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).