I have had some trouble downloading the DVDs that are intended to compliment the Kim thesis described in my last post, so I am still looking at options to see youth-produced videos online. The following is a documentary produced by young Scottish kids in a 'troubled' neighbourhood of Edinburgh called Broomhouse. What I found interesting about this video, and many other such documentaries or fictional depictions of 'troublesome youth', is the discourse around boredom as being a key factor in anti-social behaviour. They do, at first, mention some of the socio-economic difficulties plaguing the neighbourhood, but the problem with Broomhouse youth is quickly reduced to a lack of activities. The acting out is not related to poverty, not to the obvious prejudice inherent in the community, not to the systemic issues affecting these youths' families--no, they just need something to do.
I am all for youth centres and activities (even youth video projects), but at what point do these activities shift from being beneficial to the youth to being distractions from the social conditions that are causing them to act justifiably anti-social? Are YVPs and other youth activities intended to placate and maintain the status quo? Is a capitalist anxiety about an unproductive class more the issue here, i.e. is the lack of 'productive' behaviour itself more troubling than the little acts of rebellion?
It is unfortunate that the young people involved in this project go down this path, when their first instincts seem to be a discussion of the economic conditions of their community. This may be an example of what both Kim and Fleetwood describe as youth co-opting negative community/media perceptions in their own self-representations.
Have a look... (the accents take a bit of adjusting!)
Found through a Youtube search for "youth video project" [quotation marks included] which retrieved 38 results.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Kim (2007) Doctoral Thesis
I feel I have hit the jackpot, so to speak, with this work, although I imagine it may be already known to my colleagues. It is a doctoral thesis by Isabelle Kim from 2007 through OISE at the University of Toronto and it presents an in-depth study of youth video projects (or "YVPs" as she labels them) from many of the theoretical standpoints we have been discussing in our current work. I have not had the chance to read through the entire 200+ pages of Youth Videomaking: A Spoken Word Study, but I did do a brief scan this evening and it seems like a gem of a project that could open up all kinds of new directions in our research.
Kim's work is based on publicly funded YVPs that seem to be, for the most part, based out of Ontario social service agencies and/or arts groups. She states that she is interested in community-based, youth led work, and how social discourses have created the possibility/necessity of such projects. Kim also proposes the development of an "ontology" of YVP spaces, i.e. the ways in which these videos can exist as an "outside" to the dominant media culture. Her research intends to investigate the following questions:
Kim also breaks down the types of YVPs into 5 distinct models: 1. the festival model (video as art), 2. the employment model (work experience, pay & skill-building), 3. the artist-in-residency model (commissioned artistic work), 4. the focus-on-Process model (self-expression for ‘at risk’ youth) and 5. the message-focussed model (video is meant as a tool for social education/change). She also gives examples of each and agencies in Ontario that are involved in their production. These paradigms create a very useful language for our own look at youth video, and in-and-of themselves create new tangents for critical investigation of the product and process of each "model." The wonderful thing about Kim's work is that she provides examples and links to media related to her research and even includes a DVD component, which serves as an equally important compliment to her written work.
I am currently in the process of downloading the 2 DVDs that accompany this work (they are available on the ProQuest download site for her thesis). The first DVD is composed of interviews with the youth involved and their experiences with making YVPs. The second includes 5 short videos created by the youth. It seems as though Kim has taken a conceptual and artistic approach to the authoring of these DVDs, as to coincide with the theoretical underpinnings of her research. I'm excited to see them and will update soon!
REFERENCES:
-Kim, I. (2007). Youth Videomaking Projects: A Spoken Word Study. Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada.
SEARCH HISTORY FOR THIS ARTICLE:
-Incidentally found when looking up another article "Beyond "Straight" Interpretations: Researching Queer Youth Digital Video"on the University of Toronto Libraries' Catalogue Search.
