[Imc-africa] evaluation and documentation

[fabian]

Hello all,
while we are preparing for what I believe is going to be a great 
experience of mutual cooperation and knowledge exchange in Nairobi, I 
would like to make a point about the need to document and evaluate the 
process of the project. This comes as I have been in contact with a 
research project called „alternative media research“. This project is 
reflecting on a range of alternative media projects and has some 
funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) - one 
of the main governmentally funded (yet fairly independent) research 
bodies in the UK. Alt.Media.Res involves people who are themselves 
involved in a range of alternative media projects, and is trying to 
build a resource of documentation regarding such initiatives in an 
attempt to better understand their struggles, constraints and 
organisation.  Here is the link to the project.
http://alt-media-res.clearerchannel.org/public/index.php?title=Main_Page
I have proposed to alt.media.res to include the IMC in Africa working 
group as a case study and to look specifically at our project for 
Nairobi as an example for alt.media production and co-operation. I 
understand this as an opportunity for us to put an emphasis on 
documenting and critically evaluating the creation of  an IMC at 
Nairobi WSF. They have confirmed that they would be interested in 
supporting this.  This is great as it enables me to fund my trip to 
Nairobi and to support the project here and there.
Part of my proposal is to document the IMC in Nairobi with a film that 
is made in the course of the IMC. This allows us to hold a workshop on 
video making and create a nice documentary of the project in the same 
time.
Additionally to that  I will assemble a written account evaluating the 
IMC project from observing the process, active participation and 
anonymous interviews with volunteers which hopefully will be helpful 
both as a record of the Nairobi meeting and for future initiatives. I 
believe that both a video documentary and an action research evaluation 
will serve the possible future co-operation of IMC in Africa. For more 
information please see the proposal that I sent to alt.media.res which 
is to be found here.
http://en.wiki.in-no.org/EvaluateNairobi
Everything derived from the documentation and evaluation project will 
be availabe under creative commons licence and hopefully will also 
provide relevant information for other similar media initiatives .
The actual outline of the documentation and evalutation project is yet 
open as its quality and feasibility depends to a high degree on active 
and informed participation of all the people involved in the planning 
and realization of the IMC in Nairobi.
As this proposal is linked with a publicly funded research project, 
there also are important ethical questions, mainly about the dangers of 
the misuse of data collected for the documentation. This seems to be 
something that the alt.media.res project is well aware of and they have 
outlined their approach to this on their wiki in a way that I find 
comphrensive. See their webpage for more information...
http://alt-media-res.clearerchannel.org/public/index.php?title=FAQ

In any case, I believe that it is extremely important for any process 
of documentation and evaluation to be open to all people involved in 
the project from the beginning. This is why I would like to ask you for 
questions, concerns and comments arising with this idea. This hopefully 
serves as an ongoing reflection about the meaning(s) of our project and 
the way(s) we are conducting it.

best for now
Fabian