Edinburgh Napier University

  MeCCSA Annual Conference, University of Bedfordshire. “We film therefore we are: Media made in communities - process, practice & participation.”

This paper will discuss practice-based methodology, as used within research into the production process of media made in communities. Focusing on the practice of collaborative, local video production, the research methodology explores the scope of engaged research, which draws on the ethnographic here and now, of doing, and specifically of (documentary) video production.

The paper, which is based on doctoral research at the University of the West of Scotland, draws on examples from Govan in Glasgow and the Isle of Bute on the West coast of Scotland.

Through practice-based fieldwork, the research engages directly with the process of video production and draws reflexively and practically on the researcher and participants’ experiences.

Media made in communities channels the situated-ness of knowledge and identity through an ongoing process of production. This paper presents such media production as part of an ongoing social process, which both draws on and creates relationships, networks, experience and knowledge.

Using examples from fieldwork practice the paper explores how this practice-based research is itself part of the ongoing process of knowledge creation.