Film as Method: Community Engagement and Reciprocal Research

Join this special screening and workshop exploring how film is used for community engagement, co-produced knowledge & reciprocal research.

The School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, in collaboration with the Institute of Regional Futures, invites you to a screening and workshop exploring how film can be used as a powerful tool for community engagement, knowledge co-production, and reciprocal research.

This event brings together two anthropologists and a media and communications expert working with film in contexts of environmental and social change. Through screenings and discussion, we explore how filmmaking can move beyond representation to become a collaborative and relational practice—one that builds trust, facilitates dialogue, and returns research to the communities involved.

The films offer insight into communities navigating environmental transformation—from changing agricultural landscapes in Mexico to post-mining futures in the Hunter Valley, Australia. Together, they show how film can create space for people to articulate lived experiences, engage with contested environments, and imagine possible futures.

The workshop will also consider how film can act as a provocation for rethinking relationships to land, water, and place. It asks: what does it mean to treat film as a form of reciprocity? How do collaborative and creative methods intersect with decolonial practice? And, how may we understand film not only as storytelling, but as a methodological and environmental intervention?

Participants will have the opportunity to meet the filmmakers and reflect on how visual methods can be used in their own work for engagement, collaboration, and knowledge exchange.

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