NESFAS believes that documentation of agrobiodiversity is paramount for maintaining visibility to a wide audience. With this in mind, NESFAS has taken collaborative measures to document food festivals, agricultural practices, cultural diversity, plants and most importantly, documenting people’s own stories. Methods of story-telling and documentation were usually done via oral, written, photography and video.
The videos are produced in an extensively participatory manner, where community members have substantial influence on the nature and theme of the contents. Participatory Video is an important documentation tool, in which NESFAS in collaboration with the Indigenous Partnership and InsightShare, a community development organisation with 15 years experience combining media technology, with participatory approaches and community engagement for locally-led change, encourages and trains the community members to document their own Traditional Knowledge and different issues relating to Agriculture.
Since April 2014, the organization has been working in creating participatory video hubs around the Northeast region starting from our very own state. On 7th August, NESFAS set up a participatory video “hub” in Garo Hills. The community members were trained in the various phases of videography – story boarding, script writing, shooting and editing. The training programme, which lasted nearly two weeks, was facilitated by Chris Atkins, consultant to Insightshare and expert on participatory video production, in three villages
Following the establishment of video “hubs” in Garo Hills, one each was set up in Nongtraw and Mawphu, East Khasi Hills, and two other two were established in the Nagaland districts of Chezami and Noklak. With each training received and every video made, the respective teams consistently progressed towards showcasing heavier and more serious issues which would be evident with future follow-ups on this area.
The videos that were produced in the villages were screened at the ITM 2015. The purpose of this activity was to provide a platform for the village communities to share their stories with the people from different parts of the world who were present at the event.
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