Call for CELLPHILMS

We invite submission of cellphilms (videos made with a cellphone) to our International Cellphilm Festival. These cellphilms should be 60-90 seconds in length on the theme: “Exploring Consent: Bodies, Lands & Media.” Students, faculty, and community organizations are welcome to submit entries.

By November 1st, 2016, participants should:

  1. Upload your 60-90 second cellphilms onto Youtube.com
  2. Email the link to thecellphilmfestival@gmail.com with the following information:
  • submission title
  • a 100-200-word description of the cellphilm (English, French, or Spanish)
  • country of origin
  • all names of the producers of the cellphilm.

We encourage submissions that explore the festival theme broadly. For example, submissions might include cellphilms that explore topics such as: what consent means to you; ideas about how consent is negotiated; consent in relation to all kinds of media (DIY, social media, news media, etc.); consent in relation to bodies, consent in relation to the land and environment; critical interpretations of how individuals or communities negotiate consent and issues of self-determination within a wider society; or how cellphones, themselves, may or may not contribute to the way we understand consent, across local or global spaces. We hope that submissions will creatively interpret the theme in a way that is meaningful for you and can be shared with a global audience through the on-line festival format.

The International Cellphilm Festival sponsored by the Institute of Human Development and Well-being and the Participatory Cultures Lab will feature a public screening and discussion event at McGill University, Montreal Canada on World AIDS Day, December 2nd, 2016. The event will celebrate the contributions and insights of students, community activists, and research participants using this mobile medium in hopes of further developing this method and their creativity.

Our Partners:

McGill Institute of Human Development and Well Being http://www.mcgill.ca/ihdw/ and Participatory Cultures Lab McGill http://participatorycultureslab.com/

Festival Website:
https://internationalcellphilmfestivalblog.wordpress.com/

cellphilmcall

Two Perspectives on the Networks4Change Project Meeting & Symposium

July 14, 15, & 17, 2016

By: Brittany Jones and Takatso Mohlomi

A View from Canada

Aanii, my name is Brittany Jones, I am Anishnabe from Neyaashiinigmiing First Nation in Ontario and am a member of the National Indigenous Young Women’s Council (NIYWC). Along with Kari Wuttunee, I recently represented the council in the Networks for Change project meeting and at the Indigenous Pre-conference on HIV and AIDS in Durban, South Africa.

While in Durban, we had the chance to meet and interact with Young Indigenous women from across South Africa that are part of Girls Leading Change. They are a powerful, driven and beautiful group of women who are committed to making change in their communities, schools and in their country. We had a discussion around the formation of a Girls Leading Change Youth Council. Kari and I shared our experience as members of NIYWC as it is an initiative for and by Indigenous women.

metting recap1
The Girls Leading Change shared ideas on what they could be, what they can do and what their council will look like. Their ideas were great and fueled by passion. Forming a council is a huge undertaking and the work has only just begun but their hearts are with the project. We will continue to support the Girls Leading Change group while they form their council.

During the project meeting, we were able to hear about the various field sites in South Africa and Canada and the work that has begun. We as a council will have the opportunity to choose and guide 2 field sites in Canada. Listening to and learning from the group while they shared their experiences has given us many ideas coming back. NIYWC is a very diverse group and we are located across Canada so have many possibilities moving forward.

Meeting recap2While Indigenous populations in Canada and South Africa share a history of colonization, racism and struggle, more apparent on my trip to Durban was the shared history of passion for our people, resilience and strength. This trip was my introduction to South African culture, song and people and it was nothing short of life changing. The work we are doing is important and I look forward to strengthening the relationships I have made while continuing work on the project.

A View from South Africa

I am Takatso Mohlomi, a fourth year education student at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU). I am a member of the young women activists for social change and well-being who call themselves Girls Leading Change. We attended a project’s team meeting on the 14th -15th July 2016 held at the Square Boutique & spar Hotel in Mhlanga (Durban, South Africa).

