When Life Gives you Lemons

As some of you already know, the Creative Video Retreat (mine and Kailyn’s Participatory Video project) did not go as planned. In fact, it went as little to plan as something can possibly go while still being vaguely associated with the original plan. If my university education is to be believed, perhaps I can best illustrate this point by making use of comparison and contrast.

INTENT

Bring together a diverse group of students to work on the Creative Video project, in an attempt to get the participants to expand their social circles.

REALITY

The students that attended the retreat were all friends and knew each other very well, making out “icebreaker” and team building activities awkward and forced. (The only reason that we went ahead as planned was because as facilitators we felt that there was still value in us getting to know them and vice versa).

INTENT

Complete a video to at least the beginning stages of editing within three days, with a group consisting of 8-10 high school participants.

REALITY

Due to challenges recruiting students during the summer, we agreed to do the project if we could get a minimum of 4 participants. While 5 were registered, one cancelled roughly an hour before the first session. With only 4 recruits everything that we had planned took about half as much time; we ended up only having activities for 1.5 days.

INTENT

Teach basic video skills to a group of students with varying skill levels thereby increasing their confidence in this creative process.

REALITY

The students that we worked with were Video Junkies, this is their hobby and passion. At age 15, they have invested over $1200 into equipment and software. There was very little (if anything) that I could teach them technically.

INTENT

Encourage participants to use video as a medium to tell a meaningful story. The process is ideally meant to be empowering for everyone involved.

REALITY

Given that the participants regularly make videos together they were quite set in their ways in terms of process and video content. While they briefly considered making a “serious” movie (due to our prompting), they ultimately decided to do what they always did and made a comedy/action film.

As you can see, basically all of our expectations with this project were crushed by the circumstances that we found ourselves in. Frustratingly, aside from starting recruitment earlier, there was very little that we could have done to prevent the challenges that we faced. 

So how can we take all these lemons and make us some metaphorical lemonade?

Kailyn and I struggled as we thought about what benefit, if any, came from all of our efforts. After much thought, we feel that it is safe to say that, if nothing else, we did validate these young men’s pastime. Throughout the sessions they kept mentioning how no one cared about their videos. It is my hope that, by showing an interest in their skills and talents, we have encouraged them to think of their hobby as a legitimate creative outlet.  Though it is a bit of a stretch, this could be considered to be empowering for them.

While it was challenging to stay positive after encountering barrier after barrier that prevented us from achieving our intended outcomes, I truly feel that we made the best of the situation. Generally, people learn more when they fail than when they succeed. Certainly, there is much to be learnt from this attempt at a participatory video project.