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BOTTOM-UP DEVELOPMENT: PARTICIPATORY MICRO-

PLANNING
Author: Fuente, David

Plan, Monitor and Evaluate

Introduction
Participatory Planning
Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E)

Introduction

Participatory approaches can be used in each stage of programme and project

cycles: during planning, while monitoring progress, and after a programme has
come to an end.

In participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation the process of engagement is as

important as the outcomes. It aims to shift power from development professionals to
the intended beneficiaries of the intervention. With participatory approaches, it is
these people who set the direction for change, plan their priorities, and decide
whether the intervention has made progress and delivered relevant change.

There is now a long tradition of participatory approaches to development planning,

practiced by donors, governments and NGOs. But the involvement of local
stakeholders in the monitoring and evaluation of interventions lags behind; although
Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E) is nothing new, it is not as widely
used as participatory approaches to planning.
Learn and Empower

Introduction
Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) is one of the names now given to
participatory processes of critical reflection, analysis and collective action by local
people.

Many participatory methods (PMs) are used to support PLA and other similar
processes. They are ways of learning that empower people to imagine a different
world. Through facilitation that aims to bring about change, such processes focus on
learning by all participants, valuing diversity, supporting group interactions and
addressing the importance of context.

Learning approaches to development

Learning approaches to development emerged in response to the perceived failures
of the bureaucratic blueprint approaches to development assistance which were
dominant in the post-war era. They have contributed to the development and
evolution of PMs, and to PLA’s focus on learning
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Particularly important was the work of David Korten, who in 1980 put forward a
‘Learning Process Approach’ to development that embraces mistakes, plans with
people, and links knowledge and action. This approach overlapped
with organisational learning theory and practice, which has explored how and why
learning happens in organisations, and how this learning can be used to improve
their work.

Reflective practice
Reflective practice is a collection of methods for both personal and social
development. It supports practitioners and participants in participatory processes to
undertake cycles of learning, reflection and action about their own experiences, with
the aim of transforming themselves, their relationships within groups, organisations
and social systems, and ultimately those systems themselves.

By building the self-awareness and creativity of individuals and strengthening their

connections to their values, reflective practice contributes to both personal change
and collective development.

Empowerment
If participatory methods are processes of learning and reflection that empower
people to imagine a different world, what do we mean by empowerment?
Empowerment is defined and supported in many ways by different actors, reflecting
different underlying understandings of power. But often, understandings of
empowerment in participatory practice include the importance of making the space
to envision a different world, and creating the possibility to change existing power
relations in order to realise that vision.

Translating empowerment into social change?

If citizen participation and engagement can lead to empowerment, what are the
outcomes in terms of social change?

According to findings from ten years of research on citizen participation and

accountability, positive outcomes of citizen engagement include greater access to
state services and resources, increased capacities for collective action, inclusion of
new actors and issues in public spaces and a greater sense of empowerment and
agency.

But the path from participation to empowerment to positive social change is not
linear. The research also found that negative outcomes – ranging from tokenistic
participation to violent state response – were nearly as common as positive ones.
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Asking what makes the difference between the positive and the negative,
researchers highlighted six key areas that shape the outcome of citizen
engagement.

Research and Analyse

Introduction
In much participatory research, control over the process and agenda of the process
is handed over from the researcher to the participants, often local people.
Participants also analyse and reflect on the information generated by the research
process. This can be an empowering experience for community members, as well
as documenting local realities which can be used to inform policy and practice.

Participatory research
Participatory research is both a range of methods and an ideological perspective. Its
fundamental principles are that the subjects of the research become involved as
partners in the process of the enquiry, and that their knowledge and capabilities are
respected and valued.

Participatory research is ultimately about relationships and power. The key

relationships are between the researcher and the researched, and between local
people and those actors they see as powerful and who affect their lives.
Participatory researchers act as facilitators and work towards attaining equality in
these two relationships.

Local people involved in participatory research processes are often subordinate in

their own social context, while outside researchers are often perceived as experts
who impose their views. Transforming these dynamics is achieved by enabling local
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people to articulate their views and express their knowledge through describing and
analysing their own situation and problems. Many participatory research processes
also have an action component, which involve the participants in successive cycles
of analysis, reflection and action.

Means or end?
Different approaches to participatory research vary in purpose, level of
participation and representation. The particular balance of these elements depends
on the intentions of those initiating the research, and on the availability of time and
resources.

Purpose
Participatory research is initiated for a variety of reasons. The purpose can be very
functional – for example, to generate specific information on a particular theme for a
new programme or policy – or might aim for the empowerment of communities.
Whatever the purpose, it is important that participants are involved in both
generating and analysing data, as it is during the analysis that much of the learning
takes place.

Level of participation
Local people experience different levels of participation in participatory research
processes. In some, they set the agenda and objectives together with researchers,
are fully involved in data collection and analysis, and can adjust the goals of the
exercise and change research activities. The exact balance often depends on how
much power is retained by the researcher or the organisation that has initiated the
research.

Representation
Who are the ‘local people’ we talk about? In participatory research it is crucial to
understand the make-up of local communities and the power relations within them,
and to include members of different social groups who have different perspectives
on their circumstances. Without due attention to difference, social inequalities can
be reproduced in the research process and its outcomes.

Participatory research and the project cycle

Participatory research and analysis can be used at different stages of the project
cycle: problem identification, assessment of local priorities, monitoring of progress
and evaluation. It can be used to inform policy design and to provide ‘reality checks’
to adjust existing policy frameworks. In each case, to be effective, participatory
research needs to be linked to other stages of the cycle. A widely recognised
problem is that activity planning does not take the outcomes of participatory
research into account, resulting in an intervention that does not do justice to the
principles of participatory research.
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Participatory research and policy

Participatory research brings out the views of local people: their reality, their
challenges, and their understanding of problems and solutions. Their ideas may
prove to be quite distinct from those in charge of formulating the policies that affect
their lives. Participatory research can therefore produce surprising insights for
policy, and may challenge the assumptions on which policy frameworks are based.
It may also reveal why certain development interventions intended to help the poor
are not actually used by local people.

Participatory research and transnational knowledge networks

Much participatory research has focused on either activities at the local level, or on
transmitting grassroots views to governments. But many of the challenges of
development and governance in today’s world cross national boundaries and
demand new ways of creating, sharing and using knowledge. This has led some
participatory researchers to focus on building research networks that cross national
boundaries to produce knowledge and action to improve citizen participation and
accountability.

Communicate
Introduction

New tools for communication

Introduction

It’s an exciting time to be doing participatory communication work in development.

An explosion of new methods, technologies, theories and approaches has taken
place around the world, adding enormously to the range of available methods for
participation. Nearly 90 per cent of the world’s population is now covered by a
mobile phone signal, and nearly 40 per cent have access to the Internet.

Increasingly sophisticated visual methods and tools for networking and data
collection give us access to different forms of knowledge and political action. New
technologies are being used not just to study reality, but also to open up other
realms of the possible.

Examples come from all over the world. Researchers in The Chittagong Hill Tract
region of Bangladesh are using computers to help women construct their own digital
stories, allowing us an insight into their everyday realities. The events of the Arab
Spring showed how bloggers reporting news from the streets can have more
credibility than mainstream news sources. Mobile phone software allows farmers in
rural Ghana to check on current crop prices before selling their produce. Digital
mapping technology in Haiti and Palestine has been used to help relief workers to
quickly access hard-hit communities. Mapping and crowd-sourcing technology have
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been used in Nairobi to create a citizen reporting system in the urban slum of
Kibera.

The power of the visual

The importance of the visual, and of popular culture, is increasingly significant in
public engagement with development research and practice. Visual methods can put
ideas in a concrete form, which is often both more accessible and more compelling
than written texts. Many traditional participatory methods – calendars, maps, models
and diagrams – relied on the visual. New technologies have strengthened and
diversified this existing tendency.

This growth in the strength of the visual has emerged hand in hand with a revolution
in digital technology. The explosion of social networking and the ubiquity of
affordable digital technology that allows people to document, capture and create
visual imagery is unprecedented. It has created a multitude of new ways for people
to access and engage with information and with other people. Photography and film
are key forms of documentation and expression in this new, networked environment.

Facilitate
Why Facilitation?

More on facilitation

Why Facilitation?

Facilitation and facilitate are not words that were much used thirty years ago. Even
recent dictionaries treat them cursorily. The Collins English Dictionary (2005) has:

Facilitate (vb.): to make easier; assist the progress of

But the usage of the words is much richer now. Their rise has happened alongside
and complemented the evolution of participatory methods. For although participation
can occur spontaneously, in a development context it is usually induced, enabled,
provoked, encouraged, catalysed or caused to happen by an actor. In short, it is
usually facilitated by a facilitator.

So now we have books and courses on facilitation. Facilitators are trained. There
are approaches, methods and exercises for facilitation, and attitudes, behaviours,
relationships and ethics for facilitators to take into account.

