communities Archives - annabel smith

On Photography*

Posted by Annabel on 27/08/2013 communities, experiential education, global, impact, media, Photography, reality, skills, social justice, stories, volunteering, young people

Aug 272013

How would you feel if a complete stranger had a photograph of you on their fridge? Your hair a mess at the end of a tiring day, caught at an unflattering angle in your oldest clothes, damp and sweaty, longing for a shower.

You might feel that your soul had been stolen – plenty of people see cameras as frightening, not just annoying – or you might just be furious that your privacy had been violated by someone who doesn’t even know your name. A few years ago a group of young Chinese men surrounded me at a tourist spot in northern India, friendly, laughing, snapping away. I asked them to stop, but they didn’t. A tiny window into the lives of those whose faces pop up as screen savers the world over.

It can be tempting just to snap away vaguely, presuming it does no harm, but a quick walk round the block in someone else’s shoes provides a sharp reminder that it does. Many people who go on slum or township tours equate the experience to a trip to the zoo.

Enough.

Clicking the shutter should be the last thing you do.

Why are you taking the picture anyway? What will you use it for?

Now we don’t have to load film, check it’s caught, wind on, keep it in a dark place, make sure it’s developed safely and hope, pray we got the shot we saw. We’re digital, we’re point and shoot, we can take thousands of frames at no extra cost.

Yet it’s no coincidence that most photographers who have worked for long periods in war zones, disaster zones and among the desperately poor, are haunted. One ex-Sunday Times reporter told me he could not longer take those pictures after his first child was born.

You want to show people what you saw, but don’t give up on words. I won’t forget watching a student tell a friend about her day at a school in a South African township. Her voice became soft and tears came to her eyes as she realised that the children she was describing were far too small for their age because they had never had enough to eat. Talking forces us to engage; photography can let us off the hook.

Use the power of your camera wisely. Access to the lives of others is a privilege, so bring both good intentions and a critical mind.

Don’t forget to capture details, insights on the condition of people’s lives. Look for the things you can’t see. A near-empty drugs cupboard in a hospital can tell you far more than a picture of someone dying, and doesn’t compromise anyone’s dignity. Heads bent over a shared textbook, an unnecessary flower garden, feet in new shoes.

Seek out contrasts, juxtapositions that illuminate. Ordinary objects that tell stories.

Talk to people. Introduce yourself. Ask.

Sometimes people say no. Perhaps one of their friends, or someone nearby will say yes. Take the photo. Show them. Do it carefully, move to catch the light and their best angle. Many people have never seen a photograph of themselves. Don’t start if you don’t have time to finish.

Last January I was in Tamale, northern Ghana. I walked through the market with a local guide. He knew everyone, they catcalled as we went past. With his permission I took shots of the market, a riot of colour and activity. But I wanted the women. So I asked. Some said no. Some said yes. I started taking pictures and when I had a good one, I showed them. They were delighted. They were beautiful, astonishingly beautiful. Those who had said no, now fought to be next in line. We laughed, I teased them, they teased me, we had fun.

I took their names and asked permission to use the photos. Although I had showed everyone their pictures, I couldn’t give them copies. I promised I would send them, and I did. I don’t know if they arrived. If I could have done I would have printed them on the spot. We lost something very precious with the demise of the polaroid. I was converted after a trip to a remote part of Madagascar in the mid 90s by friends who insisted on taking and giving people their photographs. I had been completely against the idea. I could not have been more wrong. What could be more precious than a picture of your family?

Don’t underestimate the power of photography. In thoughtful hands a camera shrinks space, connects strangers and illuminates lives. In thoughtless hands it snatches and grabs, hits and runs, confirms stereotypes. Used to tell stories it is still the magic lantern that captivated our forefathers and made us leave home in the first place.