It was a brief but very informative meeting and we had to squeeze in everything in two days time. The meeting was more focused on bringing together the members of the Networks for Change and Well-being project and also aimed at seeing how far we have gone in bringing about the change in our different places.

meeting recap3Our first meeting was comprised of different presentations which reflected on the work that has been done already. To name a few presentations, we had a values clarification which I found very helpful, the website launch, book reading exhibition, and both South African and Canadian presenters who are supported by the bigger project (Networks for Change).

It was suggested in December 2015 that we open a website for the Networks for Change and Well-being project. The suggestion went successfully through the collaborative work between the Canadian and South African women. An official website launch was presented by Takatso Mohlomi and Lelethu Mlobeli. All the members of the project who were available applauded the great work. The website is now available and running at www.networks4change.ca, in addition to that we are also available on Facebook as Networks for Change and Well-being and also on Twitter.

The Girls Leading Change from NMMU presented a beautiful and very touching reading of their published book titled “14 Times a Woman, Indigenous Stories from the Heart”. These young ladies work closely with Prof Naydene from NMMU. The present members of the project were touched and praised the young ladies for the strength of every young woman they portrayed in their awesome stories.

meeting recap4We then heard from the wonderful work done across the world, where we had presenters from South Africa (S A) and Canada. From S A we had Nokukhanya Ngcobo from the University of KwaZulu Natal, Naydene de Lange form Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, and Yolande Coetzer form North West University. On the Canada side we had Marnina Gonick from Mount Saint Vincent University, Sandrina de Finney from University of Victoria, Jessica Danforth & Kari-Dawn Wuttunee from Native Youth Sexual Health Network / National Indigenous Young Women’s Council and lastly we had Pamela Lamb from McGill University. All these presenters gave a very fruitful feedback of what they have covered and listed some events they were still looking forward to.

On the second day, we focused more on what can still be done and how can we still initiate events that will lead to the fair and justice social change we work for. We were separated into six working groups where we started discussions under different provided topics.

We then separated into two groups again where the young women from S A and Canada were in the same group and discussed about opening a young women’s council in S A which will be named Girls Leading Change Youth Council (GLCYC). The older people set together and discussed the communications strategy in knowledge mobilisation and amongst their discussion they emphasised the frequent use of our recently launched website.

This was indeed an eye opening and informative meeting where we set to see our hopes coming into reality. It all started as a dream but today there are so many powerful initiatives born from the Networks for Change and Well-being project.

“It always seems impossible until it is done” – Nelson Mandela

A Recap of the International Indigenous Pre-Conference on HIV & AIDS

Women and Girls: Leaders, Activists and Champions in the HIV Response

By: Kari-dawn Wuttunee

Tansi, I am thankful to have the platform to write on a part of my experience while in Durban South Africa attending the International Pre-Indigenous Conference on HIV/AIDS 2016 (IIPC2016). The IIPC 2016 is an AIDS affiliated pre-conference that creates a forum for Indigenous Peoples from all over the world to share wise and promising practices, learn from each other and build relationships across continents, cultures, traditions and languages. This year the IIPC 2016 highlighted Indigenous Peoples from Southern Africa to explore Indignity in Africa and HIV in their regions and communities. South Africa pays a important role as the host country because it has the biggest and most high profile HIV epidemic in the world, with an estimated 6.19 million people living with HIV.

This year sessions at IIPC 2016 were diverse and incredible to witness, for one of the breakout sessions the young women from the “Girls Leading Change” project from Nelson Mendela Metropolitan University presented on the topic -Women and Girls: Leaders, Activists and Champions in the HIV Response. Each of the young women from the project took the opportunity to speak about lived experience moving from rural communities to making the move to the city for school. They sat in a semi-circle with traditional regalia and proudly displaying their “Girls Leading Change” t-shirts – one by one they spoke about the challenge each one faced, each one with a story weaved with struggle and accomplishments. I felt proud to know them and being able to call them a friend and realizing they have taught me more about resiliency, culture and kindness then I have ever witnessed before. I know that going forward these young women are re-shaping the Indigenous womanhood narrative and breaking through gender norms by challenging stigmas and racism that oppress them everyday. I am grateful for their friendship and excited to be working with this amazing group of young Indigenous South African women.

