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).
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
First Session on Mar 26
First of all, we could witness the diversity of participants in every respect (age, origin, etc). We thought 15 participants wouldn't be a lot, but as we went through we found it hard to manage 15 participants esp when they range from 15 to 65! with totally different background.
Every workshop or meeting has someone who always wants to lead the discussion and to be centre of the workshop, and someone who doesn't really talk a lot. This workshop also seems to have the former, this loud and talkative woman seems like a community leader of Black Creek area who has lots of things to say. Because of her strong personality, some participants couldn't have a chance to talk. but we'll see how people are going to respond to this situation and also how facilitators can manage with it. For this, there should be some talks about it among facilitators as time goes. Actually, a woman from the community health centre who was also in the first session said that we should not try to control her in every way because it is who/what she is. Rather, it would be better to manage in the way of not making her feel offensive.
Because of time constraints, we could not do all the things as we planned. There were lots of questions and concerns about ethics and consent forms when taking photographs. There were also lots of paper works for that!! We were kind of worried that all these ethical stuff might prevent people from being more creative in their taking photographs and expressing their thoughts thru photographs. But at the same time, photo ethics is very important esp when we do this kind of project. (which we didn't really give much thought when we did a photogrpahy workshop in Kenya) In this sense, it was meaningful to hear all those questions and worries about ethics from the participants because we thought we needed to prepare this aspect more in the future project. Anyway, with all these difficult questions Ruth managed to lead the session very well. She seemed to prepare quite a lot about ethics and all that as she read lots of references on photovoice.
One interesting thing was that some people were really worried about being photographed and esp. having their photographs digitally manipulated and put on some websites without knowing. One Egyptian woman with veil raised this issue, and many people had the same concern. Without her, facilitator might have not talked about this, which means facilitators should have that in mind before actually starting any photo workshop (esp. when the workshop is conducted with digital cameras). Consequently, every ethical issues from different angles (i.e. between objects and photographers, among participants, etc) should be dealt with in the first session.
Regarding guidelines, we tried to brainstorm what we want to set as guidelines for this workshop and there were so many answers from participants. However, there were too many things so it seemed like they were just empty words which people don't really care or remember in the end.
That's why we recommended that there should be a small booklet which contains unbreakable concise guidelines with some other information such as what photovoice method is, project overview, and a list of participants and facilitators.
Every workshop or meeting has someone who always wants to lead the discussion and to be centre of the workshop, and someone who doesn't really talk a lot. This workshop also seems to have the former, this loud and talkative woman seems like a community leader of Black Creek area who has lots of things to say. Because of her strong personality, some participants couldn't have a chance to talk. but we'll see how people are going to respond to this situation and also how facilitators can manage with it. For this, there should be some talks about it among facilitators as time goes. Actually, a woman from the community health centre who was also in the first session said that we should not try to control her in every way because it is who/what she is. Rather, it would be better to manage in the way of not making her feel offensive.
Because of time constraints, we could not do all the things as we planned. There were lots of questions and concerns about ethics and consent forms when taking photographs. There were also lots of paper works for that!! We were kind of worried that all these ethical stuff might prevent people from being more creative in their taking photographs and expressing their thoughts thru photographs. But at the same time, photo ethics is very important esp when we do this kind of project. (which we didn't really give much thought when we did a photogrpahy workshop in Kenya) In this sense, it was meaningful to hear all those questions and worries about ethics from the participants because we thought we needed to prepare this aspect more in the future project. Anyway, with all these difficult questions Ruth managed to lead the session very well. She seemed to prepare quite a lot about ethics and all that as she read lots of references on photovoice.
One interesting thing was that some people were really worried about being photographed and esp. having their photographs digitally manipulated and put on some websites without knowing. One Egyptian woman with veil raised this issue, and many people had the same concern. Without her, facilitator might have not talked about this, which means facilitators should have that in mind before actually starting any photo workshop (esp. when the workshop is conducted with digital cameras). Consequently, every ethical issues from different angles (i.e. between objects and photographers, among participants, etc) should be dealt with in the first session.
Regarding guidelines, we tried to brainstorm what we want to set as guidelines for this workshop and there were so many answers from participants. However, there were too many things so it seemed like they were just empty words which people don't really care or remember in the end.