* See Susan Sontag’s 1977 book of the same name, and her later Regarding the Pain of Others. Also The Bang Bang Club and Ken Light’s Witness in our Time

Guatemala, Genocide and Journalism

Posted by Annabel on 19/05/2013 communities, genocide, Latin America, media, social justice, street kids, uncategorized, war

May 192013

Within 48 hours of arriving in Guatemala I had learned more about justice, genocide and journalism than all my English education had taught me. You bet I was cheering last week when the former dictator was jailed for 80 years.

There was chaos in Guatemala City when I landed in July 2003 – streets crowded with demonstrators and traffic at a standstill. The radio in my hotel told me the crowds were supporters of Efrain Rios Montt – former President, military dictator and commander of the government forces responsible for the worst excesses of Guatemala’s thirty-six year civil war.

What? A man accused of genocide – why would anyone want him back?

Heading out of town I saw posters, slogans and flags of rival political parties festooned across streets and painted on the road. Buses roared past on their way to the city to register candidates for the upcoming local elections. Perhaps the same buses that had carried the angry mobs into the capital the day before?

In 2003 Guatemala was still off the main tourist track. Guide books made scant mention of the civil war and few people strayed into the indigenous communities that were targeted in the genocide. My guide Ruben showed me things I would have missed, like the small crosses scattered across the cemetery, marking the civil war graves. Many more bodies lay in unmarked mass graves, their location still secret 10 years after the end of war.

I asked Ruben if the war had been in his village. He said yes: his people had supported the rebels and so US-backed government forces had moved in with helicopters and small planes and carried out a scorched earth campaign. Unable to defeat the rebels, the army simply targeted the communities that sustained them. Witness testimonies record villagers being terrorized, raped, tortured and killed indiscriminately.

He came home from school one day to see a truck full of boys from his village being taken away. He ran. His friends were forced to join the army and become executioners of their own people.

When the peace accords were signed in 1994 two international commissions were established to investigate the truth of the struggle between successive military regimes and leftist guerillas. Both reports held government forces responsible for over 89% of the 200,000 deaths and 45,000 disappearances.

In 2003 the generals were still in prison, but not for much longer. I arrived just as many peoples’ worst fears seemed to be being realized and the past, in the form of Rios Montt, looked set to return.

When I asked Ruben about the demonstration in the capital he smiled patiently. They were paid. Most of the demonstrators did not even know why they were there. It was true, though, that in many rural areas, including those where the terror had been worst, Montt was the candidate of choice.

His political party, the Columbian drug cartel-funded FRG, was the only one that identified with the poor. Eight million Guatemalans lived in the countryside, 60% below the poverty line. Widespread illiteracy, no media and an almost passionate determination to bury the past meant that most people knew nothing of Montt’s history. What they did know was that he promised cheap fertiliser, free health care, new schools and land reform. None of the other parties even pretended to care about the poor. Of course the stakes were lower for them – without Presidential immunity, Montt knew that his crimes would catch up with him. As they did, last week.

I saw the poverty. Six and seven year old boys in orange wigs and face paint juggling fruit at intersections in hope of winning a few quetzales from hard-faced motorists who wound up their windows against them. Tiny children who made toys out of garbage; teenagers who risked their lives taking dares from passers-by. There were 6,000 children living on the streets of the capital in 2003 and persistent rumours that private security groups were hired to shoot them because they were bad for business.

I never ‘did’ Latin America, presumably because it was never ‘ours’. When I left school I could not even have found Guatemala on the map. Without time on the ground, Ruben, the writings of Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu and considerable research I would still have no idea why last week’s verdict was historic and monumental.

I also never once considered that the BBC could simply be wrong.

Learning To See Invisible People

Posted by Annabel on 06/09/2012 communities, education, experiential education, global, maps, reality, schools, skills, social justice, stories, uncategorized, volunteering, young people

Sep 062012

I started seeing invisible people when I lived in Philadelphia, after my first visit to a homeless shelter. An old man with a shopping cart; a woman with her possessions in bulging plastic bags; the people-shaped bundles under bridges. It reminded me of the time I tried on a friend’s glasses and first saw the leaves on trees.

