Edinburgh Napier University

  Media Discourse Group, MeCCSA PG Network, 2012, De Montfort University, “You Play Your Part: an ethnographically informed, practice led approach to documentary knowledge.’

‘You Play Your Part: an ethnographically informed, practice led approach to documentary knowledge.’

In this paper I would like to discuss practice led and ethnographic research methods relating to my PhD research into participatory and collaborative documentary making as a locus for the production of knowledge.

The research employs an ethnographically informed practice led methodology, in which practice is both the field of investigation and an integral part of the research methods. This paper will reflexively critique the researcher’s positioning as Producer and Director of a collaborative short documentary, You Play Your Part (2011), which explores women’s campaigning history on Clydeside. The project was made with Senior Citizens and members of the community in the Govan area of Glasgow.

The paper examines her relationship with the participants and organizations with whom she was involved before, during and after the production process. This relationship is posited as the starting point for an inquiry into knowledge produced during an ongoing process of production (and knowledge creation), which subverts notions of documentary authorship and practice.

This paper discusses aspects of the researcher’s role as both researcher and practitioner, and the practical difficulties of studying something in which one is also involved. It explores some of the complexities involved if one is to speak ‘nearby’ rather than ‘about’ (Trin. T. Min-ha) in both film and video and the written word and reflects on the difficulties of maintaining transparency about such relationships in a written PhD thesis.