The power of facilitation

On the surface it sometimes seems that facilitation is somehow neutral: surely all a
facilitator does is bring people together and enable them to interact, with outcomes
which emerge from the process and belong to the participants? This is theoretically
possible, and may to a degree be desired and achieved, but more often a facilitator
has an idea of where things should be going, and is far from neutral.
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So we have a continuum of facilitation behaviours and relationships from

 open-ended to goal-oriented
 emerging to converging
 empowering group autonomy to facipulation.

Facipulation is a word which still gets a laugh: a combination of facilitate and

manipulate, it means to facilitate in a manipulative manner. It points to the pervasive
reality that, to varying degrees, facilitators set agendas, steer processes, frame
analysis, and summarise conclusions.

In short, facilitation entails the exercise of power – whether at one end of the
spectrum the power to initiate a process, stand back and let a group process take its
course, or at the other end, to manage the process so that it ‘remains on track’
towards a predetermined goal.

Facilitation and participatory methods

There are now a multitude of participatory methods (PMs). Many have distinct
contexts, whether agriculture, health, natural resource management or transparency
and accountability. Many have been named and have distinct identities – Popular
Theatre, Reflect, Appreciative Inquiry, Most Significant Change, outcome
mapping, participatory budgeting. More and more are linked with new technologies –
Participatory Geographic Information Systems, crowdsourcing, and many
applications of the Internet and mobile phones. All require facilitation. Someone has
to make them happen and help them along.
And they need special skills, and more importantly, special attitudes and behaviours.
As Ugandan teacher and facilitator Maria Nandago wrote in Springs of
Participation in 2007, “training and facilitation are the key enablers of the spread and
success of participatory methods… Asked who are the most important persons in
the development, spread and evolution of high-quality PMs, without hesitating I will
respond that it is the facilitators”.

A good facilitator of PMs and participatory approaches and processes will often be
creative and, together with participants, improvise a process, drawing on a diversity
of traditions and methods.

Useful methods and ideas

These pages provide a more in depth look at a whole range of issues, ideas,
theories and methods.   They aim to give detail and explanation, provoke thinking,
offer resources and the opportunity to comment.   All the pages to date are all listed
here, but they can also be accessed under relevant activity areas (the coloured tabs
on the home page).

Accountable Aid
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Could it be that accountability is the single most important thing to focus on in

international aid? If states, governments and private sector companies became
accountable to their citizens, voters and workers, would community development
and international aid efforts still be needed?

We often hear that aid is needed because states are not always accountable to their
citizens – perhaps because of violent conflicts, natural disasters or corruption. Aid,
the argument goes, can help to narrow these accountability gaps, either by
supporting citizens where the government is not doing so, or by working with
government institutions to encourage them towards more accountable governance.
That aid is needed because some countries and peoples have exploited others
unaccountably throughout history is rarely part of this narrative.

Accountability relationships play out in development practice and aid programmes in

various ways. Official aid agencies and NGOs, for example, fund accountability and
transparency programmes or initiatives with the objective of reforming governance
practices they judge to be unaccountable. Aid agencies engage recipient
governments in policy dialogue to try to persuade them to be more transparent and
accountable to their citizens in their use of public funds and aid. Aid programmes
are subject to monitoring, evaluation, impact assessment and reporting using a wide
array of tools and standards, although few are designed to account to those citizens
whose lives are meant to be improved by international aid.
When development aid is given, the tax-payers in aid-giving countries need to be
reassured that those receiving it use it for its intended purpose. To ensure that this
happens stringent reporting procedures are imposed on community groups and
development NGOs. We might call this accounting for aid.
Only much more rarely do we hear of aid agencies that introduce special measures
so that the recipients of their aid can hold them to account for their aid-giving
practices. This, by contrast, is accountable aid.
Accountability and Transparency is further discussed by IDS fellow Rosie McGee
and others on Duncan Green’s Blog From Poverty to Power.

Citizen Participation and Accountability

In the development field in recent years, increasing attention has been given to
understanding and promoting methods which enable relatively powerless people to
hold more powerful people, organisations and institutions to account. Many
development practitioners see efforts towards this kind of accountability as having
the potential to transform power relations in favour of the less powerful.

For those who look at issues of governance and development from the perspective
of citizens, it is both the right and the responsibility of citizens to participate in
accounting for themselves and in holding other actors to account. If social exclusion
and discrimination are to be reversed, it is particularly important for governments
and aid agencies to be accountable to marginalised and excluded citizens. Involving
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such citizens in accountability initiatives calls for particularly innovative and far-
reaching participatory processes.

The Participation, Power and Social Change team at IDS is involved in designing,
implementing, supporting and evaluating initiatives that work towards different
aspects of accountability, including accountable governance and accountable aid.
We work not only to facilitate participation in such initiatives and strengthen citizens’
voices, but also to understand and address the underlying power relations in our
accountability work. In the words of a well-known scholar of accountability, Jonathan
Fox, “if voice is about capacity for self-representation and self-expression, then
power is about who listens.” (Accountability Politics: Power and voice in rural
Mexico, 2008)

What is accountability and why is it important?

In their Policy Briefing on Making Accountability Count, IDS researchers Joanna
Wheeler and Peter Newell ask why accountability matters for different actors, and
under what conditions it operates. They tell us that “the concept of accountability
describes the rights and responsibilities that exist between people and the
institutions that affect their lives, including governments, civil society and market
actors.”

They say that accountability takes many different forms, but go on to describe the
two key components of most accountability relationships:

 Answerability – the right to get a response, and the obligation to provide one
 Enforceability – the capacity to ensure that an action is taken, and access to
mechanisms for redress.

They also argue that when accountability works, citizens are able to make demands
on powerful institutions and ensure that those demands are met. This can enable
them to realise their rights, and to gain access to resources.

How do citizens participate in claiming accountability?

Many methods for citizens to participate in claiming accountability have evolved
since the 1990s. In their 2013 paper on The Impact of Transparency and
Accountability Initiatives (TAIs), IDS researchers John Gaventa and Rosemary
McGee look at TAIs from five different sectors. They report on a range of
approaches for citizen participation in TAIs from different parts of the world,
including
 Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys, citizen report cards, score cards, social
audits and community monitoring have all been used to develop direct
accountability relationships between service users and service providers.
 Participatory budgeting, sector-specific budget monitoring and participatory
audits have all been used to improve citizen engagement in the management of
public finances.
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What are the outcomes of citizen engagement?

In their Working Paper So What Difference Does it Make?, John Gaventa and Greg
Barrett map the outcomes of citizen engagement from an analysis of one hundred
case studies drawn from research carried out by the Development Research Centre
on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability.

They cluster the positive outcomes of citizen engagement into four main categories.

 Construction of citizenship. Increased civic and political knowledge; a

greater sense of empowerment and agency.
 Practices of citizen participation. Increased capacities for collective action;
new forms of participation; deepening of networks and solidarities.
 Responsive and accountable states. Greater access to state services and
resources; greater realisation of rights; enhanced state responsiveness and
accountability
 Inclusive and cohesive societies. Inclusion of new actors and issues in
public spaces; greater cohesion across social groups.

They found that three quarters of the examples of citizen engagement reported in
their case studies had a positive outcome which was included in one of these
categories.

Empowerment

Empowerment has been defined and supported in many ways in development

cooperation, reflecting different underlying theories of change that are often implicit.
The frameworks discussed in this section are useful because they take into account
not only agency – individual and group capacity for action – but also structure –
underlying norms, beliefs and institutions.

The frameworks are taken from studies of women’s empowerment carried out by
the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment research consortium, which understands
empowerment as a journey rather than a destination. What that journey entails will
depend upon how power is understood. As consortium researchers Rosalind Eyben,
Andrea Cornwall and Naila Kabeer wrote in their 2008 paper Conceptualising
Empowerment and the Implications for Pro-poor Growth, empowerment happens
when “individuals and organised groups are able to imagine their world differently
and to realise that vision by changing the relations of power that have been keeping
them in poverty.”

The role of imagination in this definition is key, as it reflects the ability of

marginalised or excluded groups to reflect critically on their situation and to develop
a vision of alternatives that they can act upon. Without this critical awareness,
individual and collective empowerment and action will be less effective.
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Empowerment: liberal or liberating?

In Liberal vs. Liberating Empowerment, her 2009 paper for the Pathways of
Women’s Empowerment consortium, Brazilian feminist anthropologist Cecilia
Sardenberg draws on her experience of women’s movements in Latin America to
highlight the differences between two key forms of empowerment.
She defines liberal empowerment as “a process individuals engage in to have
access to resources so as to achieve outcomes in their self-interest.” She goes on to
argue that collective political organization is not necessary to achieve this kind of
empowerment, and economic, legal and personal changes are sufficient for liberal
empowerment.”

Liberal empowerment is associated with trends of individual self-help, and is widely

used in business leadership and employee motivation programmes. Most
mainstream development discourse and practice emphasises this understanding of
empowerment.

A liberal view of empowerment sees it as a process through which individuals obtain

the ‘power to’ act, and is based on an assumption that power is a resource held and
used by people and groups. It can be criticized for ignoring the power that is part of
social structures, because it fails to address the norms, discourses and behaviour
that are socialised and internalised by all actors, but are less visible and difficult to
challenge. It also does not recognise ‘power with’ or ‘power within’ as expressions of
power. Sardenberg argues that these omissions mean that a liberal approach to
empowerment is not the most effective framework for women’s empowerment in the
long-term.

