Envisioning Democracy: Participatory Filmmaking with Homeless Youth

Abstract

This paper explores the democratic potential for participatory filmmaking with homeless youth, as well as the constraints and dilemmas associated with this visual method. Theorizing democracy through the work of Hannah Arendt and Pierre Bourdieu, the paper approaches democracy not as an end, but rather as a process that seeks to lessen social injustice. Bourdieu's work helps us appreciate, however, that this process is constrained by structures of inequality that shape access to the political dispositions that enable such engagement. Consistent with other research on low-income and marginalized young people, this study found that homeless youth engage with democracy through forms of community participation and mutual support, and are disinclined to orient toward liberal democratic structures such as voting and political parties, which they see as harmful or problematic. With a focus on one particular dilemma faced by the research team-namely, the question of how to make sense of and represent the issue of legalizing marijuana, which had been signaled by the youth participants as of primary political importance to them-the paper uses Arendt and Bourdieu to discuss how participatory filmmaking can help to expand the space of appearances available to homeless youth in Canadian society, and create a space at a shared table of understanding with middle class power brokers.

Environmental Futures through Children’s Eyes: Slow Observational Participatory Videomaking and Multi‐Sited Ethnography

“…What appealed to me about MacDougall’s approach was that it was deliberately “slow,” in that it required a commitment to spending extended periods of time with interlocutors. While participatory videomaking has become an established method in visual anthropology (Bessire 2017; Blum‐Ross 2013; Kennelly 2018), it often relies on the use of mobile phone cameras or simple consumer cameras that are so easy to operate that they often require little thought about how one is filming. MacDougall, by contrast, stressed the value of slow and careful observation during the filming process and of operating the camera in manual mode so as to have full control over it.…”

A critical discussion of the use of film in participatory research projects with homeless young people: an analysis based on case examples from England and Canada

“…In the Manchester project, the involvement of a member of staff – the creative director – who had worked with some of the young men for 10 years, helped to create the conditions for trust, securing some level of ongoing commitment from the young men. In the Ottawa project, the presence of the research team in the drop-in centre over a period of 8 months allowed them to develop relationships with some young people who then acted as mediators, inviting more openness from other young people (see Kennelly, 2018b). The idiosyncrasies as well as the broader effects of homelessness were voiced in these spaces.…”

“…In this paper, we engage with an emerging critical literature through which we examine the possibilities and constraints for realising such objectives (Mistry, Bignante and Berardi, 2014), particularly when working with young people already stigmatised within the public view -in the case of our projects, young people with experience of street homelessness. As Shaw (2015) has argued, film has no inherent 'magic' (p. 639) and its use does not unproblematically guarantee improved understandings, democratising processes, power-free relations between academics, youth communities and statutory bodies, or change/impact which is of obvious value to those who take part (Roy, 2012;Kennelly, 2018aKennelly, , 2018bCaretta and Riaño, 2016;Holland et al 2010;Lomax et al, 2011;Mannay, 2013;Mistry et al, 2014).…”

“…The film-maker edited the three films. It was agreed in advance that young people’s faces would not be shown, for the sake of anonymity and to minimise risk to individuals, a challenge that the film crew struggled with in producing aesthetically interesting films (see Kennelly 2018a, 2018b, for further discussion on this). Rough takes of the films were screened at the drop-in centre.…”

heART space: Curating community grief from overdose

“…In contrast, we believe that foregrounding the experiences that youth have endured as traumatic as well as their strategies to heal that trauma provides important insights into the devastating impact of the opioid crisis and the ‘complex and multi-directional relationship between trauma, substance abuse, mental illness, and homelessness’ (Hopper et al, 2010: 97). Specifically, our experience with heART space demonstrates that curation and creative expression offers youth not only powerful ways of exploring and articulating their concerns (Henderson, 2011), but can generate opportunities to learn from their insights (Kennelly, 2018) about the essential need for social and community responses to trauma which recuperate ‘overdose deaths’ as persons and validate the grief of survivors.…”