That's why we recommended that there should be a small booklet which contains unbreakable concise guidelines with some other information such as what photovoice method is, project overview, and a list of participants and facilitators.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Facilitation Workshop (Mar 19)
We joined in the facilitation workshop facilitated by Rabea from Access Alliance.
There were us, Ruth, Mohamed, and a woman from Access Alliance.
Rabea had a lot of experience in facilitation, and she brought many reference books on facilitation and popular education which was interesting because I took this pop-ed class last term. Actually, most of what she gave us as documents was what I read or heard in that class. Anyway, it was good to see them again.
After ice-breaking exercise called 'Bus Exercise', Rabea set some agendas for this workshop, and started with setting charters for the workshop. I had some experience with it because some of classes that I took always started with this exercise which I found really useful. Rabea also encouraged us to talk about our expectation on this workshop, such as what we want to learn from it. There were various kinds of needs according to each person's experience.
Eventually, all the expectations could not be fulfilled for many reasons including time-constraints. (Rabea said that this workshop originally runs for two days, but we got only 2 1/2 hours this time!) So, the workshop was mainly about general issues like the role of facilitaors, different kinds of leadership, designing, etc. Lastly, Rabea handed out some copies from ref books she got from Catalyst Centre (where Chris Cavanagh works!). At this time, SK was not there because he had an evening class. Anyway, we wrapped up the workshop with lots of questions and assignments which we ourselves should think about.
Our reflections....
Rabea said that we as facilitator should know how to enjoy silence among participants. That was interesting to know because we were usually worried about silence from participants when we had our photo workshop in Kenya.
While we were doing "Best & Worst Facilitator" exercise, it was great to share those stories with others, and especially looking back on our experiences as facilitators in Kenya was meaningful because we could see ourselves as facilitators and hear others' reflection on our experiences.
There were us, Ruth, Mohamed, and a woman from Access Alliance.
Rabea had a lot of experience in facilitation, and she brought many reference books on facilitation and popular education which was interesting because I took this pop-ed class last term. Actually, most of what she gave us as documents was what I read or heard in that class. Anyway, it was good to see them again.
After ice-breaking exercise called 'Bus Exercise', Rabea set some agendas for this workshop, and started with setting charters for the workshop. I had some experience with it because some of classes that I took always started with this exercise which I found really useful. Rabea also encouraged us to talk about our expectation on this workshop, such as what we want to learn from it. There were various kinds of needs according to each person's experience.
Eventually, all the expectations could not be fulfilled for many reasons including time-constraints. (Rabea said that this workshop originally runs for two days, but we got only 2 1/2 hours this time!) So, the workshop was mainly about general issues like the role of facilitaors, different kinds of leadership, designing, etc. Lastly, Rabea handed out some copies from ref books she got from Catalyst Centre (where Chris Cavanagh works!). At this time, SK was not there because he had an evening class. Anyway, we wrapped up the workshop with lots of questions and assignments which we ourselves should think about.
Our reflections....
Rabea said that we as facilitator should know how to enjoy silence among participants. That was interesting to know because we were usually worried about silence from participants when we had our photo workshop in Kenya.
While we were doing "Best & Worst Facilitator" exercise, it was great to share those stories with others, and especially looking back on our experiences as facilitators in Kenya was meaningful because we could see ourselves as facilitators and hear others' reflection on our experiences.
after meeting for the 1st session (Mar 19)
Planning meeting for 1st session
Finally, we've got a list of applicants for the project.
They're all 15 persons from various backgrounds in terms of origin, language, and age.
There is only one Asian men (Chinese) in the group, and he's said to be the only Asian applicant for the project, so he couldn't be missed out!
We've decided on the first session to be mainly about these three themes; 1) general intro of the project (consent forms, safety tips, charters) w/ ice-breaking exercise 2) intro of photography in terms of technique 3) power of photography.
First, we wanted to do some exercise about anti-oppression (suggested by Rabea), but we should've given it up because of time constraints. Also, some people were worried about people being shamed by talking about their social locations publically, esp for the first session, and we all agreed. This is the first session, and we don't want to make people feel overwhelmed...
