo. So they were guessing. To talk about others' photos is good, but we think it would be better for people to talk about their own photos with their own intentions and stories.
Also, we thought that it would be good if people can lead a discussion one by one because we found that people had quite good stories to tell. Besides, to lead with SHOWeD questions would be helpful for people to have more critical perspectives when they see the photos and take photographs.
In Jiha's group, there was a Karen man who didn't really talk much during discussion because of language problem. Ruth told that there would be a translator for Karen refugees next time.
# Still Few photos: Jiha asked people how many photos they took, and most of them told that they took less than 10 photos which is still not many. Some even said that they were afraid to take photos because of consent forms. Maybe some of them are still not familiar with their cameras. Moses didn't know how to take photos with digital cameras so she took photos with video mode. Particularly for older people, it would be critical to give them enough instruction on using camera.
# Giving homework: We couldn't have much time to talk about homework for next week. It was about visualizing the research question, but it might not be easy to some people to understand the question and how to take photos according to the question. We do need more time to talk about homework to help people better understand what they should take. Or we might need to have a big group discussion to debrief what the small discussions got.
# Other exercise: Sarah suggested an exercise with photos. We also have some exercises that we talked about earlier with Rabea, such as community mapping, generating themes using stickys.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
2nd Session on Apr 2
How the session went;
- photo prining: we got only three persons' photos before the session started, drop-in hours did't seem to work well.
- so as Yogendra gave brief introduction on the project and information, Mohamed printed the photos for the rest of the participants.
- reviewing the guidelines: we wished to have a small booklet with the guidelines, but next time for sure.
- check-in: we asked participants how the photo shooting went.
- reflections on photos: Ruth explained SHOWeD questions and showed some photos from Kenya to give some ideas about writing anwsers for SHOWeD questions.
- 10 mins for individual reflections based on the questions
- we had to skip the small group discussion because of time constraints
- we did a go-around in a large group
- what next?: Rodrigo gave homework for the next week. Topics are their community.
Reflections
* Teambuilding
- People are still not very close to each other. It's too soon because we had just two sessions, and we didn't do the small discussions yet, but we do need to design and insert some teambuilding exercises for participants to better understand each other and feel close to each other. Particularly about cultural difference.... today there nearly was a small conflict between Safi and the loud woman (forgot her name) regarding religious matter. There should be respect for each other's culture and religion. How can people be more careful about this matter?...
* Facilitators' encouragement
- While participants were explaning about their favorite photos, Ruth tried to encourage them as she giving lots of encouraging comments such as "your photos look great", which impressed us a lot. It's one of the most important role of facilitators in this workshop, I think. To encourage people. To motivate people. As most of the participants might not be familiar with taking photos with their own cameras and also giving presentations in front of people, it would be important to encourage them with compliments so that they could be proud of what they took and take more various photos for the rest of the sessions.
- Actually, it was surprising to see people didn't take many photos even though they are using digital cameras. Some took only 4 photos, while others took 40 photos. To tell them (or make them) to take at least 40 photos would be necessary.
* Language
- During the individual reflection, Karen refugees worried about their limited ability of writing in English, so we told them to write in their own language and try to talk about it in English when they are presenting their photos. we did have that kind of issue in Kenya because there were younger kids whose English is not that good as other older ones.
* Small group discussion
- It would be good to have facilitators also prepare their own photos for the small group discussion for the next session. In doing so, facilitators can show the examples of how we can express thru our photos and also can share our lives in our different communities. Just leading the discussion as throwing questions might end up with one-way communication in the end.
* Reflections from participants
- We would love to hear participants' reflections on each session because we think they might have different opinions and perspectives from ours about the sessions. It would be helpful to re-designing coming sessions if we could have their reflections. But, how can we get them? Using questions? This reminds me of the questions that I had to answer at every end of the Pop-Ed class last term. It was called 'structured criticism', maybe we could revise them to use in this session.
- Structured Criticism
1) What did you connect with
2) What did you learn about the way you learn?
3) What would you like to change
* Extra activity
- Besides session in class, it would be nice to have some extra activity, esp outdoors such as photo shooting trip as Rodrigo and Ruth suggested. And visiting any photo exhibition altogether at some point would be good as well. In Kenya, we luckily had this kind of chance to go to an exhibition and also had a photographer with us. In that way, people can have a chance to appreciate others' work and get inspired.
* SHOWeD came out too early?
