In this chapter, the authors examine to what extent a participatory video process promoted by a group of university researchers and conducted in collaboration with two grassroots innovations in the city of Valencia (Spain) has been a tool of human development innovation. They explore both the process and the product using different categories belonging to the participatory action research and human development and capabilities approach literature. They conclude that the process has expanded the capabilities of the participants, particularly those relating to rethinking and re-signifying their own innovative practices, and the more instrumental capabilities developed in connection with the use of video and teamwork. Furthermore, videos contribute, firstly, towards spreading a certain vision of the grassroots innovations aligned with the values of human development and, secondly, to creating communicative spaces where such innovation can be shown and discussed.
TopIntroduction
Can digital technologies serve to highlight and strengthen the work of social organizations that promote a model of a more equitable and sustainable development? This is the question we want to answer in this article, in which we will analyse an eight-month participatory video (PV) process, promoted by a group of university researchers and conducted in collaboration with two social organizations in the city of Valencia (Spain): the Fuel Poverty Group and Sólar Dómada. We call these two groups Grassroots Innovations (GI) according to the definition by Seyfang and Smith (2007), who understand GIs as: Networks of activists and organizations generating novel bottom-up solutions for sustainable development; solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the communities involved. In contrast to mainstream business greening, grassroots initiatives operate in civil society arenas and involve committed activists experimenting with social innovations as well as using greener technologies.
Business and industry are no longer the only actors of innovation, but also groups of people from civil society, mainly activists or non-profit organizations, that generate bottom-up innovation in response to local needs. The aim of this kind of innovation is to lead to a transition to a more sustainable society, introducing a normative direction of innovation (Smith et al., 2010; Belda-Miquel and Pellicer-Sifres, 2019).
In this paper, we complement this normative perspective of innovation for sustainability with the human development and capability approach, which arises from such a tradition in humanist social philosophy and humanist economics (e.g., Haq, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000; Gasper, 2009). Following previous attempts of dialogue between GI and human development (Pellicer-Sifres et al, 2017), we can call this kind of innovation GI for Human Development (GI4HD). The first GI4HD is Fuel Poverty Group, a new group of volunteers, mainly university students that want to challenge fuel poverty1 by giving advice on how to reduce fuel consumption. This group is part of a wider network named the Platform for a New Energy Model2, which works towards a more democratic and sustainable energy model. The other group is the Solar Dómada3, a group of people who are occupying a private plot, highly deteriorated at the time of their occupation (2013), as a way to assert the need for social spaces in the neighbourhood. Solar Dómada also seek to highlight that another kind of coexistence between neighbours is possible; one based on respect and intercultural coexistence. In the centre of the plot is the Garden of Ca Favara, one of the symbols of neighbourhood participation, involving more sustainable practices of food production and consumption.
There are, therefore, two experiences of GI that have a common aim behind their activism in that they both seek a more equitable, democratic and sustainable livelihood. The differences between them lie in: the area in which they are located (energy and production of urban space); the age and characteristics of their members (university students in the case of Fuel Poverty Group and people of different ages, educational levels and careers in the case of Solar Dómada); and their strategies (information and technical advice in the case of Fuel Poverty Group and occupation of urban space in the case of the Solar).
Over a period of six months (from October 2015 to March 2016), a group of researchers (including the authors of this chapter) worked with these two groups and facilitated a PV; understood here as a participatory action research where people created their own film, using digital video technology. This PV was a five-stage PV process, from the initial definition and planning to the public screening and debate on the videos.