The Pedagogy of Participatory Video

The primary objective of my MA thesis project is to examine the possibilities of fostering a critical sensibility amongst Toronto urban youth by use of popular education activities and then to put these critical skills to work in the form of documentary production. I was able to perform this practical aspect of my project as part of a field placement in the Spring and Summer of 2009. During this placement I was able to provide youth (aged 14-19) in the Lawrence Heights community of Toronto, Ontario, Canada (colloquially known as "Jungle") with both the critical and technical skills necessary to create a documentary about their community and the issues that exist therein. Having these videos in hand, I am now able to reflect on both the process and the theoretical grounding of my fieldwork (which is done in this paper) as well as create an interactive and virtual home for the videos created last summer and any more that, in the future, might come ·out of the model that I implemented (www.whatisjungle.org). With my primary objective in mind, the greater, long-term, goal of my project is to help youth become more engaged with their community and begin to ask questions about their, and other, so-called "at-risk communities". I do not intend on this project '· being the final say on such an objective. Rather, it is only the beginning of a larger objective to help foster a positive sense of community in neighbourhoods negatively portrayed in the media and to help these residents become more civically engaged in order to create social change.