What is Indaba?
Indaba is an innovative approach to supporting local communities share their stories using video. Traditionally, video production has been seen as a highly skilled endeavour and was limited to those with high media literacy. Using Indaba, a group/community/organisation can collaboratively shoot, edit and publish videos.
Indaba uses innovative features within a digitally augmented process to allow non-professionals to support community delivered media. The Indaba process works very much like a 5 day 'film school'. It takes a community through the key stages of making a video to tell their story, from ideation to production, allowing them to perform all steps along the way without content intervention by the Facilitator.
Indaba has been developed through a long-term partnership between Newcastle University (UK), Monash University (Australia), Northumbria University (UK) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (Geneva).
The process has been developed iteratively through real deployments in field settings across the world. See our Publications and Press section for related reading.
Indaba was developed within a set of core values and design principles:
- To empower the use of video as a means to support community voice.
- To support sustainable and practical use of video with communities in field contexts.
- To be Open Source, and Creative Commons in everything we do so that knowledge is shared.
Indaba in Practice
Indonesia (in collaboration with Palang Merah Indonesia): A participatory video monitoring initiative looking at community feedback on a water, sanitation and hygiene promotion (WASH) project in East Kalimantan region, Indonesia.
Namibia (in collaboration with Namibia Red Cross Society): A participatory video monitoring initiative looking at community feedback on a Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) project in Grootfontein region, Namibia.
Egypt (in collaboration with Egyptian Red Crescent Society): A participatory video baseline initiative looking at community feedback to contribute to the planning phase of ERC’s School Children Training Programme “Health and Safety”in a deaf school in Helwan, Egypt.
Technology Considerations
Although advanced computer skills are not a requirement, some knowledge of using computers and software will be useful during the setup process. In particular some experience using Android will help in the field, but is not essential.
Indaba consists of an application running on a computer which is present at the deployment location, alongside an Android application running on mobile devices which at various points communicate with the local computer over WiFi.
No upstream (internet) is required at the deployment location, and if appropriate batteries and power management is used, Indaba can be deployed in remote locations without power or connectivity.