By contrast, Sardenberg defines liberating empowerment as being “influenced by

empowerment as a goal of radical social movements” and emphasizes “the
increased material and personal power that comes about when groups of people
organize themselves to challenge the status quo through some kind of self-
organization of the group.”

Liberating empowerment thus becomes not a means to meet development goals,

but an end in itself, and a process of gaining the ability to make strategic life
choices.

Three dimensions of empowerment

In her 2005 paper, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: A critical analysis
of the third Millennium Development Goal, Naila Kabeer, Professor of Gender and
Development at the London School of Economics, identifies three key dimensions of
empowerment:
 resources, pertaining to the existing preconditions
 agency, defined as the capacity to define and pursue their strategic choices
despite possible opposition
 achievements, the outcome of a person exercising their agency.
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While this definition of empowerment at first seems focused on individual agency

rather than structural change, Kabeer also calls attention to what she calls the
conditions and consequences of choice, which are always shaped by context. As
such, she argues the second dimension of empowerment also includes
“transformative forms of agency that do not simply address immediate inequalities,
but are used to initiate longer-term processes of change in the structures of
patriarchy.”

Women’s empowerment, for example, is dependent on collective solidarity in the

public arena as well as individual assertiveness in the private arena, with women’s
organizations and social movements having an important role to play in creating
conditions for change.

Facilitating workshops for the co-generation of knowledge: 21 tips

This set of tips was written by Robert Chambers in January 2013, based on his 2002
book Participatory Workshops: A sourcebook of 21 sets of ideas and activities,
which he refers to below as “PW.”

Most of these tips are generic and apply to all types of workshops for learning, and
sharing and co-generating knowledge, but in the book there are many others which
apply to specific workshop types.

Following the structure of the book, there are 21 tips, organised into three sections:
planning and preparation, the workshop, and follow-up and actions.

A. Planning and preparation

1. Reflect on the “why?” and the “so what?” of the workshop

What sort of workshop is it? What sorts of knowledges are you hoping will be
shared, learnt about and co-generated? Who might co-convene and co-facilitate?
Who has what – including creativity – to share? Who can contribute to the content of
the workshop and to its process and culture? Who needs to meet whom? How will
participants benefit? What outputs, follow-up and impact might the workshop have?
Who will any outputs be for? Who will be able and willing to follow up at once in
preparing, disseminating and further developing outputs?

2. Write or co-create a concise concept note

This need not be long and should not be too detailed, lest it constrain flexibility and
the scope to seize emerging opportunities. Send the note out with invitations. For
more creative workshops, say that the process may evolve and may modify the
concept and purpose.

3. Use workshops to get to know key players face-to-face

There really is no full alternative to meeting face-to-face. Skype, teleconferences
and group telephone conversations are not a substitute, though they are more
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effective when you have already met face-to-face. The numerous early participatory
rural appraisal (PRA) workshops, combined with the group immersions in villages of
the first PRA South-South exchanges, helped us share and reinforce excitement
and solidarity, and gave many of us a sense of common identity – we liked and
respected one another. The workshops were occasions to look forward to.
With Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), the 2011 Water Supply and
Sanitation Collaborative Council Global Forum in Mumbai had for some of us a
sense of reunion, almost of family, as we met again people we already knew from
the regional sanitation conferences or in other contexts. The sense of common
purpose and relationships that can result is precious.

4. Co-convene
Some workshops cannot and should not be co-convened, but co-convening has
much to be said for it: it means co-commitment and co-ownership, brings wider
experience into decision-making, can share costs, and improves chances of follow
up. One, two or at most three partners may be optimal. With more partners,
transaction costs rise if they engage with the preparatory process. This happened
when we had nine partners for the 2009 South East Asia Regional CLTS Workshop
in Phnom Penh, with a flood or storm of widely copied emails.

5. Choose a fitting venue

The venue should match the occasion, the participants and the purpose. This is
easier said than done. For a participatory workshop, the usual conditions of space,
furniture, wall space and equipment apply. Relative isolation, peace and good
amenities matter for writeshops, and for sharing and brainstorming workshops which
have the character of retreats. One reason why the Nepal Participatory Action
Network has survived for almost 20 years is that the founders had two or three quiet
retreats staying outside Kathmandu to reflect, evolve and agree basic principles,
plan and decide how to establish it. At the other extreme, where Ministers and
senior officials are involved, it may be (but not necessarily is) advisable to move up-
market for the venue. Proximity to field visits matters, although longish journeys can
be turned to good uses (see 14 below).

6. Plan, but do not overplan

Distinguish fixed points from open time. Fixed points may be the start, and opening
if there has to be one; the end, and closing if there has to be one; field visits; and
shopping or tourist time off. From these fixed points, plan backwards with cards on
the floor. List topics and activities on cards. Start with how you intend to end. Then
continue planning backwards inserting and moving the cards around. Recognise
rhythm and anticipate low points – usually at or just over half time – Wednesday
afternoon in a five-weekday workshop. Wednesday is a good day for a field trip, or
an afternoon off, or doing something different.
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7. Be prepared and optimally unprepared with the programme

Government people, and some others, often want a detailed programme, especially
if there is a formal opening or closing. The degree of pre-programming depends on
the nature of the workshop. It is quite often politic to have a programme even though
you know it will in the event not be followed. Be careful, though, if there are people
coming for only one or a few sessions, or they may turn up to find you doing
something else. One device is to label sessions, or half a day, or a whole day, or
even more, as ‘Open Space’. This has the advantage of a meaning which is both
specific, giving legitimacy, and general, giving flexibility. Optimal unpreparedness
means being open to an unfolding process that cannot be fully foreseen. Where
possible, avoid giving a closing time for the day – a good participatory process can
stimulate energy, excitement and commitment which often should run its course.

8. Be careful and thorough with invitations

Some of those I invited to the first PRA South-South lacked relevant experience or
were unable to follow up. It was a sadly wasted opportunity. The ‘wrong’ people can
also be a distraction. On the other hand, and more important, failure to invite key
people who should be invited, or who feel they should, can cause lasting resentment
which can be deeply damaging if those slighted harbour their grudge. Be especially
careful to inform and invite people in the host country, city or area. Check carefully
and issue invitations well in advance if you can. This can matter a great deal with
governments and government people.

9. Be aware of government protocol

When inviting specific government people, getting procedure and process right can
be time-consuming and frustrating. Assuring good government participation can
require a lot of care and patience. Sometimes a person you want to invite can give
informed advice on how to proceed.

10. Act early for visas

It is sad how often late applications for visas prevent participation in international
workshops. Ease of obtaining visas may even be a necessary factor in choice of
country for the venue. Some countries have few embassies in other countries, which
can delay, complicate and add to the financial and transaction costs of getting visas.

11. Identify key documents, encourage participants to study them in advance,

and have them available
There may be research reports or summaries, websites, or other documents. Do not
overload people, but ensure that they have the opportunity to be informed and up-to-
date. Where government policy is involved, make sure that key policy statements
and other documents are identified and available.

B. The workshop
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12. Encourage multiple ownership and credit

Do not seek a high profile or institutional or personal recognition. Let ownership and
credit be collective. Any impression that a workshop is a public relations exercise for
an organisation is damaging and self-defeating. Do not allow yourself big ideas
about yourself or your importance.

13. Set an informal atmosphere, and err on the side of informality

There are several ways of setting the atmosphere at the beginning (PW, pp. 5–30).
For CLTS, Kamal Kar’s instruction to ‘greet others and tell them when you last did a
shit in the open’ works well. Standing on a map and then making brief self-
introductions is another good technique – we used it in the Nainital CLTS workshop
with mainly government people whilst waiting for the arrival of the VIP who was
formally opening the workshop. It is acceptable to senior people – Principal
Secretaries in Tanzania were delighted and found it fun and interesting. Buses – an
exercise which clusters people by type of organisation – is another; at the AfricSan
Conference in Kigali, clustering by type of organisation provoked an instant
animated buzz which ran on for almost ten minutes as government people met
government people from other countries, and the same for separate clusters of
people from international agencies, INGOs and NGOs, and one group of
freelancers.

14. Make good use of car and bus journeys!

Car and bus journeys are opportunities. In Zambia we had a 3–4 hour bus journey
from Lusaka to visit Chief Macha’s Open Defecation Free Chiefdom. During the trip
back we could move around and discuss what we had seen. Out of those
conversations came the idea of the Lusaka Declaration. Without the consensus and
commitment that developed during the bus trip it would not have happened. An
advantage of vehicles is the lack of eye contact much of the time, and the lack of
pressure to keep talking, giving time for reflection.

