Kathryn Gentzke Fieldwork Progress Report INTE 5345 November 22, 2012 Two Important Decisions Six months ago, I decided that it was a goal of mine to create a youth empowerment photography program utilizing the knowledge and experience I built up as a teaching artist. Tentatively titled The Berlin Project, this decision sat in the back of my mind over the course of the summer as I worked countless hours developing and implementing youth-oriented community outreach photography projects in the Bay Area and New York City and prepared for another international move. Every time it came to the forefront of my mind, the idea of The Berlin Project elicited a mixed feeling of excitement and fear. Youth-oriented photo-based outreach projects are my passion, and the idea of creating a program on my own internationally was extremely exciting, but the shear magnitude of the endeavor struck fear in the core of my being that I would somehow not be able to live up to the challenge. When I arrived here in Berlin at the end of September, all of my teaching engagements and the tasks associated with moving that had absorbed my time over the summer were completed; I was left alone with my decision to create The Berlin Project along with all of the excitement and fear this prospect conjured. Overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite directions I could take this work in, and unsure where to begin, I decided to enroll in INTE 5345 at UC Denver, with the hope that this accelerated course would help me to concretize my plans, ground my curriculum in sound theories and methods, provide me with colleagues for inspiration and feedback, and keep me on an honest, tight schedule to make this dream a reality. As I look back now on the last six months, I realize that these two decisions were some of the best that I've made in my professional life: I'm on my way to making The Berlin Project happen. The Berlin Project Thanks to the course readings and discussions as well as supplemental independent research, The Berlin Project is taking shape. This program will be realized as an 8 week (40 hour) curriculum for underserved teens that merges photography training with digital storytelling techniques. Each participant will gain a foundation in the basics of photography as a creative medium, including camera techniques and editing skills. Furthermore, they will be trained to use the technology needed to create their own multimodal digital story. But the acquisition of these skills is not the end goal of this curriculum, rather the aim is to train participants to see these skills as tools that allow them to creatively explore the world around them, their relationships with others, and their own personal lives.
In contrast to traditional digital storytelling programs, The Berlin Project places emphasis on photographic education. Instruction on camera function, composition techniques and editing skills empowers participants to capture their world as they see and experience it. Photography is a narrative medium – photographs naturally tell stories and through the course of the program, participants will practice reading visual narratives, learn how to tell their own stories through images, and importantly, share their images with others. The photographic education element of the curriculum dovetails with the digital storytelling element. After acquiring a foundation in photography, participants will then use the photographs they've created in the context of the program to build a digital story that explores a personal memory. Stories are sensory experiences: they involve images, but also words, sounds, and feelings. Through a variety of instructional exercises including journal writing, interviewing, storyboarding, and soundtracking, participants will receive both individual and group support as they learn how to create a multimodal digital story that reflects on a memory they find meaningful. The Berlin Project offers youth an educational program that works on several levels. By combining photographic education with digital storytelling instruction, participants acquire technical skills that will support them in their creative and/or professional lives. But importantly, they learn that technology is not an end in itself. Emphasis is placed throughout the course of the program on creating opportunities for participants to hone their technical skills as tools to support selfreflection, artistic creation, critical thinking and communication. Photographs and digital stories will be shared and discussed in the classroom community, and each participant will be given a space to communicate their experiences and identity. The aim of these sharing exercises is to practice deep listening, foster empathy, and build a community based on mutual respect across difference. Methodology: Heideggerian Hermeneutic-phenomenology Through our readings and course discussions, I have been able to begin to articulate a methodological approach based on Heidegger's Hermeneuticphenomenology. Philosophically, The Berlin Project aims at creating a safe and supportive space where participants take part in creative endeavors that foster critical thinking on how we instill our own lives and experiences as well as the world around us with meaning, and also how we translate that meaning into the creative process. Technical instruction is grounded in in-class exercises and outof-class assignments that foster self-reflection and articulation of personal experiences that participants find meaningful. This work is then shared in the classroom community with the intention of fostering empathy, that is to say developing an understanding of how others make meaning, even if we may not have shared their particular experiences. But rather than taking the process of meaning-making for granted, this program asks participants to think critically about how we make meaning, or why certain
experiences, ideas, and individuals are particularly meaningful to us. When sharing work and/or reflecting on personal creations, participants will be asked to think critically about how we communicate what is meaningful through image, text, sound and action, and how we, as viewers or listeners of a creative work, co-create meaning when we analyze or engage with the work in question. Heidegger's hermeneutic-phenomenology locates the making of meaning in the embodied experience of the viewer/listener, focusing on the engagement of viewer and viewed as a relational whole. Rather than bracketing the subjectivity of the viewer/listener, a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to analysis recognizes and centralizes the dynamic interplay between the viewer/listener's understanding of his or herself, and his or her understanding of the world (in this case, the creative work in question). Between the work and the viewer, a dynamic interchange occurs that is unique to each viewing situation. Hermeneutic-phenomenology recognizes that just as the world, in this case a digital story, is impressing “meaning” on the viewer/listener, the viewer/listener impresses her “meaning” on the world, or the digital story, itself. That ultimately, through my trying to make sense of the piece, I am confronting myself. This chiastic relationship is, in Heidegger's work, referred to as the Hermeneutical Circle.
