Fostering a relational sense of place through video documentary assignments

Abstract

Research on the use(fulness) of student-led film has emphasized the benefits of combining fieldwork and the production of moving image in terms of active, deep and reflexive learning. This paper contributes to this literature by discussing how a video documentary assignment can (also) help fostering relational thinking–a main objective of human geography education. Inspired by Doreen Massey’s notion of a “global sense of place”, the assignment asks students to explore, in a neighbourhood of the Dutch city of Utrecht, how external influences and relations to other places have shaped the neighbourhood’s development and identity. Based on the in-depth qualitative analysis of videos, students’ logbooks and personal reflections from two cohorts, we argue that a film assignment can stimulate relational thinking, but there are some important caveats. The assignment needs to be embedded into a course where relational thinking explicitly figures as an overarching perspective. Furthermore, offering students supervised autonomy and continuous feedback, and the inclusion of follow-up reflection is key to making students critically engage with their own and others’ “essentialist gaze”. Finally, to help students exploit the added value of film in conveying a sense of relationality, sensitization to and training on aspects of cinematography is needed.