- Maybe SHOWeD question sets were introduced early for the 2nd session. Some people seemed to be stuck with 'what can we do about it?' question with their very casual photos like family photos. It's good to show them and give them an idea what SHOWeD is and how to use it, but it would be better to ask them more casual questions (asking feelings, concerns, etc) at the beginning sessions.
- Topics can be also changed from casual ones to more serious ones. As we gave them broad range of topics last week, we had some very casual photos and some very critical ones. We can start with things like your favorite people, funny moments, and could go into things you want to change, the place you don't want to go, etc. In this way, people can get a sense how they can express and identigy issues from different topics as they go into different levels.
- Topics can start from 'knowing who I am' to 'knowing my community'. Without knowing ourselves, how can we go further to know other issues related to ourselves? Faceless portrait was a good exercise to think about oneself in Kenya....
* Where is positive & happy thing?
- Giving background informations about Black Creek and the project is very important esp when this project is research project, but giving them some overwhelming datas and negative stats might make people feel gloomy and bad about themselves and their own community. They should know the reality around them, but it's also important to show them positive side and possible outcome of the project. Feeling proud and sense of belonging would be essential to be an active community member who can make a change.
- In this sense, topics can include positive ones so that participants can think about the strength of themselves and their community.
- Also, we thought we should think about designing the session of 'introduction of certain issues' in different ways, more positive ways, more participatory ways so that people could feel that it's their issues they have to identify and find a solution.
- Choosing words would be careful too. As we heard the introduction, we think we heard the words like 'people of color' so many times. Overusing might bother people, affect people's feelings especially when the presenter is outsider. It's true that we are people of color, but why labelling so much?????
- It reminded us of what we did in Kenya; we gave them this evaluation sheet including the questions of 'I'm happy because.......'. We could see lots of positive answers that we couldn't imagine.
* Success Stories
- After Community Art Symposium, we felt lots of things. Esp, hearing Lily Yeh's story was very touching. We still vividly remember that she showed 'before & after' photos of the previously abandoned place which was changed into beautiful park with wonderful artwork from community members. Why was it so powerful? It was because people could see the change happened at the end through all the effort. Thus, showing some success and touching stories to participants would be a good way to inspire them and encourage them to make their own change for their community. Story of Julius Mwelu (the founder of Mwelu Foundation that we worked with in Kenya) would be one example to show people how one small thing changed one person's life totally different way. These things can show people what they do is not something useless or something for others, but it's for themselves and their lives. We thought we needed to have some success and happy stories to introduce to people according to different objectives of projects.
* Digital or Film?
- We used disposable cameras in Kenya, and this is the first time to use digital cameras. Both have good and bad. Using films was good in the way that participants could have all the prints with them and see what came out good and what came out bad. It's like a small collection so that they can check them out carefully and see the difference and challenges to take photos as they want. Using digital camearas is very convenient, but people might not be able to see the whole collections more carefully in the process because most of them cannot download the photos in their own devices. (Of course, we will make them CDs with all the photos they took at the end of the project).
- photo prining: we got only three persons' photos before the session started, drop-in hours did't seem to work well.
- so as Yogendra gave brief introduction on the project and information, Mohamed printed the photos for the rest of the participants.
- reviewing the guidelines: we wished to have a small booklet with the guidelines, but next time for sure.
- check-in: we asked participants how the photo shooting went.
- reflections on photos: Ruth explained SHOWeD questions and showed some photos from Kenya to give some ideas about writing anwsers for SHOWeD questions.
- 10 mins for individual reflections based on the questions
- we had to skip the small group discussion because of time constraints
- we did a go-around in a large group
- what next?: Rodrigo gave homework for the next week. Topics are their community.
Reflections
* Teambuilding
- People are still not very close to each other. It's too soon because we had just two sessions, and we didn't do the small discussions yet, but we do need to design and insert some teambuilding exercises for participants to better understand each other and feel close to each other. Particularly about cultural difference.... today there nearly was a small conflict between Safi and the loud woman (forgot her name) regarding religious matter. There should be respect for each other's culture and religion. How can people be more careful about this matter?...
* Facilitators' encouragement
- While participants were explaning about their favorite photos, Ruth tried to encourage them as she giving lots of encouraging comments such as "your photos look great", which impressed us a lot. It's one of the most important role of facilitators in this workshop, I think. To encourage people. To motivate people. As most of the participants might not be familiar with taking photos with their own cameras and also giving presentations in front of people, it would be important to encourage them with compliments so that they could be proud of what they took and take more various photos for the rest of the sessions.