We also decided to include 'self-portrait' exercise to each session first because we wanted to identify photos with photographers' portraits, and secondly we wanted to give people casual themes.
The first homework for the 2nd session would be: 1) People you know 2) Places in Black Creek that you like 3) A day in a life of.
Our reflections......
It was good to have Mohamed in our project because he's one of community members in Black Creek so he knows almost every participant in some ways. So he knew what people might want and get from this project, and he gave very useful and practical advices based on that, which could save lots of time to organize the session. For example, he suggested that we should change the term of 'guidelines' to 'charters' which is more softened. Without Mohamed, we couldn't have considered these critical things.
About anti-oppression exercise, we are still not sure about doing that in our future sessions. Even if we could, who's going to lead the exercise? If we let one of the community members lead the exercise, will there be lively discussion without feeling ashamed??
As this project is a part of a big research project of the region, outcomes (such as research questions and discussions, photographs) would matter a lot at the end. So we thought that the role of facilitator in this project is more important than any other, in that sense, we as outsiders might have some barriers in doing the job. The only 'insider' among the facilitators is Mohamed and it would've been better to have more 'insiders' as facilitators to do the work more efficiently.
As for the applicants... with so broad ranges in age(15-65 yrs), origin... we wonder what kind of outcome would be produced during the project. Even when we did our project in Kenya with kids from 6-14yrs, there existed some differences and barriers among their work. So, we imagine this would be somewhat challenging for us, but worth to giving it a try.
In general, the meeting for the 1st session was a kind of time-consuming because we all didn't have a clear concept of what the 1st session is to be. So many of us were not sure about which exercise to be out or not, which took lots of time to decide.
Finally, we've got a list of applicants for the project.
They're all 15 persons from various backgrounds in terms of origin, language, and age.
There is only one Asian men (Chinese) in the group, and he's said to be the only Asian applicant for the project, so he couldn't be missed out!
We've decided on the first session to be mainly about these three themes; 1) general intro of the project (consent forms, safety tips, charters) w/ ice-breaking exercise 2) intro of photography in terms of technique 3) power of photography.
First, we wanted to do some exercise about anti-oppression (suggested by Rabea), but we should've given it up because of time constraints. Also, some people were worried about people being shamed by talking about their social locations publically, esp for the first session, and we all agreed. This is the first session, and we don't want to make people feel overwhelmed...
We also decided to include 'self-portrait' exercise to each session first because we wanted to identify photos with photographers' portraits, and secondly we wanted to give people casual themes.
The first homework for the 2nd session would be: 1) People you know 2) Places in Black Creek that you like 3) A day in a life of.
Our reflections......
It was good to have Mohamed in our project because he's one of community members in Black Creek so he knows almost every participant in some ways. So he knew what people might want and get from this project, and he gave very useful and practical advices based on that, which could save lots of time to organize the session. For example, he suggested that we should change the term of 'guidelines' to 'charters' which is more softened. Without Mohamed, we couldn't have considered these critical things.
About anti-oppression exercise, we are still not sure about doing that in our future sessions. Even if we could, who's going to lead the exercise? If we let one of the community members lead the exercise, will there be lively discussion without feeling ashamed??
As this project is a part of a big research project of the region, outcomes (such as research questions and discussions, photographs) would matter a lot at the end. So we thought that the role of facilitator in this project is more important than any other, in that sense, we as outsiders might have some barriers in doing the job. The only 'insider' among the facilitators is Mohamed and it would've been better to have more 'insiders' as facilitators to do the work more efficiently.
As for the applicants... with so broad ranges in age(15-65 yrs), origin... we wonder what kind of outcome would be produced during the project. Even when we did our project in Kenya with kids from 6-14yrs, there existed some differences and barriers among their work. So, we imagine this would be somewhat challenging for us, but worth to giving it a try.
In general, the meeting for the 1st session was a kind of time-consuming because we all didn't have a clear concept of what the 1st session is to be. So many of us were not sure about which exercise to be out or not, which took lots of time to decide.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
after two info sessions
questions that i should ask:
1. who owns the images?
2. what are they photographing for?
3. what do we want to tell?
1. who owns the images?
2. what are they photographing for?
3. what do we want to tell?
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