Tag Archives: Community Film

Supporting FAO and climate change activists with Participatory Video

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We are happy to announce the release at COP27 of the first 2 videos shot and directed by young activists as the outcome of a Participatory Video project facilitated by Spectacle for FAO’s ‘Stories from local heroes fighting climate change, biodiversity, and malnutrition crises” 

Over the last 6 months Spectacle has been supporting the United Nation agency Food and Agriculture Agency – FAO with our Participatory Video expertise in order to allow young activists from all over the world to produce short videos about their everyday struggle to mitigate climate change and develop better and more sustainable food systems. The project ‘Stories from local heroes’ aims at collecting stories from people whose communities experience the immediate impacts of climate change. Spectacle has facilitated the participatory video process to let young activists produce short documentaries about their effort in fighting malnutrition and biodiversity crisis.

Over the last 6 months Spectacle has facilitated online workshops with participants from Nepal, Nigeria, Kenya, Ecuador and Venezuela,  working with them in Spanish and English and providing them with training on how to shoot good quality videos with their phone, developing their filming ideas and supporting the production of short documentaries that would illustrate stories they care about. Using our online editing experience, we engaged them in selecting and cutting the footage, directing us in the technical process of editing together the stories that  would best represent their point of view.

Stories from local heros. Climate change, biodiversity, nutrition

The first two videos were launched by FAO at the United Nation conference on Climate change COP27, shown on big screens welcoming visitors to The Food and Agriculture Pavilion in Sharm El Sheikh for the duration of the conference. The first two videos are shared worldwide and will remain available on FAO’s youtube channel, which will also host 3 other videos that will be released in the coming weeks. FAO will offer Local Hero’s participants and their stories a platform to raise awareness on the effects of climate change and, more importantly, to inspire others with local initiatives aimed at mitigating the impact of climate change,  improving biodiversity and access to sustainable food.

Spectacle has been pioneering Participatory Video practice and workshop based collaborative documentary making for over 30 years. Adapting to changes in technology, nature and duration of the collaborations, Spectacle has successfully deployed strategies to support existing local groups, social research participants, local stakeholders in making their own videos around the stories that most mattered to them. Spectacle provides technical training and workshop facilitation in order to allow people who have a story to tell to work together in order to share their messages with the rest of the world.  

Since 2020, due to COVID related restrictions to travel and in-person activities, we have been further developing our Participatory Video practice in online working environments. We have been part of research projects based in different areas of the world, providing participants with filmmaking skills  and tools to develop visual stories using the technology available to them. In tune with our long established practice, we have facilitated video making processes aiming at giving editorial power to participants. For this reason we have developed strategies not only to allow participants to record videos with their phones, but also to engage them with video editing and storytelling.

We welcome any opportunity to explore collaborations with research groups, NGOs and local communities to facilitate Participatory Video projects and develop participant-led video production.

Read more about our participatory model and past projects.

Contact Us

If you want to be trained in Participatory Video you can attend one of our Participatory Video Workshops or organise a bespoke programme for you and your organisation.

For more information or to chat about your project and ideas email us at training@spectacle.co.uk 

Sign up to our Newsletter for more information about our ongoing projects.

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SVG says Thank You Lottery!

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We are delighted to announce that Spectacle CIC has received funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to restart the Silwood Video Group with an archive-based film project. 

Map of the Silwood Estate, from the archive

Since 2001 Spectacle has worked with the Silwood Community in Lewisham and Southwark setting up the Silwood Video Group. Spectacle has run over the years hundreds of video workshops documenting daily life and changes created by regeneration. The collaboration has resulted in many short films published in DVDs, added to a few web episodes in the Channel 4 series Unteachables, an ICA exhibition, as well as further exhibitions at the Musee du Beaux Arts in Brussels.

The National Lottery grant allows members of the Silwood community to gather together around the video documentation that has been produced during the regeneration of the estate, aiming to revitalize the Silwood Video Group and equip the community to make use of video archive and video tools to reflect on their own history and future. Spectacle is running a series of online workshops, watching back and commenting together on what were the issues documented by the Silwood Video Group in the early 2000s. The project culminates in a workshop on the Silwood estate to collect oral histories and reflect on how to use the video archive to support the local community. 

Community Video Work shop from the archive

The Project

The Lottery funding has allowed us to re-start the Silwood Video Group, initially in an online setting through an archive-based film project.

Workshops for SVG begin online

Putting the Silwood Archive online has been an aim for many years. Spectacle has been uploading archive selections for the community to watch and discuss online. If you want to watch the available archive, sign up HERE. 

Meeting every Thursday at 7, the SVG group watches selections from the archive and discusses the material, drawing out themes and topics of interest. If you would like to join this meeting, please sign up and we will send you the Zoom link. This is leading up to meeting in person with up to 12 participants to record oral histories in the community and add new perspectives on the archive. 

Our Archive-based video project aims to bring together a variety of different groups and generations of the Silwood Community to review and add new oral histories to the Silwood Video Archive. We hope participants will build community bridges, connect to the past, engage in creative practice, and learn filmmaking skills. 