I had another shock 2 years later when I ran a community-based program in Cape Town. I thought I knew a good deal about the townships, having spent some considerable time working with community leaders. But nothing prepared me for visiting a hostel where families rented not rooms, but walls. 1 room 4 families, bunk beds on all sides, belongings, or a child, underneath, clothes hanging from the bedposts. In one room a single woman forced to wake and wash at 3 am if she was to have any privacy.

Last year in London I had my English eye-opening. Guides from Unseen London took a group of my students and I on walking tours around the city. They had all slept rough – they showed us where, as well as telling us where to find the only free toilets (in Covent Garden) or a free cup of tea and a sandwich. They showed us the places where you could find a warm grating in winter or shelter from the rain, although most had recently been closed off or locked. I complimented one guide on her highly detailed knowledge of the city. “And I’m a History teacher” I said. She beamed back “so was my mum.”

Like the transparent overlays that transform the ruins of ancient Rome into the great city it once was, there’s a whole missing dimension to our cities.

Without realising, we have all become partially sighted; without intentional programs and lots of practice there is a real danger that this may become a progressive condition

Without realising, we have all become partially sighted; without intentional programs and lots of practice there is a real danger that this may be a progressive condition. To combat this, we have to show young people how to look and to listen; to see what’s under their noses, to make sense of the quiet voices it’s so easy to miss. We need to bring that lens into the classroom, and with it reality, and some pretty big surprises.

There are lots of ways you can do this, but here’s one: Community Mapping

2 years ago I collaborated with an amazing English teacher to design a Service Learning program. Ours had a Human Rights theme, but it would have worked equally well focused on people with disabilities, the elderly or refugees. These are all sensitive issues; the trick is to give them a human face. Our inspiration was a highly-detailed map of our local community, produced by the UK Ordnance Survey, which also has a fantastic Digimapping package for schools.

Each Year 8 / 7th Grade class had a map, and a set of pins. The project began with lessons on human rights, looking at the Universal Declaration and all the laws that require governments to act (the UDHR doesn’t.) They also studied definitions of Poverty, widely agreed to be the greatest human rights violation in the world today.

That done, their first task was to find and mark on the map every organisation that worked towards fulfilling people’s rights: doctors and hospitals, schools, churches, a homeless shelter, the police station, a library and a community centre. I’d established community partnerships with many of them the year before, so this was a powerful way to strengthen and extend those partnerships.

The next task was to divide the list up and research each one. For each organisation they identified a leader and made a note of their contact information. As a class, they drafted a letter inviting all the leaders to come to school to be interviewed – on a day we called Write on Rights Day.

The venue for the work now switched from advisory / tutor / form time, to English class. The English teachers launched a journalism unit, with a particular focus on interviews. They studied examples, looked at the most successful techniques for extracting information and opinion, and started practising. In small groups they began deciding the best questions to ask each of the community leaders.

Invitations were emailed out and replies came in. A Friday afternoon was chosen and several parents roped in to bake cakes and man the teapots. Posters went up around school to let everyone know what was happening.

18 local community activists and leaders were interviewed that day – not only one of the most powerful and inspiring collections of role models you could imagine, but also a masterclass in leadership. Student photographers were hard at work. Detailed notes were taken, and for the next few weeks students worked on their articles. Once edited and peer reviewed they were gathered together and indexed. A small group of students then put in a grant application to the parent association, and a month or so later they got approval: the manuscript was sent to a local printer. Copies of the book were delivered to all the community partners.

One boy talked to a student from the neighbouring school about what it was like being in a school with lots of refugees:

“I learned a label can mean a lot of different things. The word refugee is more complicated than just something like illegal immigrants. A student I talked to was a refugee from Kosovo and all these years later, he’s just a normal kid going to school.”

A student I talked to was a refugee from Kosovo and all these years later, he’s just a normal kid going to school

Far from a grim responsibility, this work is a gift. I’ve yet to meet a young person who couldn’t be drawn in, their curiosity piqued by the mystery of the unknown, their brains and hearts engaged by the stories they uncover. They don’t even notice that they’re collaborating, problem-solving, thinking critically and analytically, being creative, storytelling and developing their communication skills..

