We Made a Film: Participatory Video
Christoph Warrack FRSA
CEO Open Cinema
#videoforgood
@weareopencinema

Participatory Video Session
• 0 – 10mins: Welcome and Introduction to PV
• 10 – 15mins: Q&A and intro to small groups
• 15 – 35mins: Small Groups: Develop and Pitch
• Most Significant Change: Strategic, Beneficiaries or Both
• Participants: Staff, Beneficiaries or Both
• Audiences: Staff, Beneficiaries, Peers, Public, Policy Makers, Supporters
• 35 – 40mins: Small Groups feed back
• 40 – 45mins: Closing Remarks and Next Steps

The Open Cinema Mission:
To enable any individual or
community to move from
exclusion to participation

Filmmakers

Organisations

9
Commissions

What is participatory video in a
nutshell?
• Participants (of any category) rapidly learn to use video
equipment through creative workshops
• Supervisors help groups identify important issues in their
community
• Short films are produced by the participants
• Resulting films are presented to the wider community at
interactive events
• A dynamic process of community-led learning is set in
motion.

Me / We

What can we do with it?
• Life Skills: Improved confidence, wellbeing,
teamwork, and goal-focus
• Media Skills: media approaches integrated
• Media Assets and Capabilities: infrastructure
and equipment enhanced
• Advocacy: Awareness raising and campaigns,
knowledge and innovation sharing

What can PV offer?
• PV:
– engages
– empowers
– clarifies
– amplifies
– catalyses
– is inclusive and flexible
– is accessible
– equips people with skills and positive attitudes
– disseminates good practice.

Open Cinema’s PV
Programmes
– Creative Film Programme
– Advocacy Film
– Impact Film Series
– Enterprise Film Programme
– Apprenticeship Film Programme
– Industry Film Programme
– Event Film
– Peer Mentoring Film Programme

PV Films
• ”Windows” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q03x2tw_IJY
• “Passmores House”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=31&v=c3Gtcj5ux7I
• “Macmillan Good Together” (Premiering 25 September, BFI Southbank)

Charity
Educators Employers
Other Community Activities Relationships / Housing
Cluster
Builder

Your Film
21

Develop and Pitch
• Get into two groups of six.
• In each group, choose two people to be
commissioners and four people to be staff members.
• The commissioners leave the room.
• The staff members decide what kind of issues the
charity faces and what kind of role they would the film
to play in addressing them.
• The commissioners return and decide which issue
they’d like to address and who is going to do what.
• Commissioners work with participants and:
– Agree on the issue; agree the creative approach (genre)
– draw a storyboard.
• Participants pitch the resulting project to
commissioners

Thank you for being here.
info@opencinema.org
opencinema.org
#videoforgood
@weareopencinema