From the Silwood Archive

We are very excited to be providing a space where isolated members of the Silwood Community can come together in a fun and educational environment to talk about history and film. 

Archive-based Participatory Film Projects 

Spectacle CIC is very excited about the tool of archive-based film projects. We see that they have the power to reduce loneliness by bringing people together, creating connection through shared creativity and learning, and anchoring residents within their own history. 


Silwood Community video workshops, from the archive

These workshops foreground the wisdom of an older generation that is too often sidelined and isolated, while also sparking the joy in technology of younger generations. They offer an outlet for art and creativity in connection with others, as well as skills for future employment.  It enable older community members to pass on knowledge to younger members or newcomers, and offer practical tech literacy and filming skills to participants. 

Silwood Video Group and the Future 

For 20 years, the Silwood Video group has built relationships across generations, ethnicities, and cultures through filmmaking. This extraordinary and unique group has been open to anyone in the community and in that time has benefitted approximately 200 people aged 6-70 constituting an unusually diverse range of people in terms of race and religious background. 

Silwood Community planning meeting, from the archive

Spectacle’s relationship with the Silwood community stretches back 20 years. Spectacle created the Silwood Video Group because the community wanted to have a voice in the proposed regeneration plans for their community. Placing the tools of filmmaking in the hands of the community empowered people to actively shape the future of their community through media activism.  

The idea for this archive project is based on the community’s desire to reconnect with the places that existed before the regeneration. Many are getting older, and they want to share their stories with their grandchildren. They also see it as a good opportunity to build connections with newcomers to the community who don’t know about it’s history. 

Walk through of Silwood construction site during regeneration process, from the archive

The Silwood Archive project is supported by The Audience Agency’s Digitally Democratising Archives project thanks to funding from DCMS and the National Lottery, as part of The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s, Digital Skills for Heritage initiative.

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Collaborate on a Participatory Project

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Participatory Training & Production Hybrid 

Are you an NGO or Community Centre or organisation looking to include your participants in the making of compelling videos addressing their interests and concerns? Why not engage them in a participatory video project? Spectacle has successfully adopted collaborative documentary making models for over 40 years, including award-winning participatory documentaries that have been broadcast on national and international television. We can design hybrid training-production programmes which will give you the best aspects of a collaboratively-directed film combined with professional quality production. 

We offer:

1) Training in shooting and editing film for you and/or your participants

2) Our professional shooting and editing services 

3) A final short film and a fast turn around participatory project 

Why Participatory? 

Because every community is different, there is no single participatory process model. The goal is to create a space which is open to equal participation, sharing, and creating for a community. By giving artistic and editorial control to non-professionals, the final results are vibrant and multifaceted. The participatory video process centres the lived experiences of many people. 

The benefits this can offer from a research standpoint are obvious. Whether you want to understand people’s experiences or just build community, a participatory project can be a joyful experience of co-creation and co-authorship of knowledge and art.

Spectacle has a long history of participatory work. From Germany to Colombia and across the UK we have led, co-led, and facilitated participatory film groups and workshops both in person and online for groups of all shapes and sizes. 

Why Spectacle?  

For over 40 years Spectacle has worked with groups that want to begin participatory projects. From setting up community video groups to facilitating ESRC funded participatory research projects. Further we’ve run workshops for people around the world online and in person and trained hundreds of people in our methods. 

Spectacle is an award winning independent television production company specialising in documentary, community-led, investigative journalism and participatory media. Spectacle’s documentary work has been broadcast and exhibited internationally. We have produced work on commission for clients including Amnesty International, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Howard League for Penal Reform, Council of Europe, Groundwork, the London Health Commission, the NHS, Big Local and the Wellcome Trust.

As well as undertaking productions, Spectacle runs short, sharp, affordable training courses and community based media workshops. We believe our courses are the best around, largely based on the exceptional feedback we have received from the hundreds of people we have trained over the years.

We are a small, socially-minded company, our training and commissioned work income supports our unfunded community based work. 

How do I begin a participatory video project?

We are offering a bundle of services that will guide your staff through a specifically designed programme of training and production based on your video project. There are many options for how we could design your programme together. We can accommodate any time zone where your participants might be located. 

We can offer practical workshops on video making. These bespoke training workshops can be tailored to the needs of the client including: a variety of cameras including smartphones, DSLRs, camcorders, etc; visual storytelling including storyboarding or idea generation; filming techniques guaranteed to generate quality footage.

We can teach you how to teach your participants to film, and how to run your own participatory project. 

Travel permitting, Spectacle can assist you in your real shoot. You will have complementary equipment (second camera, audio recording, lights) and extra crew if needed. 

We can train you on how to effectively use video editing software, sitting together in front of your project to get the editing process started. 

If you want professional editing, we can finalise your video with the possibile option of drop-in editing sessions.

Finally, we can guide you through uploading and promoting it on your social networks and media platforms.

We can facilitate this entire process from beginning to end, give you the skills to run it yourself, or any hybrid in between. 

Read more about our participatory model and past projects.

Contact Us

For more information or to chat about your project and ideas email us at training@spectacle.co.uk 

Sign up to our Newsletter for more information about our ongoing projects.

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Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, Youtube and Linkedin