15. Brainstorm to create the agenda.

This applies mainly with smaller workshops, with numbers of, say 10–50. A concept
note, or a sense of common purpose, and a framework of timings may already exist.
The agenda can evolve through all participants brainstorming and/or individually
writing on cards which are then sorted on the ground into emergent categories.
These can then be discussed and agreed. The clustered cards can then provide the
basis for plenary or group activities. In several cases, they have also provided the
structure for a final output. Brainstorming to decide how to handle the emergent
topics can lead to a variety of solutions – some in plenary, some in groups with
feedback to plenary, some deferred. In a PRA sharing workshop in Pakistan, for
example, seven topics coalesced. Three were crosscutting. So four groups were
formed, and each included in their agenda each of the three that crosscut.
 Page 16 of 39

16. Self-organising systems on the edge of chaos

Self-organising systems on the edge of chaos (SOSOTEC) is a label given to an
unplanned learning process within a workshop (see PW 93,103,105,116,123–8). It is
best, if not vital, not to be pre-programmed. Brainstorming onto cards and sorting
them sets a starting agenda (as in 15 above). Volunteers come forward to be
champions, often for clusters of cards to which they have contributed. Ideally there
will be two or three champions for each subject. Between them they combine and
take turns as writers, interviewers, recorders, searchers and hunter-gatherers for
their topic. Each topic group sets up shop with table(s), chairs and laptop(s),
together with their cards. They plan their activities, and then work as a team to tap
into their own knowledges, experience and ideas, and to seek and solicit
contributions from others. The process then runs itself. Variants of SOSOTEC led to
the CLTS Lusaka Declaration and the Bamako Consensus, and were key to
Lukenya Notes.

17. Declare a PowerPoint-free zone

PowerPoint did not seriously raise its head until the 2000s. Now, unless warned in
advance, participants are liable to go to pains to prepare presentations and feel hurt
if they cannot show and speak to them. But (mercifully) ‘death by PowerPoint’ has
become a cliché. PowerPoint can slow and stop a participatory process: it is pre-set
and rather inflexible, interrupts flow, takes time (often more than allocated), induces
passivity and cannot easily respond to emergence. Very selectively and sparingly
used it can be positive, especially with visuals – in presenting one or a very few
photographs or key diagrams. To avoid its damaging distractions, some workshops
have with good effect been declared PowerPoint Free zones. Wherever possible,
plan and announce this in advance.

18. Use Participatory PowerPoint

Paradoxically, Participatory Power Point (PPP) is a brilliant, powerful and quick way
of achieving agreement and consensus on a text. A fast and accurate typist familiar
with the topic sits and writes, with the text appearing on a screen for all to see. The
text can be composed jointly or – usually better and faster – a draft is written which
is then modified. Proposed changes can be entered in italics, and then changed to
normal when there is agreement. If there is a serious debate or a deep
disagreement, text can be abandoned, or a small group can be delegated to go off
and hammer out a revision and bring it back. Without PPP we could never have
achieved the Lusaka Declaration or the Bamako Consensus.

C. Follow-up and actions

19. Think in advance about follow-up and seek agreement on actions

Follow-up needs to be planned for, but announcing it up front may be undermining.
Ideally, ideas and commitments emerge from the participatory process and come
individually and collectively from participants. Far too often, follow-up is lacking.
 Page 17 of 39

Either it is promised and does not happen, or in the conditions of the end of a
workshop – particularly if there is a formal closing – it is simply squeezed out by lack
of time. There was good follow-up from the first Nainital CLTS workshop, with a one-
page statement agreed by the workshop, a four-page summary written the day after
the workshop, and a large follow-up meeting of about 70 people in Delhi about three
weeks later. Follow up on text can involve time-consuming editing and iterations with
the draft notes. Plan ahead and agree that someone will have the time.

20. Ensure short prompt summaries of workshops

It is widely considered good practice to have a detailed record of a workshop. If this
is succinct, out in a matter of days, and widely distributed, it can be useful and
multiply impact. But far too often laborious notes are taken, for example by a student
who is not familiar with the subject, and then written up none too well, and much too
long – a lead balloon that sinks without trace, read by no one except those who want
to be sure they are mentioned. A short, punchy summary of main points has more
impact. Pre-plan for this. Have time after a workshop ring-fenced for it. It is the
summary that will receive the most attention, while at the same time pointing to the
topics in the main text which can be consulted.

21. Convene or co-convene in your own way, and share what you do and learn
How Do You Measure the Difficult Stuff?
It is widely argued that the development projects that are most transformational are
often the least measurable. Progress, or otherwise, in empowerment, rights and
social justice cannot easily be turned into neat, numerical graphs. Yet the pressure
to be accountable is increasing all the time.  In his blog, “How Do You Measure the
Difficult Stuff (Empowerment, Resilience) and Whether Any Change is Attributable
to Your Role?",  Duncan Green, strategic advisor for Oxfam, explores the complexity
and measurement of development interventions.

Levels of Participation

Participation is a ‘buzz word’ in international development, a term that embraces a

wide range of possible meanings. Many different actors in development adopt the
language of participation, but with different and sometimes contradictory motivations
and objectives. Here we look at different meanings of participation and discuss two
important typologies that highlight the different ways the word has been used and
the outcomes that have resulted.

The many meanings of participation

As one of the key words in development, participation is used by actors from very
different political backgrounds. Lack of conceptual clarity poses real risks.
Representatives from opposite ends of the political spectrum use the language of
participation but mean different things. Some speak of transforming power
structures in society that oppress the poor, while others talk of the economic
 Page 18 of 39

participation needed to advance a neoliberal agenda. In local politics, ‘participation’

can mask manipulation, or the legitimation of interventions driven by more powerful
actors in which citizens have no control.

Clarity and specificity are therefore necessary in any policy discussion or

intervention claiming to make use of participatory approaches. It helps to understand
what citizens actually do, or what is done to them, when they are encouraged to
participate. It also helps to understand participation as something deeply political,
and to retain the notion of rights and empowerment.

To clarify the concept of participation, a number of scholars have formulated

typologies which outline different levels of participation. Two well-known efforts are
Sherry Arnstein’s 1969 ladder of citizen participation and Sarah White’s 1996 work
on the forms and functions of participation.

The ladder of citizen participation

The ladder of citizen participation (shown below) has eight steps, each representing
a different level of participation. From bottom to top, the steps explain the extent of
citizen participation and how much real power citizens have to determine the
process and outcomes.

The ladder is a useful tool for interpreting what is meant when programmes and
policies refer to ‘participation’. Arnstein uses the terms ‘the powerful’ and ‘citizens’
as shorthand, but emphasises that neither are homogenous entities; and that each
grouping contains actors with more or less power.

At the lowest end of the ladder, forms of non-participation are used by powerful
actors to impose their agendas. Participation as tokenism occurs when participants
hear about interventions and may say something about them, which power holders
denote as ‘input’. However, the voices of participants will not have any effect on the
intervention; thus participation does not lead to change. At the higher end of the
ladder, participation is about citizens having more power to negotiate and change
the status quo. Their voices are heard and responded to.
 Page 19 of 39

Source: Arnstein, S. (1969) ‘A ladder of citizen participation’, Journal of the

American Institute of Planners 35.4: 216–224

What the ladder does not show are the actions and barriers to move from one level
to the next. Finally, in real-life situations many more levels may exist, and people
may move up and down the ladder over time within the same intervention.

The forms and functions of participation

Sarah White distinguishes four forms of participation: nominal, instrumental,
representative and transformative. She reasons that each form has different
functions, and argues actors ‘at the top’ (more powerful) and ‘at the grass roots’
(less powerful) have different perceptions of and interests in each form.

 Nominal participation is often used by more powerful actors to give

legitimacy to development plans. Less powerful people become involved in it
through a desire for inclusion. But it is little more than a display, and does not
result in change.
 Instrumental participation sees community participation being used as a
means towards a stated end – often the efficient use of the skills and knowledge
of community members in project implementation.
 Representative participation involves giving community members a voice in
the decision-making and implementation process of projects or policies that
 Page 20 of 39

effect them. For the more powerful, representative participation increases the
chances of their intervention being sustainable; for the less powerful, it may offer
a chance for leverage.
 Transformative participation results in the empowerment of those involved,
and as a result alters the structures and institutions that lead to marginalisation
and exclusion.

White’s work helps us to think about hidden agendas and the dynamic relationships
between more and less powerful actors. Discussing the differences or compatibilities
between bottom-up and top-down interests can lead to a clearer understanding of
the politics of participation. The actors at the top may talk about participation, but
intend to maintain the status quo. It is only in ‘transformative participation’ that the
power holders are in solidarity with the less powerful to take actions and shape
decisions.

White emphasises that this framework needs to be seen as something dynamic, and
that a single intervention can include more than one form of participation.

Organisational Learning

Organisational learning, in which leaders and managers give priority to learning as

integral to the practice of an organisation, is increasingly recognised as critical to
making development organisations work better. In order to make it a priority, we
need to understand how and why learning occurs in organisations, why it is an
important part of a healthy organisation, and how it can be promoted.

How and why does organisational learning happen?