Kim's work is based on publicly funded YVPs that seem to be, for the most part, based out of Ontario social service agencies and/or arts groups. She states that she is interested in community-based, youth led work, and how social discourses have created the possibility/necessity of such projects. Kim also proposes the development of an "ontology" of YVP spaces, i.e. the ways in which these videos can exist as an "outside" to the dominant media culture. Her research intends to investigate the following questions:
- How are YVPs possible today?
- What kinds of spaces do YVPs create and occupy in civil society?
- Does the discourse of ‘youth’, and ‘risk’ contribute to the chains of reasoning around YVP practices related to the participants’ video production? And do these practices in turn confirm deficient and/or other views of youth?
- What spaces of interpretation are produced through the public exhibition of videos by youth?
- What kinds of spaces of interpretation are enabled/disabled by the use of video and DVD authoring in qualitative research? (pg. 12).
Kim also breaks down the types of YVPs into 5 distinct models: 1. the festival model (video as art), 2. the employment model (work experience, pay & skill-building), 3. the artist-in-residency model (commissioned artistic work), 4. the focus-on-Process model (self-expression for ‘at risk’ youth) and 5. the message-focussed model (video is meant as a tool for social education/change). She also gives examples of each and agencies in Ontario that are involved in their production. These paradigms create a very useful language for our own look at youth video, and in-and-of themselves create new tangents for critical investigation of the product and process of each "model." The wonderful thing about Kim's work is that she provides examples and links to media related to her research and even includes a DVD component, which serves as an equally important compliment to her written work.
I am currently in the process of downloading the 2 DVDs that accompany this work (they are available on the ProQuest download site for her thesis). The first DVD is composed of interviews with the youth involved and their experiences with making YVPs. The second includes 5 short videos created by the youth. It seems as though Kim has taken a conceptual and artistic approach to the authoring of these DVDs, as to coincide with the theoretical underpinnings of her research. I'm excited to see them and will update soon!
REFERENCES:
-Kim, I. (2007). Youth Videomaking Projects: A Spoken Word Study. Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada.
SEARCH HISTORY FOR THIS ARTICLE:
-Incidentally found when looking up another article "Beyond "Straight" Interpretations: Researching Queer Youth Digital Video"on the University of Toronto Libraries' Catalogue Search.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
An interesting video
This may not be relevant to what we're currently looking at, but worth a watch as an example of a youth-led video project in California. Full screen view is best.
Found through a Youtube search for "youth video project" which found about 15, 900 results.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Bowey & McGlaughlin (2006) and Ager et al. (2008)
The following two articles are the last of the interesting research I found through Scholar’s Portal (please see my search history in the Sept. 8th post Fleetwood Article). They are both analyses of youth video projects conducted in school or agency settings. Bowey & McGlaughlin look at a video-based intervention in youth crime and social exclusion at school. Ager et al. discuss the use of youth video to prevent substance abuse.
The Bowey & McGlaughlin article, “The Youth Crime Reduction Video Project,” looks at an intervention with English grade nine students who were labeled “at-risk” by their schools (criteria: “excluded or at risk of being excluded, and/or having offended or showing the potential for offending” [!!] (p. 271)). The intervention included a video produced by each the two groups of youth involved. It also included an outward bound weekend. The authors present a qualitative study of youth attitudes towards police, crime and their levels of self-esteem before and after the intervention. The participants appeared to have slight, temporary shifts in attitude after the intervention including higher self-esteem (which the authors, somewhat presumptuously, believe will lower their future criminal behaviour). However, this study is more or less irrelevant to our project’s focus, as it has no information about the content of the video work itself. Our interest lies in how youth represent themselves, not in the potential therapeutic influence of this representation (or, for that matter, its conforming influence—why should teens like police, necessarily?). In fact, it seems as though the video was scripted and directed by the agencies involved, not by the youth. The post-study interviews with the participants showed significant discomfort with this top-down narrative, which is understandable. It might be an interesting element of our current project to investigate how much control youth are given over their videos/films from agency to agency, as well as if a therapeutic/educational agency approach detracts from the creative freedom of the participants.