- Actually, it was surprising to see people didn't take many photos even though they are using digital cameras. Some took only 4 photos, while others took 40 photos. To tell them (or make them) to take at least 40 photos would be necessary.
* Language
- During the individual reflection, Karen refugees worried about their limited ability of writing in English, so we told them to write in their own language and try to talk about it in English when they are presenting their photos. we did have that kind of issue in Kenya because there were younger kids whose English is not that good as other older ones.
* Small group discussion
- It would be good to have facilitators also prepare their own photos for the small group discussion for the next session. In doing so, facilitators can show the examples of how we can express thru our photos and also can share our lives in our different communities. Just leading the discussion as throwing questions might end up with one-way communication in the end.
* Reflections from participants
- We would love to hear participants' reflections on each session because we think they might have different opinions and perspectives from ours about the sessions. It would be helpful to re-designing coming sessions if we could have their reflections. But, how can we get them? Using questions? This reminds me of the questions that I had to answer at every end of the Pop-Ed class last term. It was called 'structured criticism', maybe we could revise them to use in this session.
- Structured Criticism
1) What did you connect with
2) What did you learn about the way you learn?
3) What would you like to change
* Extra activity
- Besides session in class, it would be nice to have some extra activity, esp outdoors such as photo shooting trip as Rodrigo and Ruth suggested. And visiting any photo exhibition altogether at some point would be good as well. In Kenya, we luckily had this kind of chance to go to an exhibition and also had a photographer with us. In that way, people can have a chance to appreciate others' work and get inspired.
* SHOWeD came out too early?
- Maybe SHOWeD question sets were introduced early for the 2nd session. Some people seemed to be stuck with 'what can we do about it?' question with their very casual photos like family photos. It's good to show them and give them an idea what SHOWeD is and how to use it, but it would be better to ask them more casual questions (asking feelings, concerns, etc) at the beginning sessions.
- Topics can be also changed from casual ones to more serious ones. As we gave them broad range of topics last week, we had some very casual photos and some very critical ones. We can start with things like your favorite people, funny moments, and could go into things you want to change, the place you don't want to go, etc. In this way, people can get a sense how they can express and identigy issues from different topics as they go into different levels.
- Topics can start from 'knowing who I am' to 'knowing my community'. Without knowing ourselves, how can we go further to know other issues related to ourselves? Faceless portrait was a good exercise to think about oneself in Kenya....
* Where is positive & happy thing?
- Giving background informations about Black Creek and the project is very important esp when this project is research project, but giving them some overwhelming datas and negative stats might make people feel gloomy and bad about themselves and their own community. They should know the reality around them, but it's also important to show them positive side and possible outcome of the project. Feeling proud and sense of belonging would be essential to be an active community member who can make a change.
- In this sense, topics can include positive ones so that participants can think about the strength of themselves and their community.
- Also, we thought we should think about designing the session of 'introduction of certain issues' in different ways, more positive ways, more participatory ways so that people could feel that it's their issues they have to identify and find a solution.
- Choosing words would be careful too. As we heard the introduction, we think we heard the words like 'people of color' so many times. Overusing might bother people, affect people's feelings especially when the presenter is outsider. It's true that we are people of color, but why labelling so much?????
- It reminded us of what we did in Kenya; we gave them this evaluation sheet including the questions of 'I'm happy because.......'. We could see lots of positive answers that we couldn't imagine.
* Success Stories
- After Community Art Symposium, we felt lots of things. Esp, hearing Lily Yeh's story was very touching. We still vividly remember that she showed 'before & after' photos of the previously abandoned place which was changed into beautiful park with wonderful artwork from community members. Why was it so powerful? It was because people could see the change happened at the end through all the effort. Thus, showing some success and touching stories to participants would be a good way to inspire them and encourage them to make their own change for their community. Story of Julius Mwelu (the founder of Mwelu Foundation that we worked with in Kenya) would be one example to show people how one small thing changed one person's life totally different way. These things can show people what they do is not something useless or something for others, but it's for themselves and their lives. We thought we needed to have some success and happy stories to introduce to people according to different objectives of projects.
* Digital or Film?
- We used disposable cameras in Kenya, and this is the first time to use digital cameras. Both have good and bad. Using films was good in the way that participants could have all the prints with them and see what came out good and what came out bad. It's like a small collection so that they can check them out carefully and see the difference and challenges to take photos as they want. Using digital camearas is very convenient, but people might not be able to see the whole collections more carefully in the process because most of them cannot download the photos in their own devices. (Of course, we will make them CDs with all the photos they took at the end of the project).
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