There are a number of theories on how and why we learn within organisations. One
perspective, argued by Huber, assumes that learning happens through the effective
processing and interpretation of information that an organisation finds useful. This
has been criticised by Easterby-Smith and Araujo for assuming that people and
organisations behave according to rational considerations, and ignoring the political
agendas that influence organisational behaviour.
A more social perspective, argued by Cook and Brown, recognises that learning
emerges from social relationships and interactions, is a political process and is
dependent on the culture of an organisation. This leads to a focus not only on formal
structures and learning processes, but also on informal exchanges and relationships
between staff, and the value placed on learning and knowledge within the culture of
the organisation.
An important theory of organisational learning, first developed by Argyris and Schön,
is double-loop learning. This involves reflecting on experience and knowledge, and
using this reflection as a basis both for action and for critical questioning of the
underlying assumptions that previous strategies were based on. Double-loop
learning highlights the importance of collective reflection within organisational
learning: the need to reflect together on and challenge our deeply ingrained
assumptions about how the world works, and challenge them collectively.
 Page 21 of 39

As noted by Eyben, undertaking the critical reflection entailed by double-loop

learning can be challenging to participate in and to facilitate. Participation risks
exposing one’s own mistakes, or appearing to be disloyal to colleagues and friends.
It can also threaten existing hierarchies if, for example, junior staff are allowed to
reflect on the actions and decisions of senior staff.

Power relations within organisations shape learning processes. Not everyone’s

learning or knowledge will be equally valued, and some learning or knowledge might
challenge those in power. Individuals and organisations may not wish to reveal
knowledge from which they perceive they derive their power; particularly as
information generation and exchange is becoming increasingly important in
development projects. This raises the possibility that important knowledge is not
shared or imparted for fear of the loss of power this may entail.

This has implications for the structures which facilitate organisational learning within
an organisation. These structures need to be both formal and informal, encourage
trust amongst staff, allow staff to learn collectively, and support staff to engage in
free and honest conversations. Learning processes also need legitimacy, so
organisational learning needs to be supported by strong and engaged leadership.

Roper and Pettit acknowledge that much of the organisational learning literature is

aspirational, as individuals and organisations struggle to ‘unlearn’ dysfunctional
behaviours which undermine supportive institutional structures for learning. This
highlights the challenges of initiating and sustaining organisational learning
processes.
How to can learning be promoted?
If organisations are to create an environment that is supportive of double-loop
learning, they need to be able to ask how and why an intervention has been
successful. This requires understanding the complex set of factors that led to a
particular outcome, and the assumption on which interventions have been based.
Methodological innovations, for example the Most Significant Change tool
developed by Rick Davies and Jess Dart and the Theories of Change tool used by
the UK Department for International Development, offer ways of building and
articulating such an understanding.
The internal structures, rules, procedures and culture of organisations create strong
incentives or disincentives to learn. For example, the systems and structures of an
organisation mediate the ability of staff to interact, collaborate, and communicate
with each other. If these are integrated, Preskill and Torres argue, they can create
opportunities for mutual learning, but traditional organisational structures often
create silos, which may lead to disincentives for cross collaboration and learning.

Integrated management systems can go some way to address this by creating

incentives for cross-team working. However, such systems need to be reinforced by
the culture of an organisation. For example, an organisational culture that rewards
staff for disbursing funds can create incentives to act quickly and manage multiple
 Page 22 of 39

projects, leaving little time for learning, unless learning is equally rewarded and
recognised.

The capacity of an organisation to be open and confident enough to encourage a

culture of critical self-reflection and dialogue is intrinsically linked to institutional
incentives. These should not be confined to formal structures and approaches,
because learning happens both formally and informally.

Recognising that learning often happens informally has led to the development of
learning methodologies such as ‘open spaces’ and ‘unconferences’ – attempts to
formalise informal learning and also provide safe spaces to discuss issues people
feel less comfortable discussing in more formal or structured settings. These sorts of
informal spaces could form part of the institutional structures and incentives that
support learning through monitoring and evaluation.

Hailey and James have argued that the single most important incentive for
organisational learning is a learning leader, someone with a positive attitude towards
learning, and who practices it themselves. Learning leaders form a critical part of a
learning culture which creates incentives for staff to take risks.

The value an organisational culture puts on learning is closely related to their

attitude towards mistakes. Organisations evaluate their mistakes in different ways. If
an organisation regards mistakes as failures, the incentive for staff is to hide their
mistakes away and learning at the organisational level will not occur. However, if an
organisation regards mistakes as sources of learning, the incentive is for staff to
reflect on, discuss and learn from mistakes and be less fearful of taking risks.

Learning for accountability

The purpose for learning within an organisation will be affected by power relations.
Development organisations can be accountable in different directions. Accountability
may be upwards, to donors; horizontal, to partners; or downwards, to beneficiaries.
But many development organisations have distorted upwards accountability, so that
they are ultimately accountable to donors, but not the communities they work with.
This can result in learning systems that do not address downwards accountability as
well as they address upwards accountability. The distorted incentive appears to
value the knowledge and learning that donors demand, rather than the knowledge
and learning that other stakeholders value or require, which would lead to more
bottom-up learning being captured.

This points to the importance of the quality and nature of the upwards accountability
relationship in providing the incentives to learn from the bottom up. It also suggests
that upward accountability needs to be balanced by horizontal and downward
accountability, with systems that build sufficient trust to be able to give honest
feedback – often difficult when hierarchy and resource dependence makes honesty
difficult.

Participatory Community Arts Projects

 Page 23 of 39

Outsiders who try to represent marginalized indigenous cultures through art have
been criticized of various forms of misrepresentation including orientalism, exoticism
and romanticism. One approach to address these problems has been to work on
participatory art projects with indigenous communities. Representatives of
indigenous communities, it is hoped, can provide a more complicated and realistic
insider's portrayal of their community.

 In the last decade there has been a surge of participatory and community-based art
projects all over the world. These projects differ greatly in form, content and aim.
Community art projects allow audiences different ways to engage with and
experience the art work through installations that are often site-specific and make
use of objects and ideas from the communities. Several also combine participatory
action research with art production.

Visualising Development with Identity – a community art project

This project, a global initiative of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), The
Netherlands,took place between 2011-2012.  It aimed to examine and counter
stereotypes of indigenous people. Installations, music videos, documentary films,
soundscapes and live performances were used to show how indigenous and
minority cultures have changed across generations.  It has focussed on two key
projects.

In India...
IDS Fellow Pauline Oosterhoff has been working with the Khasi people, an
indigenous group mostly living in eastern Meghalaya, a state in northeast India.   In
this project the Shillong-based “Cryptographik Street Poets” teamed up with Khasi
musicians to address alcohol abuse among the Khasi youth. In order to get a
realistic picture they visited San-Ker Mental Hospital to talk with patients enrolled in
the 3-month Detoxification and Rehabilitation program. They gained inspiration from
their stories which have been incorporated in the lyrics of a video “Poison
Thoughts”. Their message is not ‘anti-alcohol’, but it is rather a warning to respect
your limits and be aware of the possibly devastating consequences if those limits
are crossed.

Another art project with the Khasi people has seen the production of an art
installation - The Red, Gold and Green of the Khasis.  Depicting their rich physical,
traditional and spiritual heritage, the installation also shows the threats they face and
how they interpret these.  The title is explained as follows:
 Page 24 of 39

 Red stands for blood. Also it can symbolize danger.

 Gold represents the wealth of natural resources and the Khasi cultural
heritage.
 Green is the land and the environment from which the Khasi live, which they
love and (need to) cherish. Also, both red and gold are to be found in the Khasi
jewellery.
A review of the installation appeared in the The Telegraph (Calcutta, India).
And in Uganda...
As part of the same project, artists have been working with the Benet people of
Uganda to explore their cultural heritage and children’s aspirations since their forced
displacement.  Moved from their mobile, forest-dwelling roots on Mount Elgon by the
Ugandan Wildlife Authorities, the Benet now have a sedentary agricultural lifestyle. 
This is both is hard to adapt to and is resulting in the loss of their heritage and
customs, along with their deep knowledge of forest ecology.  To visualize the Benet
identity, the artists worked closely with elders, leaders, women and children in
documenting and registering their stories.  The result of this 5-week artistic research
journey was a collaborative art-installation presented to an audience in December
2012, accompanied by sound, song and dances.  This is recorded in their
video Rooted: art project with the Benet people of Uganda.

Participatory Geographical Information Systems (PGIS)

What are Participatory Geographical Information Systems (PGIS)?

Spatial information technologies, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS),

Global Positioning Systems (GPS), remote sensing software and open access to
spatial data and imagery, empower those who command them. Differential access
can lead to gains to powerful people and interests to the disadvantage of
communities and local people, further marginalizing those already marginalized.
PGIS is a generic term for approaches which seek to reverse this. 

By combining PRA/PLA and spatial information technologies, minority groups have

been empowered along with those traditionally excluded from spatial decision-
making processes.  Giacomo Rambaldi’s publication ‘Participatory 3-dimensional
 Page 25 of 39

Modelling (P3DM)’ details how local people have been trained to use the
technologies to construct their own maps and 3-D models and use these for their
own research. These maps and models differ from the ground and paper maps of
PRA in their greater spatial accuracy, permanence, authority and credibility with
officialdom.  As Rambaldi points out in Barefoot Mapmakers and Participatory GIS,
they have been used as ‘interactive vehicles for spatial learning, information
exchange, support in decision making, resource use planning and advocacy
actions’.
How can PGIS be useful?