Ager et al.’s “The Youth Video Project: An Innovative Program for Substance Abuse Prevention” focuses on substance abuse videos produced by African-American children (10-12 y.o.) in New Orleans. Unfortunately, this project was, again, a description of the therapeutic uses of youth-made video. Ager et al. provide very little information about the actual content of the videos, other than that the youth were meant to produce a drug abuse prevention video.
As anticipated, it seems that academic research material is, perhaps, not the best source of information for our current focus. However, one must start somewhere! It would be ideal to have access to more of agencies' actual youth-produced videos, but I imagine confidentiality restrains would be a significant obstacle. However I did find some promising work in the articles’ citations including: Chavez et al. (2004) “A bridge between communities: Video-making using principles of community-based participatory research” and Holleran et al. (2002) “Creating culturally grounded videos for substance abuse prevention.” Hopefully not more of the same!
REFERENCES:
-Ager, R.D., Parquet, R. & Kreutzinger, S. (2008). “The Youth Video Project: An Innovative Program or Substance Abuse Prevention.” Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions 8(3). 303-321.
-Bowey, L. & McGlaughlin, A. (2006). “The Youth Crime Reduction Video Project: An Evaluation of a Pilot Intervention Targeting Young People at Risk of Crime and School Exclusion.” The Howard Journal 45(3). 268-283.
The Bowey & McGlaughlin article, “The Youth Crime Reduction Video Project,” looks at an intervention with English grade nine students who were labeled “at-risk” by their schools (criteria: “excluded or at risk of being excluded, and/or having offended or showing the potential for offending” [!!] (p. 271)). The intervention included a video produced by each the two groups of youth involved. It also included an outward bound weekend. The authors present a qualitative study of youth attitudes towards police, crime and their levels of self-esteem before and after the intervention. The participants appeared to have slight, temporary shifts in attitude after the intervention including higher self-esteem (which the authors, somewhat presumptuously, believe will lower their future criminal behaviour). However, this study is more or less irrelevant to our project’s focus, as it has no information about the content of the video work itself. Our interest lies in how youth represent themselves, not in the potential therapeutic influence of this representation (or, for that matter, its conforming influence—why should teens like police, necessarily?). In fact, it seems as though the video was scripted and directed by the agencies involved, not by the youth. The post-study interviews with the participants showed significant discomfort with this top-down narrative, which is understandable. It might be an interesting element of our current project to investigate how much control youth are given over their videos/films from agency to agency, as well as if a therapeutic/educational agency approach detracts from the creative freedom of the participants.
Ager et al.’s “The Youth Video Project: An Innovative Program for Substance Abuse Prevention” focuses on substance abuse videos produced by African-American children (10-12 y.o.) in New Orleans. Unfortunately, this project was, again, a description of the therapeutic uses of youth-made video. Ager et al. provide very little information about the actual content of the videos, other than that the youth were meant to produce a drug abuse prevention video.
As anticipated, it seems that academic research material is, perhaps, not the best source of information for our current focus. However, one must start somewhere! It would be ideal to have access to more of agencies' actual youth-produced videos, but I imagine confidentiality restrains would be a significant obstacle. However I did find some promising work in the articles’ citations including: Chavez et al. (2004) “A bridge between communities: Video-making using principles of community-based participatory research” and Holleran et al. (2002) “Creating culturally grounded videos for substance abuse prevention.” Hopefully not more of the same!
REFERENCES:
-Ager, R.D., Parquet, R. & Kreutzinger, S. (2008). “The Youth Video Project: An Innovative Program or Substance Abuse Prevention.” Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions 8(3). 303-321.
