InsightShare connects communities around the world allowing them to discover commonalities, make friends, build bonds and share knowledge. Here are some examples.
A group of 11 farmers, members of the Bukonzo Joint Co-operative, came together for a participatory video project to plan and shoot a video about their local environment, before creating a screening in the community to raise debate around sustainable agricultural practice.
In this participatory video project a film is made by 11 members of the Ericaville Farming Trust. A complicated process led to the participants going out into their community to enable a group of youth, elders and women to come together to tell their stories through a participatory video process, and community screening. The video tells the story of their journey together as a community. The past displacement from the West Coast and their resettlement along the coast of the Southern Cape, South Africa, their longing to own land and to farm became a reality after a wait of 30 years.
In this participatory video project a group of people in Chanya (Malawi) explore key issues affecting them as individuals and the wider community, in relation to climate change locally and/or globally. Video was used as a tool by which the subject could be explored and perspectives shared amongst the participants themselves and with the wider community and beyond.
In this participatory video project 12 cocoa farmers made a video, which focused on the negative impacts of deforestation. They succeeded in generating a video that carries the seldom heard voices of Ivorian cocoa farmers, and clearly demonstrates the problems that they are experiencing as a result of climate change. The completed video has the potential to raise awareness of how climate change is impacting on people in this region and may serve to generate interest in supporting efforts to mitigate these problems.
In this participatory video project a team of coffee farmers identifies and documents sustainable land management practices through video, which could then be used to share knowledge locally, and potentially further afield. Participants were selected by the organisers from two neighbouring coffee co-operatives. InsightShare facilitators helped the group to identify the main threats to farmers, and look at changes in the local environment and weather. They produced a video, which was subsequently made into 3 short videos: ‘Climate Change’, ‘Land Management’ and ‘Land Subdivision’.
Climate change is seen by many as being perhaps the greatest and most urgent threat to the culture, environment, livelihoods and spirituality of indigenous communities around the world. Over the past 3 years InsightShare supported the development of an unique network of autonomous community media ‘hubs’ in eight different communities; fueled by the dedication, passion and energy of extraordinary individuals, who have organised and facilitated projects with hundreds of people within their regions and beyond. It is their words that are quoted in this article and their perspectives on climate change and related issues that are represented by the CWE project.
In March 2012 InsightShare worked together with six other partners of the BRAVE collaboration on the 'Planet Under Pressure' conference. The conference aimed to bridge the worlds of science, the arts, politics, business, faith and the global South, the BRAVE collective challenged participants within and beyond the conference to develop a shared global vision of sustainability and come up with some 'big ideas' for achieving it.
An article about the conference was published in the Summer Issue of 'Planet Earth', click below to download the article.
What is your vision of a sustainable world? This is the question that was addressed by people from India, South Africa, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia and shared with an international conference of scientists, to inspire radical thinking.
One of our current programmes aims to build capacity to two groups of young women in Uganda and Guatemala in Participatory Video for M&E. These women are learning to make films that then inform programming and promote learning as well as peer to peer exchange for community mobilisation.
As part of the 'Conversations with the Earth — Indigenous Voices on Climate Change' programme InsightShare has supported the development of an indigenous media network around the world. Since 2009 the participatory video process has helped inspire indigenous communities across five continents to work together to protect the planet for future generations. This impact report summarises their stories and the story of InsightShare's contribution to the programme.
In March 2010 we organised the first Conversations with the Earth Community Festival to celebrate biodiversity and cultural diversity around the world and in our hometown Oxford in particular. Over the course of nine days diverse activities - ranging from film screenings and lectures to discussions, practical workshops, participatory ‘ceremonies’, comedy shows and dance events - took place in the Old Book Binders in East Oxford, UK.