Villagers and their 3-D model in Monzo, Nepal

Applications have been many. They have included protecting ancestral lands and
resource rights; management and resolution of conflicts over natural resources;
collaborative resource use planning and management; intangible cultural heritage
preservation and identity building among indigenous peoples and rural communities;
equity promotion with reference to ethnicity, culture, gender, and environmental
justice; hazard mitigation, for example through community safety audits; and peri-
urban planning and research and climate change adaptation .

P3DM applications have been documented for countries as diverse as Australia,

Brazil, Bhutan, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Colombia, DRC, East Timor,
Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji, France, Gabon, Ghana, Grenada, India, Lao, Guyana,
Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, Namibia, Nicaragua, Papua New
Guinea, Philippines, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Solomon Islands,
South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago,
Uganda, and Vanuatu and Vietnam as shown on this map. In addition, there are
‘hundreds of non-documented cases where technology-intermediaries (mainly
NGOs) support Community-based Organisations or Indigenous Peoples in using
Geographic Information Technology and Systems (GIS) to meet their spatial
planning needs and/or achieve some leverage in their dealings with state
bureaucracy’.  An indicator of the power of mapping has been its restriction through
the Malaysian 2001 Land Surveyors Law, passed after a community map in
Sarawak had been instrumental in the legal victory of an Iban village against a tree
plantation corporation.
 Page 26 of 39

Where is PGIS now?

PGIS has now become a widespread form of ‘counter mapping’ enabling local
people to make their own maps and models, and using these for their own research,
analysis, assertion of rights and resolution of conflicts over land, and often reversing
power relations with government organizations, politicians and corporations.  The
power of participatory mapping is also being amplified by the opportunities offered
by the Internet (Web 2.0 and Social Media). Nowadays mapping is usually combined
with video production and use of social media to spread the information and call for
action which is particularly relevant in advocacy work. PGIS  practice touches on
many sensitive issues and is governed by a code of conduct available in 12
languages.

This piece draws heavily on the work of Giacomo Rambaldi and others.  It
particularly references the following articles and publications:
 Mbile, P (ed.) Electronic Journal of information Systems in Developing
Countries: Special Issue on Participatory Geographical Information Systems and
Participatory Mapping, Vol. 25
 Rambaldi, G. (2005) ‘Barefoot mapmakers and participatory GIS’, editorial
in Participatory GIS, ICT Update 27 (September).  Wageningen: CTA
Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation.
 Rambaldi, G et al (2006) PLA 54: Mapping for change: practice, technologies
and communication
 Rambaldi G. (2010). Participatory Three-dimensional Modelling: Guiding
Principles and Applications, 2010 edition CTA, Wageningen, The Netherlands
 Rambaldi G, Chambers R., McCall M, and Fox J. 2006. Practical ethics for
PGIS practitioners, facilitators, technology intermediaries and
researchers. PLA 54:106-113, IIED, London, UK
 Rocheleau, D.E. (2005)  Maps as power tools: locating ‘communities’ in space
or situating people and ecologies in place? In J. Peter Brosius, Anna
Lowenhaupt Tsing, Charles Zerner (Eds) Communities and Conservation:
Histories and Politics of Community-based Natural Resource
Management.  Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.  Chapter 13
Other useful resources:
 The Participatory GIS video channel website, created by CTA and hosting a
large number of PGIS videos.
 Forrester, J., and Cinderby, S. (2014) Guide to using Community Mapping and
Participatory-GIS. Prepared as part of the Managing Borderlands project and
funded by the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme of the
Economic & Social and Natural Environment Research Councils
 Page 27 of 39

 Piccolella A. (2013). Adaptation in practice: increasing adaptive capacity

through participatory mapping; International Fund for Agricultural Development
(IFAD); 28 p., IFAD, Rome, Italy
 Piccolella A., Hardcastle J. and Kereseka J. (2012). The multifaceted impacts
of participatory three-dimensional modelling (P3DM): experiences from the
Solomon Islands, Participatory Learning and Action Issue 66, pg 15-26; IIED,
London, UK
 Citizens as
Censors http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/projects/vgi/docs/position/Goodchild_VGI20
07.pdf
 Integrated Approaches to Participatory Development (iapad) website
 Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) http://www.iapad.org/ppgis/vgi.htm

Participatory Poverty Assessments

Governments and their development partners formulate and implement a range of

poverty reduction policies, frameworks and strategies. The rationale for Participatory
Poverty Assessments (PPAs) is that for these policies to work, the voices of poor
and marginalised people and their understandings of poverty need to be included.
Failure to respect and respond to how poor people experience poverty and what
they see as causing it can contribute to poverty reduction interventions missing their
targets.

PPAs became popular in the 1990s. Over time, three cases for their use became
apparent:

 Poor people have the right to participate in the design of policies targeting
them.
 PPAs generated new insights about poverty.
 PPA processes opened spaces for poor people to influence policy.

In many cases, the process of carrying out a PPA built new relationships between
government, aid actors, civil society organisations (CSOs) and ordinary people.
PPAs are not only used to design appropriate policies, but can also help in
implementing and monitoring them, providing a baseline for follow-up studies.

Understanding poverty
The early PPAs demonstrated that they could provide new and different information
about poverty, in particular supporting understandings of poverty as a multi-
dimensional phenomenon and the importance of taking a holistic approach to
people’s well-being. In particular, they:

 demonstrated that poverty is experienced differently by different kinds of

people, whether men or women, younger or older, or from different ethnic
groups.
 Page 28 of 39

 highlighted important non-economic aspects of poverty like vulnerability, social

exclusion, time poverty, seasonality and problems in access to services.

History
PPAs became popular in the 1990s. A summary of their evolution and the methods
they utilised, A Rough Guide to PPAs: An introduction to theory and practice, was
published in 2001 by Andy Norton of the UK Overseas Development Institute and
his colleagues.

The emergence of PPAs was closely related to the poverty reduction agenda of the
World Bank. At this time, governments who wanted to continue borrowing from the
World Bank were required to carry out poverty assessments and define a national
poverty line, both based on national household survey data.

The very first PPAs were small-scale research exercises designed to complement
the survey data used to produce poverty assessments. They comprised short field
visits by researchers who used participatory methods to engage with poorer people.
This led to criticisms from many development actors, including social development
experts within the Word Bank itself, about top-down understandings of poverty.
Building on these critiques, PPAs gradually developed into larger-scale research
exercises which aimed to capture people’s own analysis of poverty more
comprehensively, and channel their voices to the policy table.

First generation PPAs demonstrated the potential of the approach to produce

different information about poverty and new insights about its nature and dynamics.
The emphasis in this round of PPAs was on better information for better policies.

The second generation of PPAs built on this information focus, but also showed how
PPA processes could create new relationships between actors involved in poverty
reduction. The inclusion of a broad range of actors in implementing PPAs created
opportunities for collaboration or division of labour in the implementation of poverty
reduction strategies, and in the monitoring of progress. Second generation PPAs
emphasised the importance of policy influence by CSOs and poor people, and
amplified calls for more national control of poverty reduction strategies.

Evaluating PPAs
PPAs involve many different actors, some more powerful than others. They have
been criticised by some as being a tokenistic use of participatory methods by
powerful international institutions which have not resulted in any real change in
policy formulation or implementation. But they have also provided many non-
governmental actors with unprecedented access to policy processes, and a chance
to work with government in a positive and productive way.

Several questions can be asked about any PPA process which contribute to a
critical understanding of its value:
 Page 29 of 39

 How inclusive was the process of the PPA? Who decided which CSOs would
be involved, and under what conditions?
 How were local communities selected to participate, and who represented
them in the PPA fieldwork?
 What was the level of their participation of community members? Did they
simply get to state their opinions, or did they get involved in decisions about the
process and follow-up of a PPA?
 Were the process and outcomes of the PPA perceived as legitimate by all the
stakeholders?
 How are decisions made about poverty reduction policies, and are there any
accountability mechanisms in place to evaluate whether the PPA has influenced
these decisions?
 Did the PPA process open any space for citizens to monitor the government’s
progress in fighting poverty?

Participatory Visual Methods: a Case Study

It was twelve years ago that Bojan passed out in his English class.  It was then that
his brain tumour was discovered.  Forced to go to Ljubljana to get the treatment he
needed, Still Here tells the story of Bojan’s surgery and recovery.  It also tells the
story of Dr Šarkić.  Once one of the most-respected doctors at Doboj’s hospital, he
was expelled during the war because of his faith and ethnic origins.  Back in the
town today, he still does not practice in the hospital. 

A powerful portrayal of two connected lives, divided by differences of ethnicity and

religion, Still Here is just one of the 25 digital stories and participatory videos
produced through the Citizen Engagement through Visual Participatory Processes
project, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). 

Based on participatory visual methods, the project gave citizens in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (BiH) opportunities to tell stories about themselves, their municipalities
and the systems which affect their lives.  Their stories give powerful and personal
insights into the realities of citizenship, participation, democracy and local
governance in BiH today.  They are useful for future SDC programming, as well as
advocacy, activism and the sparking of public dialogues in BiH. 

