Photovoice
Building on the community mapping process, Sweet Home Farm residents were invited to participate in a photovoice process. Photovoice is a process of giving cameras to research participants to document the flooding challenge through their own eyes. Each had a training day with a professional photographer beforehand and was supplied with a digital camera for image taking. A series of three overarching themes (each with two sub questions) were used to guide the photography. These were
“Before the flooding event”
what made it easier to cope with this event
what made it harder to cope with this event
“During flooding”
what made it easier to cope with this event
what made it harder to cope with this event
“After flooding”
what made it easier to cope with this event
what made it harder to cope with this event
Participants were given notebooks and were tasked with writing captions to be linked to each of their photos responding to the above questions. All the photos were then reviewed by participants and the research team who conducted their own shortlisting of up to 12 images and captions that they felt best reflected the development challenge. Finally, in a group process with all participants a floor gallery was set up where all shortlisted images were lain out in the question themes, with members of the group then requested to highlight up to 12 images and associated captions that they felt best represented their experience and perspective of localised flooding. This collective process allowed participants to review all other images from their colleagues among their own, and initial any of their choice. The images and associated captions most selected through this democratic process then formed the basis of the collective final photovoice product for each site.
