writing
Below you will find a examples of my writing over the years, including three guidebooks to various aspects of participatory media practice plus various articles on a range of issues and projects…
Combatting Corruption through Participatory Video
Published in March 2019, this guide came as a result of numerous projects with Transparency International, exploring the impacts of corruption in systems of land administration and management across Africa. It was created to encourage and support organisations and practitioners to use Participatory Video as a means for unearthing, addressing and combatting corruption around the world.
A Rights-Based Approach to Participatory Video
This toolkit was written for InsightShare in 2010 with funding from the UNDP Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP). It was created to provide Participatory Video facilitators and community media organisers with methods, ideas, tools, checklists and resources necessary to adopt a Rights-Based Approach to their diverse practices.
Community Screenings for Participatory Video
A guidebook full of ideas and inspiration for anyone organising community screenings as part of a Participatory Video process. Written for InsightShare in 2014, with funding from The Christensen Fund, the guide includes advice on planning and delivering an effective screening including practical and technical considerations, facilitator tips, checklists, and case studies from diverse projects.
Paradise Corrupted: Island Community Threatened with Eviction
Three decades of negligence and corruption, at several levels, have fuelled a bitter dispute between a wealthy family from Mombasa and the community of an impoverished island in the Indian Ocean. Written for Transparency International in 2018, this article documents the circumstances facing an impoverished island community, off the southern coast of Kenya, that faces mass eviction due to decades of corruption and malpractice by officials and a powerful local elite. Read the article here.
Participatory Video in Myanmar: Capacity-Building for Local Facilitators
In 2013, representatives from communities in the Ayeyarwady Delta region of Myanmar (Burma) were trained in Participatory Video processes. This article was published in Issue 20 of the Glocal Times – a development communications journal published by Malmö University – to share the approaches adopted and challenges experienced by the team introducing community-led video advocacy to a country dominated by one of the world’s most oppressive regimes. Read the article here.
Indigenous Voices on Climate Change
Conversations With the Earth was a multimedia initiative to amplify voices of indigenous communities around the world within the global discourse on climate change. This article describes the efforts of eight communities to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change on indigenous communities around the world. It was published in the German language Südlink magazine (#160) in 2012. Copies can be purchased from the INKOTA website or you can contact me for a copy of the article.
Murder in Metchem: Violence and Land Corruption in Sierra Leone
This article documents the role of a national bank and an influential politician in alienating a small community from their land in urban Sierra Leone and the fallout of the corruption scandal which has left five community members imprisoned for murder and scores of residents forcefully evicted. Written in collaboration with local journalists and Transparency International Sierra Leone, it was published in October 2018. Read the article here.