The Images in Social Change Network (Jandarshan) - Europe and India

In early 1999 Jandarshan/ISCN embarked on a 3-year project in Europe and India designed to encourage effective use of audio visual media in research, education, and public debate about social change. Their main activities were in information and training. Specifically, an internet information service was designed to help producers and users of community/educational media, campaigners, researchers, development workers, and others engaged with issues of social change. Second, an experimental access training programme in low budget digital video production was conducted in an industrial area in the Chattisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh. This training was provided free of charge to 12 young people who would not otherwise have had the financial resources or academic qualifications to enter media training. Trainees were drawn from a variety of backgrounds, and while training, began to document the impact of industrialisation in the region. The field of the project, loosely defined, was visual representations (primarily on film and video) of industrialisation in India and Europe.

Education, Technology, Economic Development.

The aim of this project was to centralise and make available information and material that was scattered and hard to access. The only reasonably common representations of industrial life were derived from public relations or instructional films, which nearly always featured plant and processes rather than people.

In 2000, a Jandarshan trainee film was screened at the British Royal Anthropological Institute Ethnographic Film Festival. In October, 2001, one of the project partners, the Institute of Scientific Film (IWF) hosted an end-of-project event called Factories and Fields in Göttingen, Germany. Most of the films made by the trainees were screened there, along with a number of other films that IWF, on behalf of the Network, is acquiring for distribution. A selection of these films was shown at two special screenings called 'Steel Stories' at the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival. The screenings generated lively discussion among an audience of about 100. In December, 2001, the trainees all graduated successfully and received their diplomas at a ceremony in Raipur Town Hall.

The training aspect of this programme was designed with the hope that it might evolve into a local organisation that employed former trainees and continued some of the project activities. This goal has been realised in the formation of the Jandarshan Chhattisgarh Media Centre, which is staffed by former trainees.Click here to access a description of the Media Centre programme.