Khethani

First Workshop with Young People in Khetani: Leaders for Young Women’s Success

June 29 – July 1, 2016
By: Rakiya Larkin

The Networks for Change and Well-being Research Team at UKZN held our first workshop with seven young people at the Isibani Welfare Centre in Khetani over three days from 29 June to 01 July. The programme developed for the workshop included activities like body maps, photovoice and drawing. Each visual method used had a purpose, but what the young people and the research team got even more out of the process than we expected.

We started out the first day of our workshops, on July 29th, with warm tea and muffins, as us Durban folk were not used to the frigid cold weather on that Wednesday morning in Khethani. It was a slow start but eventually all the young people arrived and were ready to get down to business. We all went around and did introductions and a check-in to see how everyone was doing that morning and what they were looking forward to about the three days we had together. It is important that we do a check-in and checkout at the beginning and end of each day to start and finish our work in a good way. It allows for the group to discuss, if they feel comfortable, anything that maybe bothering them or anything they need to get off their chest.

The team went over the consent and assent forms again just to ensure all of the young people had their consent forms signed and had signed the assent forms, as well as making sure they knew this was voluntary and that they can stop participating in the project or any of the activities at any time. Once we were all comfortable with the informed consent process, the group then established some ground rules for the day and the workshop that we all agreed upon, such as: phones off/silent until lunch time, keep an open mind on others views and or opinions as well as no judgmental comments, confidentiality (what we say in the group stays in the group) and lastly participate and have fun!

We then moved on to an ice-breaker called Agree/Disagree/Unsure. How this ice-breaker works is that the facilitator reads a series of statements to the group. They then decide whether they agree or disagree with the statement or if they are unsure about whether they agree or disagree. They then go to stand at a particular spot to indicate to the rest of the group whether they agree, disagree or are unsure. Once each participant has chosen where they stand (literally and figuratively!), the facilitator asks participants who are comfortable to do so to explain why they chose the position that they did. This allows for open, non-judgmental group dialogue and for everyone to hear other points of view on a particular issue. The purpose of the ice-breaker was also for the group to start thinking about important issues around gender, sexuality and safety, get out of their comfort zone, and observe some of the differences and similarities within the group, and to learn from each other.

After a lovely hot lunch that we ate sitting in the sunshine that had finally broken through the clouds, we worked on body maps using the prompt “What does it mean to be a girl in my community?”. We used body maps to explore with the young people how they think about their bodies and who they are in relation to their community, how they think about the importance of their safety in the community, and the importance of their thoughts and feelings in their community.

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Picture 1. Creating the outlines of our bodies for body maps

It was amazing for us, as a research team, to see how creative and powerful these young learners were, and what inspiring and important messages they have to share with the world. Their body maps were full of color, pictures, paint, writing and powerful messages of what it means for them to be a girl in their community, and within this they all found new talents within themselves. A few of our participants expressed that they didn’t know they could draw or be creative in such a way and we could see as a team how much pleasure they took in the activity.

