Food on the Margins: A Creative Film Collaboration to Amplify the Voices of Those Living with Food Insecurity

Abstract

‘Food on the margins in Plymouth’ is a short ‘fly on the wall’-style documentary film which has captured the food stories of six individuals who are, for whatever reason, experiencing food insecurity. The film was inspired by a recent participatory food research project (Food as a Lifestyle Motivator) which aimed to explore creative methods to better understand the food experiences of vulnerable communities in Plymouth, UK. Our aim was to ‘co-produce’ a documentary film illustrating the realities of the lived experience of food insecurity that could be promoted by/to city leaders and policy-makers to catalyse food system change. The resulting documentary film successfully met its aim by presenting a work of public sociology that informs publics about food poverty. Here, within this ‘Beyond the Text’ companion piece, we critique and appraise what the film achieves, by proposing how and why film-making can engage publics through sharing food stories and conveying wider sociological discourses.