Participatory Culture /February 27

March 17th 5-6pm - Project Group Debriefing March 5th and March 12th - Two more meetings

Ideas for our Paper:

• Participatory Media

  1. Usefulness
  2. Relevance
  3. Impact on the Community

• Idea of Archive:

  1. importance of archiving videos by these communities as something important on their own.
  2. the existence of database of videos is valueable as a radical challenging set of representations

• We are assuming that participatory media works.

  1. Theorize offline vs online
  2. Why are we priviledging the online

• enabling a community with technical skills that they didn't have.

  1. assumption: that they didn't have such skills and that they want to learn them.
  2. sustainability relative to impact: how are this projects sustainable and long lasting and do they need to be long lasting.

• Self-representation is it important?

  1. Mac Arthur grant: funding tools to learn about this.
  2. Augusto Boal and Paolo Freire.

• Palabras doesn't want to export technology.

  1. It is not about technological training but about technological communication.
  2. Globalization

• In what contexts or models will projects be able to continue and be useful

  1. Cross-cultural communication among organizations already established.
  2. Tool that is used by orgs that have a sustained existence within a given community or with other organizations.
  3. Providing permanent equipment for different groups of participants.

• It doesn't need to be sustainable in every community that we go into.

  1. Representation on its own is revolutionary.

• Rethink the facilitation process:

  1. What do we want communities to take away from the workshops.
• Should the workshops have a political objective that is more uniform, less flexible.

• Should Palabras be an organization?

  1. Have palabras be more "centralized"
  2. Have a way in which organizations can contact us to have palabras projects
  3. Offer palabras to different organizations as a tool for community building, workshop facilitation.
  4. Have palabras be associated with Global Information Internship Program UCSC as part of the Center for Global International and Regional Studies UCSC
• We do not see palabras as a digital equalizer.

• What is the rational for it being an activist tool?

  1. honestly how will it be useful to other organizations
  2. rationale for orgs to use the palabras tools.
  3. a tool for media activism.

• What is media activism

  1. Around indymedia
  2. 1st 8mm cameras to document their own social protests and action.
  3. Local media aquicition tools
  4. to disseminate their own info through networks.
• Palabras is alternative, activist, participatory media

• Voyeurism: needs to be addressed

  1. Oportunity to self represent also produces a gaze
  2. By posting them online, makes these communities the subject of the gaze

• Exposure, visibility and invisibility:

  1. Political invisibility of different groups.

• Palabras as more than an activist tool

  1. local groups
  2. you can make it all private
  3. the power of palabras is people getting together, learning how to interact, work together, and empowers them to do whatever they want.
  4. they are teaching themselves.

• Palabras Organization

  1. That proliferates different approaches to palabras.
  2. An organization can be a set of ideas, texts and goals that people can affiliate with.