Re-visioning as Practice in Cellphilming in Sierra Leone: A Reflexive Account of Addressing Gender Transformation in the Moment

In this chapter we explore the idea of ‘learning in the moment’ as a way to frame a pedagogy of facilitation in cellphilm workshops. We draw on our learnings as a facilitation team conducting a four-day workshop with 50 preservice teachers and teacher educators in a project taking up gender transformative approaches to Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) and Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in Sierra Leone. Building on reflexive methodologies in approaching this work, we acknowledge the complexities of both SRHR and SGBV as well as cellphilming, especially for those new to participatory visual methodologies through digital media-making. In the chapter we identify a series of key ‘learning in the moment’ episodes that occurred during the workshop. These were moments when we found ourselves pivoting away from our original ‘toolkit’ plan for the workshop. Some of these moments of learning pertain to the technologies of cellphilming, building in, for example an adapted process for Screen-Discuss-Re-Shoot-Re-Screen, and tailoring storyboarding to specific genres of production such as media messaging and journalist interviews. Other moments of learning pertain to addressing the actual content of the cellphilms and ways of re-orienting the messages about SRHR away from stories of victimization to stories of agency. While it is a given that conducting any participatory workshop will be iterative in some way, what we want to highlight in this chapter is the idea of a type of co-learning between and among facilitators and participants.