Research goes to the cinema: The veracity of videography with, for and by youth

Abstract

This paper addresses the use of participatory videography as a way of knowing and bearing witness to the complexity of young lives in educational research. We outline the principles for engaging young people in participatory videography. Working in the framework of humanities-infused praxis with, for, and by young people, we explore the place of visibility and invisibility. We identify what is gained, lost and unsettled in the use of video as a cultural process and production. We offer our theoretical and aesthetic considerations in relation to two projects. The first is a project about the youth mental health system in rural Canada, wherein we explore the fractured system visually through documentary filmmaking in the cinéma vérité cinema genre. The second is a project in which we are working with young Aboriginal Canadians who are framing the intersections of mental health and technology through filmmaking. We interrogate videography as a form of cultural production with the potential for engaging young people in educative experience, symbolic activity and cultural production. Youth videography offers opportunities for comparative education research in which social and cultural analyses are made visible. We explicate videography as a potentially meaningful experience for youth and for a deeper cultural analysis in educational research while addressing the tensions surrounding its claim to veracity.