-Bowey, L. & McGlaughlin, A. (2006). “The Youth Crime Reduction Video Project: An Evaluation of a Pilot Intervention Targeting Young People at Risk of Crime and School Exclusion.” The Howard Journal 45(3). 268-283.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Fleetwood Article
Fleetwood’s work and research interests appear to be very relevant for our current project, as she is interested in issues facing racialized youth in San Francisco’s gentrifying (or gentrified) Mission District. She also uses video production—both her own and youth-led—to carry out her research and activism. Fleetwood asks a number of very interesting questions when discussing the use of video for marginalized youth in an agency setting. They are as follows:
How do we understand collaboration when white adult artists and institutions own the resources and broker access for youth of color? What are the narrative and technological limits placed on the project by its sponsors? Who ultimately has ownership of the video? How do we read the representations constructed in these collaborative
These questions might be starting points for our current investigations of youth video, and, in fact, they are questions we have already been asking. Fleetwood’s article also investigates how dominant media companies use youth in video to both fetishize and vilify them. This is especially true for racialized youth. These representations are often co-opted by youth and appear in their own independent video projects. However, their is a reciprocal relationship, in that media companies are now co-opting youth-produced video and other media as a marketing tool. Fleetwood seems to argue that a good youth-led video project would encourage an investigation of, and interference with, this cycle of representation.
Some interesting possibilities for future reading found in the notes: Dee Dee Halleck, Handheld Visions: The Impossible Possibilities of Community Media.
REFERENCES:
-Fleetwood, N. R. (2005). Community-Based Video Production and the Politics of Race and Authenticity. Social Text 82, 23(1).
SEARCH HISTORY:
Scholar’s Portal Search:(KW=(youth* or teen* or adolescen*)) and(KW=((video project*) or (video activit*) or (video program*)) or KW=(video exhibition*))
In Multiple Databases (Art Abstracts @ Scholars Portal: Arts & Humanities Citation Index ® (1975 to present); ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts; Communication Abstracts; Communication Studies: A SAGE Full-Text Collection; Criminal Justice Abstracts; Criminology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection; Education Abstracts @ Scholars Portal; Education: A SAGE Full-Text Collection; ERIC; Family Studies Abstracts; Health Sciences: A SAGE Full-Text Collection; PsycINFO; Social Sciences Abstracts @ Scholars Portal; Social Sciences Citation Index ® (1956 to present); Social Services Abstracts; Sociological Abstracts; Sociology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection; Urban Studies & Planning: A SAGE Full-Text Collection; Urban Studies Abstracts)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The Youth Video Research Blog
The following is an ongoing record of research conducted through the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work of the University of Toronto. This research project on youth video is one element of a larger endeavour to explore how a cultural, arts-based view of social work might be used to develop a "common voice" for the widely diverse populations involved in social work practice. The project's goal is to "recognize significant differences" among vulnerable populations in Canadian society, whilst trying to create a sense of solidarity across these vulnerabilities.
The youth video project, in particular, is intended to look at the way so-called 'at-risk' youth represent themselves through video work. The research is led by a PhD. student in the faculty of social work and I (Graham) am a Master's student research assistant. In this blog, I intend to investigate social service agency programs that have used video in their engagement with young people, particularly those from ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds that are typically marginalized in Canadian society. Other youth video work/projects may be referenced as supportive or supplemental information. Records and citations of material used will be documented, and hyperlinks to relevant web-based material will be embedded in the text whenever possible. My own personal thoughts on the material I find will also be included as a means of "brainstorming" future directions for research.
Comments and posting will also be open to other faculty and students involved in this project.
REFERENCES:
Chambron, A. (2009). Knowledge for Solidarity: A Critical Perspective for Social Work.
The youth video project, in particular, is intended to look at the way so-called 'at-risk' youth represent themselves through video work. The research is led by a PhD. student in the faculty of social work and I (Graham) am a Master's student research assistant. In this blog, I intend to investigate social service agency programs that have used video in their engagement with young people, particularly those from ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds that are typically marginalized in Canadian society. Other youth video work/projects may be referenced as supportive or supplemental information. Records and citations of material used will be documented, and hyperlinks to relevant web-based material will be embedded in the text whenever possible. My own personal thoughts on the material I find will also be included as a means of "brainstorming" future directions for research.
Comments and posting will also be open to other faculty and students involved in this project.
REFERENCES:
Chambron, A. (2009). Knowledge for Solidarity: A Critical Perspective for Social Work.
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