What are participatory visual methods?

Participatory visual methods include different creative forms of communication and
expression, such as drama, photography, film, drawing, design, creative writing and
music.  Using collaborative processes, participants and facilitators work together to
produce powerful stories.

Uniquely, this project combined two different participatory visual methods:

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 Digital storytelling is a learning, creating and sharing experience supported

by technology.  Using film, animation, photos or audio recordings, participants
share aspects of their life story by creating their own short digital media
production.  In this project, participants used digital storytelling to create short
individual narratives, sharing their experiences and views on citizenship,
participation and local governance.
 Participatory video involves participants learning basic filming skills and
working together to agree narratives, and shoot and produce their films.  It is an
empowering process, enabling people to take action for solving their own
problems and communicating this to decision-makers, their communities and the
wider public.  In this project, a smaller group of participants used participatory
video to collectively analyse and synthesise the stories created through the
digital storytelling process. 

By using participatory visual methods, the project opened spaces for participants to
reflect, learn, and talk about issues which are not openly discussed in BiH.  It built
their skills in technology, communication and visual methods.  It encouraged them to
be creative and playful, and to put their own experiences, imaginations and
emotions into their stories. 

By linking individual narratives with collective analysis, the project’s combination of

digital storytelling and participatory video also encouraged participants to move
beyond their own lives to develop shared visions for democracy in BiH. 

What did we do?

The project brought together activists, development professionals, civil society
organisations, interested citizens and local government representatives in four
stages:

1. Training of trainers workshop: a small group of participants were trained in

running digital storytelling and participatory video workshops.  The group went
on to co-facilitate subsequent workshops, helping to form a pool of digital
storytelling and participatory video trainers in BiH.
2. Digital storytelling workshops: included ‘story circles’, for participants to tell
their stories to each other, training with computers and other technology, and
creative exercises.  The digital stories created cover themes such as activism,
citizens’ initiatives, governance and individual transformation.
3. As a means of involving local politicians, a selection of the digital stories
was shown to four local mayors.  The mayors were also interviewed about their
motivations to enter politics.
4. In the participatory video process, power analysis exercises helped
participants to identify the underlying issues in the digital stories, and to identify
focal areas for the participatory videos.  Over several months, participants then
worked in groups to plan, film, edit and produce collective stories about
democracy and how change happens in BiH. 
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The project produced 22 digital stories, three participatory videos and four video
interviews with mayors.  These have been screened to local government officials,
NGOs, activists and the general public, sparking discussion on the successes and
failures of citizen participation in BiH.

What did we learn?

The processes involved in participatory visual methods are as important, if not more
important, than the final products. 

Creative approaches, creative stories

For many participants in this project, being creative was something new.   Bosnian
society is strongly hierarchical, and being creative has little social value. 
Incorporating playful and creative approaches into the workshops encouraged
participants to have fun and step away from their usual ways of thinking and acting. 
By doing so, they were able to develop creative and compelling stories, which
explored ‘hidden’ parts of themselves and their societies. 

Safe spaces and relaxed atmospheres

Participatory visual methods rely on storytellers putting their opinions, experiences
and feelings into their stories.  For many participants in this project, learning to tell
personal stories was one of the biggest challenges of the process. 

For trainers, it was crucial to create a safe space and relaxed atmosphere, with
mutual levels of trust between facilitators and participants.  This encouraged
participants to openly share their experiences, discuss challenging issues and
question dominant ways of being. 

Working together
The project brought together a diverse group of participants, from different
organisations, sectors, religions and ethnic groups.  In the Bosnian context, the
latter are particularly rigid social categories. By working together and sharing their
personal stories, participants were able to interact as individuals, outside of these
boundaries, and build ongoing links for the future. 

To find out more…

Silence Speaks: http://silencespeaks.org/
The Center for Digital Storytelling: http://storycenter.org/
Visit http://digitalneprice.net to learn more about the project and view the stories.
Visit  http://vimeo.com/71412865 to see a powerful digital story about a South
African boy's experience of HIV and ways it affects him and his family.
This page draws on two documents:  Work with us: How people and organisations
can catalyse sustainable change and Unruly politics and methodological mash-ups:
visual methods for social justice
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Power
As John Gaventa, political sociologist, educator and former leader of the
Participation Team, observed in a 2010 paper Power and Making Change Happen,
“whether concerned with participation and inclusion, realising rights or changing
policies, more and more actors seeking change are also becoming aware of the
need to engage with and understand this phenomenon called power.”

There are several helpful tools and classifications which can assist us in engaging
and understanding this complex but important dimension of practicing participatory
approaches to development.

What do we mean by power?

Power is most commonly understood as a form of authority, control or domination.
Those with authority over others are considered powerful, while those who are
dominated are seen as powerless. This kind of power is often labelled as ‘power
over’.

Power over others can be exercised in many ways. The most obvious is brute
domination, where a person or institution controls or constrains what another is able
to do. But power can also be exercised by influencing what others think they can do
or even imagine as possible. It extends beyond physical or verbal domination to
affecting the ways in which people view themselves, their rights and capabilities.

A useful framework which builds on and moves beyond this understanding of power
is summarised by Lisa VeneKlasen and Valerie Miller, whose 2002 book A New
Weave of Power, People and Politics: The action guide for advocacy and citizen
participation outlines several ways of looking at power as a positive rather than a
negative force. They argue that these positive expressions of power – sometimes
called agency – can be recognised and supported in development cooperation
efforts.
 ‘Power to’ is about being able to act. It can begin with the awareness that it is
possible to act, and can grow in the process of taking action, developing skills
and capacities, and realising that one can effect change.
 ‘Power with’ describes collective action or agency, and includes both the
psychological and political power that comes from being united. ‘Power with’ is
often used to describe how those faced with overt or covert domination can act
to address their situation: from joining together with others, through building
shared understandings, to planning and taking collective action.
 ‘Power within’ describes the sense of confidence, dignity and self-esteem
that comes from gaining awareness of one’s situation and realising the
possibility of doing something about it. ‘Power within’ is a core idea in gender
analysis, popular education, psychology and many approaches to
empowerment.

These expressions of positive power or agency are reminders that power can be
used positively as well as negatively, by the disempowered as well as the powerful.
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They encourage us to think about power as something that can be galvanized to

create strategies and pursue opportunities for change. The concepts are often used
together: people need ‘power within’ in order to act, and ‘power to’ in order to act
collectively, while the ‘power with’ of shared understanding and action can also
strengthen self-esteem and agency.

These four types of power are discussed by Robert Chambers, one of the driving
forces behind the growth of participatory methods, in a short video – Power: the
elephant in the room – made for Plan International in 2013. Chambers adds a fifth
type of power to those discussed above: the power to empower, which he sees as
critical to development thinking and practice. He emphasises that those with power
cannot disown it but should instead quietly accept it, and focus on using it sensitively
and meaningfully to empower others.
The hidden, visible and invisible faces of power
A widely used typology for analysing power in political decision-making and
democratic participation identifies three faces or dimensions of power: the visible,
the hidden and the invisible. The following summary, which draws on the theoretical
work of Stephen Lukes and John Gaventa, is once again adapted from A New
Weave of Power, People and Politics.
 Visible power: observable decision-making. Visible power describes the
formal rules, structures, authorities, institutions and procedures of political
decision-making. It also describes how those in positions of power use such
procedures and structures to maintain control.
 Hidden power: setting the political agenda. Powerful actors also maintain
influence by controlling who gets to the decision-making table and what gets on
the agenda. These dynamics operate on many levels, often excluding and
devaluing the concerns and representation of less powerful groups.
 Invisible power: shaping meaning and what is acceptable. Invisible power
shapes the psychological and ideological boundaries of participation. Significant
problems and issues are not only kept from the decision-making table, but also
from the minds and consciousness of those affected. By influencing how
individuals think about their place in the world, this level of power shapes
people’s beliefs, sense of self and acceptance of the status quo. Processes of
socialisation, culture and ideology perpetuate exclusion and inequality by
defining what is normal, acceptable and safe

VeneKlasen and Miller also summarise strategies for responding to each of these
faces of power:

 Responding to visible power is usually about trying to change the

‘who, how and what’ of policy-making so that the process is more democratic,
accountable  and responsive to diverse needs. Visible power is countered with
strategies of political advocacy and seeking access to formal decision-making
processes
 Responding to hidden power focuses on strengthening organisations and
movements of the poor, building collective power and leadership to redefine the
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political agenda, and raising the visibility and legitimacy of issues, voices and
demands that have been silenced.
 Responding to invisible power focuses on re-imagining social and political
culture, and raising consciousness to transform the way people perceive
themselves and those around them, and how they envisage future possibilities
and alternatives.

It is often easier to engage with visible and hidden power than with power that is
embedded in cultural and social norms and practices. But ignoring invisible power is
likely to lead to a misreading of the complex ways in which change happens and
make it harder to identify which change strategies should be developed.

These three dimensions of power are not only exercised from above, as power over;
they may also be exercised from below, as forms of resistance and as expressions
of power to, power with or power within. Some citizen groups may be able to
mobilise their own forms of hidden power or invisible power as strategies for
empowerment and social change.

