Upcoming Workshops in Video, DST and online media tools

GoCreat will be partnering with Video Volunteers to conduct a few workshops in Goa specifically for grassroots activists. The workshops will help participants in using video, new media tools and DST effectively to communicate and project online, issues they are tackling on the ground. Here is the tentative outline.

We will be conducting a workshop in Benaulim (South Goa), a village where citizens are actively protesting rampant and un-planned development that is destroying the lush green fields and charm of the countryside. This workshop will be on Video Blogging and Online Activism. This is a two-day workshop on 18th and 19th from 10am to 6pm.

Participants will be using camera phones (to be provided by VV) and will each be creating a film on a topic/issue of choice in Benaulim village. As such, participants will need to come prepared with an accessible story/issue they would like to tackle in 3 hours of field work made into a short (1min-3min) film.
Resource persons: Namita Singh and Gasper D'Souza

Day two of the workshop will deal with online activism - promoting your cause/video through New Media tools.
Resource person: Freeman Murray

Next, we will be conducting a series of workshops over 4 days from Nov 25th to 28th as follows from 10am to 2.30pm:

Nov 25th: Introduction to Online Activism.
This session will take participants through the New Media tools available to highlight, create awareness and promote the cause online.

Nov 26th: Video Blogging
The session will seek to help participants to work with simple equipment (like cellphone cameras) to create effective visual documents of activities and post these online to blogs and social media sites.

Nov 27th and 28th: Digital Storytelling
This is a hands-on workshop where we will take participants through the process of creating a digital story - a short personal story using pictures (still images, paintings, newspaper clippings etc), the participant's voice and background music.
We normally conduct these workshops over a period of 5 days and is a process oriented workshop. So this is going to be a squeeze and more product oriented. So our aim will be to help participants to put together a product - their digital stories, in the 2 days.

Participants at this workshop are required to bring in a wide variety of images (between 10 to 15 photographs, scans of drawings/paintings, scans of newspaper clippings etc) that concern the issue/story they wish to tell along with an idea of the storyline (i.e. their personal story - what to say on the issue).

We will go through the process of putting the images together in sequences (a time-line) and record the voice of the participant for each story.

This is the first time we are directly addressing workshops for activists. It should have it's own challenges. Stay tuned for our experiences and workshop outcomes.