Life at the other end: participatory film-making, power and the ‘common third’

Abstract

In this article, we will describe and analyse the production of the documentary film Life at the Other End (The documentary film Life at the Other End (2012) was screened at Picture This: International Disabilities Film Festival in Calgary, Canada; Steps-International Film Festival on Human Rights, Ukrain; at the Joint Social Work Education Conference, Royal Holloway University, London; Staffordshire Performing Arts Film Festival, UK and at the We Care Film Festival, New Delhi, India where it won the 2nd place as the best film on disability (up to 60 min category). The film can be watched on Youtube here: http://bit.ly/1O8zEqp). The film followed a group of experts-by-experience who are members in a Social Work Inclusion Group (SWIG) (SWIG or Social Work Inclusion Group is affiliated to the University of Portsmouth. For more details about SWIG please see here: http://swig.uk.net/) affiliated to the Division of Social Work at the University of Portsmouth. The film followed the group during a process of writing and performing a play based on their personal experiences in the social care system. The production process will be explored as a case study for the application of the ‘common third’ approach. The case will highlight some of the approach’s strengths and will describe the circumstances in which it failed (This article is in memory of Andrew Chappell who chaired SWIG, took a central part in the play and film discussed here and passed away on 23 July 2016).

Keywords:

• Service-users
• experts-by-experience
• power
• representation
• common-third
• documentary film making