Participants will be given prompts that encourage them to think about, write about, and discuss their co-creative role in the making of meaning in a creative work, making the hermeneutic-phenomenological process illustrated above explicit. My interest in photographic education and digital storytelling projects lies in the creation and transformation process. The creation of photographs and
digital storytelling projects makes the structure of meaning-making apparent by objectifying a process that we are already engaged in, in order to confront it and change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Philosophically grounding The Berlin Project in hermeneutic phenomenology serves to highlight to participants that the making of meaning, whether in artistic creations or in our own personal lives, is an agentive experience. Institut für Fotografische Bildung I have made contact with an institution here in Berlin that would be an excellent match for this program. Translated in English as the Institute for Photographic Education, the IFB is involved with several projects in the humanitarian and social fields. As the website states: Through the medium of photography, [the IFB] provides children and young people new ways to perceive their environment and develop their awareness of the impact that image and media can have. The children learn about media literacy and how to view images with a critical eye. In addition, we show how photography can be an effective tool in the formation of identity. These projects are implemented in schools that are located in emerging and developing countries as well as within the city of Berlin.1
I met with both the founder and director of the Institute twice over the last three weeks, and we are currently engaged in detailed discussions on how to implement The Berlin Project through the IFB in the spring of 2013. They have the resources (cameras, technology, classroom space, etc.) that I would need to realize the program, and we are looking at schools in Kreuzberg and Neukölln where the IFB has already been implementing programs as potential sites for recruitment. These districts have a high immigrant population from Turkey, as well as African and Middle Eastern countries. These populations are often marginalized by social, cultural and economic constraints. The schools are often underfunded, particularly in terms of access to art education. We are also in the process of discussing funding possibilities through the city of Berlin, or alternatively through a partnership program with a private international school in the city. And I am currently putting together a speculative budget for the program. New discoveries that demand further research • Therapeutic Photography as a methodological approach implemented by PhotoVoice, a non-profit in the UK that works with the mentally ill • Hermeneutic-phenomenological Approach to DS : I found three chapters of a PhD dissertation online that employs this approach as a method for analysing digital storytelling projects. I'm looking forward to reading it for further ideas on implementing this approach in my program. • Participatory Photography Research
1 http://www.ifb-berlin.com/en/projects (last visited 11/22/12)
To Do's • Detailed curriculum lesson plan • Short course description for IFB • Detailed Budget and further funding research • Contact other organizations for collaboration: Young Arts NK, C|O Berlin, Neue Schule für Fotografie Berlin, Fusion Intercultural Projects Berlin Trouble spots I am struggling with a couple of questions as I come to the final stages of my write up for this class. • First of all, which voice do I use and when? I feel that at times I should be using the voice of a researcher and structuring my inquiries in a more formal fashion, but often it feels more appropriate (given where I am in this process) to use the voice of an “entrepreneur” starting my own program. • I need structural advice for final write up. I would sincerely appreciate any suggestions for headings, and how to organize this work in the final stages. My goal is to end this class with a tight overview of the program that I can use to present to organizations and institutions I'd like to collaborate with.