Voice, empowerment and youth-produced films about ‘gangs’

Abstract

This article explores the dissonance between the expansive discourses imagined by the advocates for youth media as helping foster 'empowerment' and 'voice', versus the more circumscribed realities of participatory media production. I focus on a two-part case studyconsidering both a film-making project for 'at risk' young people in South London and the English national government funder that provided the resources for the young people to take part. This case study allows for an exploration of the political economy of youth media, and the relationship between youth media funding and how and why young people in my research often chose to make films about 'gangs', a striking topic of concern across 11 youth media case study sites. I use this empirical example as a means to analyse how 'empowerment' in youth media projects, understood as both critical media literacy and youth voice, moves from abstract discourse to on-the-ground practice.

Envisioning Democracy: Participatory Filmmaking with Homeless Youth

“…In one form or another, these discourses could all be seen as attempts at intervening in young people's ‘citizenship practice’ or ‘citizenship feeling’” (p. 91). Scholars themselves are divided on the efficacy of such methods for achieving meaningful social change ends, finding that, on the one hand, participatory filmmaking can result in “emancipatory and anti‐hegemonic visual representations and actions for social change” (Vélez‐Torres :299; see also de Lange and Mitchell ) while, on the other, “power operates through individualising and deficit discourses in participatory video work with youth, [which] reinforce[s] oppressive thinking, consequently adversely impacting those who participate” (Rogers :427; see also Blum‐Ross ; Pfeiffer ).…”

“…A parallel literature has explored the potential for arts‐informed processes, including music, drama, and videography to encourage and enable young people to more meaningfully engage in civic life (Blum‐Ross ; de Lange and Mitchell ; Vélez‐Torres ). At the same time, scholars are raising important questions about the limits to such methods, querying the nature of participation, the role of power, and the limits to social change that can be produced under the constraints of colossal and growing levels of social inequality (Blum‐Ross ; Pfeiffer ; Rogers ). This paper builds upon this literature, offering the theoretical insights of Hannah Arendt and Pierre Bourdieu as one manner in which to make sense of the dilemmas and contradictions of democracy, participatory research, and films as research products designed to create social change.…”

“La Grande Life”: Making a Mobile Method

“…Alicia Blum‐Ross (:8) writes of a “collaborative mode” — one “where the facilitator works closely as part of a team of ‘colleagues’ rather than standing outside the process,” with regard to a participatory filming project with youths in London. This form of interaction in participatory visual research no doubt leaves its imprint on the resulting visual texts.…”

“…As an example, Blum‐Ross claims that a focus on “gangs” was one of the most often selected topics in youth participatory video projects that she investigated in urban London, despite the fact that few of her young participants were involved in gang activity. This resulted, she suggests, from the persistent representation of youth and gangs in wider media: “Across my research I noted innumerable instance where the decision to focus on ‘gangs’ was reflective of (and often replicated exactly) the wider image economy of mainstream media that represented young people in specific ways” (Blum‐Ross :10) . In like fashion, the young people who participated in the workshop I organized were doubtless affected by their own past experiences with media, notably in terms of the YouTube aesthetic that many videos clearly styled themselves after.…”

“…Blum‐Ross (:10) goes on to suggest that, by and large, filmic representations coming out of the youth participatory projects she studied “resulted in films that seem to replicate rather than challenge existing forms of representation” about youths. This is relevant to the discussion of youth as a particular target population for programs like “La Grande Life” that appears toward the end of this piece.…”