Focal point is highly flexible and can be adapted to specific participatory goals, different groups and communities, and distinct policy, mental health and public health issues.
Goals:
Stages:
Community members are engaged in a three-stage process:
- To enable individuals to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns
- To promote critical dialogue and knowledge about personal and community issues
- To empower community members to reach out to create and initiate contact with policy makers to create change
Stages:
- Conceptualizing the problem
- Defining broader goals and objectives
- Devising the initial theme/s for taking pictures
- Critical reflection and dialogue
- Contextualizing and storytelling
- Codifying issues, themes, and theories
- Conducting participatory evaluation of policy and program implementation
Community members are engaged in a three-stage process:
- Photographing concerns that reflect broader initiatives chosen via group process
- Selecting photographs that most accurately reflect the community's concerns and assets
- Codifying the issues, themes or theories that emerge
Ethics:
Best Practices:
Be aware of, and execute ways to minimize, participant risks, including physical harm and loss of privacy to themselves or their community. Put another way, participant safety and well-being is paramount.
Best Practices:
Be aware of, and execute ways to minimize, participant risks, including physical harm and loss of privacy to themselves or their community. Put another way, participant safety and well-being is paramount.
Conclusion:
Focal Point works to involve individuals and their communities in defining issues and finding meaning and finally arriving at solutions through the lens of photography. Focal Point assists people in reflecting on their own community concerns and issues and on what questions can be linked into more general constructs or can be seen to be interrelated. It is a method that enables people to define for themselves and others, what is worth remembering and what needs to be changed. The photographic vehicle is a methodology that allows participants a way to see themselves as power holders and agents of change in their own lives and in their communities.
Focal Point works to involve individuals and their communities in defining issues and finding meaning and finally arriving at solutions through the lens of photography. Focal Point assists people in reflecting on their own community concerns and issues and on what questions can be linked into more general constructs or can be seen to be interrelated. It is a method that enables people to define for themselves and others, what is worth remembering and what needs to be changed. The photographic vehicle is a methodology that allows participants a way to see themselves as power holders and agents of change in their own lives and in their communities.