Day two of the workshop started with a discussion of leadership. As a team, we felt that it is crucial that the young people we are working with know that there are many different types of leaders and leaderships styles and that one is not more important then the other because each style of leader has a role to play in reaching a common goal. We came up with different examples of leaders such as Nelson Mandela, who was a great leader and was at the forefront of the movement for what he believed in, but he also had leaders and supporters behind him who helped him become great. We also identified Sofi, the founder and head of Isibani, as a leader, as well as each of the young people who are all Peer Educators at their school – wanted them to know they are all leaders in their community and that one person can make a difference no matter where you come from. From the list of leaders that we came up with, we started to identify some leadership qualities/traits do these people have. From that list we asked what leadership qualities we think we have already, and which leadership qualities we don’t think we have but would like to work on. Some of the group shared the qualities that we think we already have, such as confidence, empathy, listening, understanding and passion, and those qualities that we can work on as well. This session gave us the opportunity to reflect on the fact that we can all be leaders and makers of change. We also reflected on the fact that we don’t always need money or a lot of funding to make change, sometimes we can make a meaningful difference if we have passion and dedication.

We spent the rest of the day doing photovoice which is a powerful visual method involving people taking photographs based on a prompt to identify and represent something about their lives, circumstances and/or communities. We started out with a ‘practice run’ using the prompt ‘feeling brave and strong’. Once the young people were a little more familiar with the equipment and process involved they were each asked to take two photographs; one based on the prompt “What makes you feel safe in your community?”, and the other on “What makes you feel unsafe in your community?”. Using a portable digital photograph printer called a Selphy, each person’s photographs were printed. Each young person then stuck each of their photographs onto a piece of paper and wrote the caption beneath the photographs. We then posted their powerful photos on the wall and one by one each of the learners read their descriptions on both photos of feeling unsafe and safe. Some of the themes the youth spoke about involved environmental concerns, safety for girls and young women going out at night, and concerns about alcohol and drug abuse in the community.

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Picture 2. Prompts for Photovoice
Picture3
Picture 3. Creating Captions

The young people came together again as a group after their mini exhibition to come up with a name for their group, and to develop the following curatorial statement for their work:

Changing our Communities: Making Better and Safe Places for Young Women

By Leaders for Young Women’s Success, Khethani, Winterton

This exhibition comes from a photo-voice project conducted as part of the project, Networks for change and well-being: Girl-led ‘from the ground up’ policy making to address sexual violence in Canada and South Africa. The photos for this exhibition were produced by a group of girls and a boy from a local high school in Khethani, Winterton, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa after a series of workshops on June 29 to July 1, 2016.

The prompt for the photo-voice activity was, “Take pictures of ‘feeling safe’ in my community and feeling unsafe in my community as young women”. The facilitator explained the prompt and gave examples of pictures the group members could take, including spaces, people, etc. She also talked to us about the ethics of photo-voice and of taking pictures, for example, that we may not take pictures of children or of people without their permission.

The photos in the exhibition tell a story of safe and unsafe places in our community. Our school is a safe place because there are teachers there who are like our second parents. Unsafe places, like the ‘middle of nowhere’ are not good for young women because there are criminals there who are after women and want to hurt them and overpower them.

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Picture 4. Creating a Curatorial Statement with Prof Lebo

 

The third and last day of the workshop focused on drawing. We asked the Leaders for Young Women’s Success to draw four pictures, each one answering or responding to one of the following four questions: (1) What are the challenges you face to being safe in your community, (2) What would you change about this, (3) What already exists in your community that can help with this dream of change, and lastly (4) How can we put this into action? This activity was similar to the activity that we did with participants in our community consultation workshop on 25 May.

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Picture 5. Getting creative with drawings

In their drawings the young people drew attention to similar themes to those they addressed in the photovoice activity, including environmental challenges to safety, and alcohol and drug abuse in the community. As researchers we often forget that we cannot conduct proper research on topics and issues we have no idea about, that is why Participatory visual methodologies is so important to making real change in real time. It is one thing for us to assume what these girls, learners and young women go through in their own communities, it is another to allow them to express it themselves and for them to be involved in the process of changing their surroundings and policy around girls safety.

The three-day workshop was busy, and by the end of it all of us were tired – probably the grown-ups more than the young people! We all had a wonderful time and were all sad that it was over. We are all looking forward to working together more in the future and making change!