The politics of performance: methodological challenges of researching children’s experiences of childhood through the lens of participatory video

Abstract

Participatory methods are often premised on ameliorating the gap between the concepts and models of researchers and those of individuals and communities. However, within PV there has been much less focus on the process of participation and its implications for research outcomes. This paper addresses this gap in order to explore how the children, researchers and residents co-produced a visual narrative about life in the neighbourhood and in particular, how a methodological focus on PV as process makes visible its potential to offer valuable insights not only into children's social connectivities, relationships and friendships but also to the theorising of children's identities and childhoods.

Contested voices? Methodological tensions in creative visual research with children

“…For reasons of space this paper will not cover the important ethical issues which our visual work generated. For analysis of some of these, including the ways in which children's own moral agency and representational practises shaped the process and outcome of the research see Lomax et al (2011) as well as useful analysis by Holland et al (2010).…”

“…The research started with the premise that children should be able to opt in (and out) of the research freely and should define the research questions and methods that they wanted to work with. This approach generated a series of interconnected research projects in which children drew on a range of creative visual methods, including participatory video (Kindon, 2003;Lomax et. al., 2011;Shaw, 2007) ; video and photography 'walk-alongs' (Trell and Van Hoven, 2010);…”

Youth-Led Participatory Video as a Strategy to Enhance Inuit Youth Adaptive Capacities for Dealing with Climate Change

“…While the participants were the directors of the process, the amount of flexibility versus direction was constantly shifting. Working with flexibility led to another challenging aspect-one which has been discussed by other researchers using participant-led methods-which was the struggle to maintain research interests while using a method controlled by participants (Evans et al, 2009;Lomax et al, 2011;Mistry and Berardi, 2012). An intentional project goal, and the substance of PV, was to emphasize participant control; however, this emphasis can lead to a substantial shift away from the original research topic.…”

Advancing towards inclusive social research: visual methods as opportunities for people with severe mental illness to participate in research

“…The issue of power relations between researcher and participants is also related to ethical aspects of anonymity, confidentiality and image control. These are aspects that affect the behavior of not only the researchers but also the participants (Lomax, et al, 2011) 3. Photo and graphic elicitation to improve participation of people with SMI in research.…”

“…Other elements of these methods that mean the interviewees do not hold all the power are related to the ethical aspects of anonymity, confidentiality and image control (Lomax, et al 2011). For example, we asked them not to take pictures of people who could be identified.…”