Edinburgh Napier University

  This chapter draws on the author’s practice-led research in community-based media to explore how participatory production techniques and strategies create opportunities to increase older women’s visibility on screen and in production. Through examining the production process older women’s participation, agency and knowledge challenges marginalising representations and expectations of older women in the media.

The chapter emphasises the networked and ongoing processes of community based production. It examines production strategies in the context of interviews, location filming and screenings. It focuses on the ways in which production strategies create spaces to engage older women as participants, contributors and audiences. It explores the collaborative relationship formed around the creative practice of the practitioner, who facilitates contexts for participation, and the agency and experience of older women.

The discussion is informed by the author’s practice with women in the Govan area of Glasgow, Scotland on the participatory community-based documentary, You Play Your Part. The short film, about campaigning women in the area, acted as a catalyst for revealing the political agency of older women. The chapter discusses how developing production around women’s participation elevates personal, local knowledge and experience, connecting participants’ lives to broader historical processes, and locates them at the centre rather than the margins of the past and present.