Cellph Reflection: Learnings from audience engagement, education, and cellphilms

This major portfolio is a culmination of a research project which shared participatory visual work with diverse audiences to assess the promise and impacts of participatory visual methodologies. The research project that was developed became an offshoot from the Celling Sex study, which brought together 15 cis, queer, and racially diverse young women to share their experiences trading sex in Toronto. They shared their experiences and strategies to stay safer through cellphilmming (brief videos made on a cellphone). Key themes from participants’ cellphilms were brought together in an edited film to convey the project’s findings. Screening events were then organized with eight target audiences which the participants identified— ranging from community organizations, youth groups, health providers, and the general public. My research was guided by the following question: How do cellphilms and participatory visual methodologies more broadly, open up spaces for dialogue and (re)education as part of their aim in addressing social change? Here, I tie together three journal articles that document the research process, beginning with, “Staying Safe: How young women who trade sex in Toronto navigate risk and harm reduction”. This article is a precursor to the audience engagement research and explores the agentic harm reduction strategies which the young women involved in Celling Sex implement. This paper, in a sense, is a documentation of one of the primary findings which are taken up in the Celling Sex composite film. “Screening Stories: Methodological considerations for critical audience engagement” is a paper exploring the considerations, tensions, and ethical dilemmas that come with critical audience engagement work. Very little is documented about how to assess audience response to the products of participatory visual methodologies (PVM), this paper fills that gap and serves as a resource for other PVM researchers to consider. “Screen(ing) Share: Cellphilms, Audience and Social Change”, documents the pedagogical promise that can result from engaging in audience work and reception. My portfolio is rounded out with two pieces of work that presents the findings from the project and process in more accessible ways. The first is a short booklet which presents the thematic findings from the screenings to share with the communities and organizations which were involved in the research. The second is a cellphilm which I made after the research was said and done, to reflect on what I learned through the process of setting up and facilitating screenings.