Public, private and intimate realms of power

This framework is widely used in gender analysis to explore the way in which
women and men experience power differently in the public, private or intimate
spaces of their lives. These realms of power are frequently ignored in power
analysis. As summarised by VeneKlasen and Miller,

 the public realm of power concerns one’s experience of public interactions in

areas such as employment, livelihoods, market activities, public social spaces
and the community
 the private realm of power includes one’s experience of family, relationships,
friends, marriage and the household, and is usually defined by the social,
cultural and religious norms of these relationships
 the intimate realm of power concerns personal self-esteem, confidence,
dignity, relationship to one’s own body, reproductive health and sexuality.

Take the case of a young professional woman as an example. She may be

respected in her place of work, but lack status in her home or community. Or the
reverse may be true: she may have power in her household but be marginalised in
the public domain. She may feel powerful in the public or private realms, but not in
the intimate realm; or, conversely, her lack of power in the intimate or private realms
may serve to undermine her sense of power in the public realm.

The public, private and intimate realms of power draw attention to the ways in which
experiences in particular spaces are both shaped by and can reinforce gender and
other socially constructed norms. A person’s sense of identity and power as defined
by gender, age, ethnicity, religion or sexuality may shift from moment to moment
according to which realm they are in. This framework sheds light on personal and
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familial sources of power which are too often ignored – even though they are
experienced by everyone.

Socialised and internalised power

Much social theory focuses on less visible and culturally embedded forms of power
to explain how social norms, hierarchies and behaviour are unconsciously
reproduced and resist efforts to change them.

For some, the idea of invisible power is too concerned with the deliberate strategies
of more powerful actors to shape the consciousness and felt needs of less powerful
actors. Others explain this not as a result of intentional ‘agency’ or even of
deterministic ‘structures’, but as a kind of continuous interplay between the two –
where power is defined as the norms, discourses and behaviour that are socialised
and internalised by all actors.

Perhaps the most important of these thinkers is influential philosopher and social
theorist Michel Foucault, who sees power as everywhere, embedded in the very
fabric of our daily lives and institutions. In his view, power is not monolithic or
coercive but takes the form of multiple points of pressure and resistance, arising
from all directions, and is in constant flux. Power is in the forms of truth and
knowledge that we accept as given. It is internalised in our bodies, and we learn to
discipline ourselves to conform to social norms. We are usually unconscious of
these effects of power, because we take so much of what is around us for granted.
Social reformers have long been concerned with how to break the cycles that
reproduce these social norms and conditioned responses. Most responses call for
some process of critical reflection or consciousness raising as a stimulus for ‘power
within’ and empowerment. Popular education and feminist pedagogy, for example,
seek to empower by enabling people to become aware of the oppressions they face
in their everyday lives, recognising these as man-made rather than the natural order
of things.

Tools and frameworks for power analysis

Power Matrix
The Power Matrix was developed by Just Associates for use by social movement
and NGO leaders using rights-based approaches to development and social
change. It is a useful tool for assessing real examples of citizen engagement in
terms of the visible, hidden and invisible dimensions of power and how they interact
to define the possibilities for action. It can be used to identify possible responses
and strategies in relation to each dimension of power, and to explore the sequence
and synergies between them.

Powercube
Powercube is a conceptual framework that can be used to understand and analyse
how power works in processes of governance and citizen participation, in
organizations and in social relationships. It uses a multi-faceted approach to explore
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the visible, hidden and invisible dimensions of power by mapping the various spaces
and levels where actors experience and exercise these forms of power. It is best
used as a strategic analytic framework and is helpful as a lens for analysing the
context of an intervention, identifying entry points to support change, and for
evaluation and learning.

Peeling the Onion

Peeling the Onion explores different forms of power arising at different levels: the
individual stakeholder, the group or collective, the organisation or institution, and the
wider society or system. It can be used with participants and key informants in a
power analysis to explore both the negative or dominating forms of power, and the
positive or alternative forms of power that can be mobilised for social change or
supported by development co-operation strategies. (NB The above link takes you to
a book on Power: see Section 2 for Peeling the Onion).

Ethnographic research methods

Some of the best tools for observing and making sense of multiple forms of power
have been developed by qualitative researchers, particularly anthropologists and
sociologists. These can easily be applied within a power analysis process by
including experienced, applied academics in the team. Methods like participant
observation, visual tools, storytelling, oral testimonies, semi-structured
interviews and focus groups can all shed light on forms of power and their
interaction.

Reflective Practice
How can I make a difference in the world?  What is “good change” and how
do I contribute to it?

What is reflective practice?

Reflective practices are methods and techniques that help individuals and groups
reflect on their experiences and actions in order to engage in a process of
continuous learning. Reflective practice enables recognition of the paradigms –
assumptions, frameworks and patterns of thought and behaviour – that shape our
thinking and action. It also allows for the exploration of broader questions, such as:

 What are the paradigms that shape not just our own actions, but development
as a whole?
 How does our position relate to the assumptions we make? Are these
constructive or destructive to our goals?
 How are our goals themselves limited by our paradigms?

By trying out methods of reflection and personal inquiry we can nurture greater self-
awareness, imagination and creativity, as well as systemic, non-linear modes of
thinking and analysis.
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What use is reflective practice to a development professional?

Reflective practice can help us understand our own intentions, values and visions
and support us to work in a challenging field where our ethics and morals may be
tested, where power relations may be decidedly unequal, and where we may be
working in emotionally and physically demanding environments.

Many of us keep coming back to fundamental questions: how can I make a

difference in the world? What is “good change” and how do I contribute to it? How
do we sustain ourselves and keep going, when the going gets rough? How can we
position ourselves effectively within a change process, and avoid becoming part of
the problem? Practicing reflection can help us answer these questions and others
throughout our lives and careers.

More development professionals could benefit from adapting creative and innovative
approaches to reflective practice – many of which are already used in fields of
qualitative research, education, health care, social work, psychology and
management. Opening spaces for reflection offers the possibility of transforming not
only individual experience, but also the patterns and relationships within groups,
organisations and systems, and ultimately those systems themselves.

How can I use reflective practice in my work?

Reflective practice can be a particularly powerful tool for organisational learning and
in monitoring and evaluation. It can also be used for addressing issues of position,
conflict, resistance and power relationships, which are often present in development,
but seldom dealt with directly. Reflective practice, whether named as such or not, is
already an important dimension of

 participatory and qualitative research

 gender and power analysis
 social constructivism and feminist standpoint theory
 methods of facilitation and community development work
 monitoring and evaluation
 organisational learning and change, and capacity development
 attention to power and relationships in aid.

Methods for reflective practice

Reflective journals
Keeping a reflective journal – sometimes also called a learning journal – is a way to
reflect through documenting ideas, feelings, observations and visions. It can be
done on paper or on a computer. Keeping a reflective journal can help you to

 focus your thoughts and develop your ideas

 develop your voice and gain confidence
 experiment with ideas and ask questions
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 organise your thinking through exploring and mapping complex issues

 develop your conceptual and analytical skills
 reflect upon and make sense of experiences and the processes behind them
 express your feelings and emotional responses
 become aware of your actions and strategies
 develop your writing style and skills, and explore different styles of writing
 develop a conversation with others.

When keeping a reflective journal, these tips may be useful:

 write for yourself, and write every day

 be informal, using language you are comfortable with
 write by hand if you prefer
 write in your own language
 be relaxed and comfortable
 try sitting in different places and positions
 use diagrams and drawings
 record not just events but reflection on process
 ask questions and  challenge assumptions
 connect personal and professional experiences to concepts and theories.
More details on these and other tips can be found in Jenny Moon’s 2004 book A
Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning.

Peer groups and Co-operative Inquiry

A group of peers who meet on a regular basis to learn and reflect together can be a
powerful supporting element of individual reflective practice. The group, which
decides together how to use and organize its time, may discuss work-related issues,
share learning journal excerpts or try out a form of collective reflective practice.

Co-operative Inquiry is a reflective practice method for groups which was initially
developed by John Heron to support the reflective practice of participatory
researchers. Heron, a pioneer in the development of participatory methods in the
social sciences, describes the theory and practice of the method in his 1996
book, Co-operative Inquiry: research into the human condition. It involves a group
working through a structured, four-stage cycle of action and reflection, through
which group members move towards developing new ways of acting.

Methods from research and other fields

Reflective practice, reflexivity and first person inquiry are used in research to explore
issues of power and positionality and to make the role and assumptions of
researchers more explicit and integral to their analysis. There are many approaches
to this, which include methods from qualitative ethnographic and anthropological
research, participatory and action research, and feminist research.
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There are also many different reflective practice methods and approaches from
management science, experiential and transformational learning, and organisational
learning and change. Several of these are reviewed in the 2010 IDS
Bulletin Reflecting Collectively on Capacities for Change.
Within development and action research, the field of embodied learning and
reflection is growing. Many practices in this field are based on the pioneering work of
Brazilian director and activist Augusto Boal, who developed Theatre of the
Oppressed in the 1970s. They include methods for bodywork and movement, and
approaches such as Forum Theatre and Theatre for Development.