Learning to see, hear and acknowledge one another is a fundamental part of being human. It’s also really interesting. As one student wrote: “The way I see the local community changed a lot. I never thought that there were people living so close to my house that needed so much help.”

A Place for Pride

Posted by Annabel on 23/11/2011 communities, current, education, UK politics, US politics, volunteering

Nov 232011

Demos published a report last Friday called A Place for Pride. It examines what makes people proud to be British, and reached an inspiring conclusion: community engagement and volunteering.

‘When you ask about what’s best about being British I think of all the people
that give up their time to help other people, or to do good things in the
community. That’s what makes me proud of this country.’

Shakespeare, the National Trust, the armed forces and the NHS came out of the polls ok (Parliament and legal system not so much) but they left most people feeling unengaged:

‘I think of being British as being about littler things, more boring I suppose.
Like doing your bit and manners and helping out. The thing about British
people is that we do things for each other, you know? Being British is more
about the way we are than things like Buckingham Palace or Parliament.’

There’s a strong tradition of volunteering in the UK, but it’s understated: few of us would think of doing the old lady next-door’s shopping or picking up a friend’s kids from school as community engagement. Even so, the Demos polls showed that two-thirds of respondents had volunteered in the last 12 months. This is very good news.

And it’s true in the US too: volunteering makes you proud of yourself and others, and pride in your community makes you more likely to volunteer and help others. There’s a positive feedback loop that links individuals, local communities and the whole country. Even the very grand: On September 11th 2008 I was in New York to mark the launch of the new service bill through congress. One after another a show-stopping cast of celebrities stepped forward – Hilary Clinton, Jon Bon Jovi, the presidents of Bank of America, GE, Home Depot and Time Inc; Usher, Former President Bush, UN special envoys, representatives of churches, the Presidents of 9 of the top universities, Arnold Schwarzenegger, top military, senators, congressmen and women, Wendy Kopp, Jeffrey Sachs, Queen Noor of Jordan and Alicia Keys – and they all said the same thing: of all their achievements, nothing made them more proud than their volunteering. There must have been a billion dollars in that room, but there were no press.

What else does the Demos report tell us?

That four-fifths of those polled agreed with the statement ‘people who are proud of themselves and their community behave in more positive ways.’
That one crucial reason why volunteering and social action are so important is that they mix people together, so old and young, rich and poor, black, white and Asian work side by side and explode the lurking stereotypes.
That the minute politicians get involved, ordinary people back away:

‘Sometimes when they [politicians] talk about volunteering and all that, it
sounds like they think they invented it or something. I don’t volunteer
because the Government tells me to, I volunteer because I want to – I enjoy
it and I think it’s important, when you get to my age, to give something back
and to stay in touch with what’s going on.’

‘I’m always a bit dubious when the politicians see something good and then
say ‘that’s what I believe in’ because usually they take that thing and they
ruin it.’

So, Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg and and Mr Miliband, listen up:

‘Honestly, I hate the Tories. And I feel angry that they’ve taken something
I’m most proud of in my community – the way we pull together and
organise to keep the street tidy and safe – and they’ve said ‘this is a
Conservative thing’. It’s not a Conservative thing, it’s a British thing.
Well I think it’s good that the Government is supporting volunteering. And I
agree with the Big Society or whatever it’s called. But I don’t like it all being
so political – Tories say it’s good, Labour say it isn’t, and then it becomes
like the Labour Party are saying volunteering isn’t good.’

If you want to strengthen our communities, integrate all those who are part of them and increase pride and positive action, then here’s some advice:

▪ Stop cutting the budgets of the organisations that are doing exactly that.

▪ Start making Citizenship in schools mean something: make community action and community learning a part of the core curriculum of every school and don’t just do it for the little ones. Nobody needs this more than teenagers, and nobody does it better.

▪ Keep politics out of it. This is not about you, it’s about us.