Social Justice and Video: Imagining as a Right in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside more

Chapter 7 Social Justice and Video: Imagining as a Right in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Jessica Hallenbeck 7.1 Introduction In this chapter I want to examine the relationship between the right to the city, social justice and video, using as an example a short film Wishlist which I co-produced in Vancouver, Canada, in 2006. Wishlist was one of a trio of short films made in the Spring of 2006, originally conceived as a participatory video project that focused on a particular street in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver. Carrall Street was at that time the subject of a design project by the City of Vancouver and it was the film-makers’ collective intention to experiment with the use of video as a way of eliciting residents’ desires for this pivotal street which connects different parts of the downtown area (see Maps 7.1 and 7.2). The purpose of Wishlist was twofold. First, we wanted to engage people in a dialogue about how they see themselves and their neighbourhood. Second, we wanted to be able to convey this vision to City of Vancouver planners, in the hope of affecting decisions made about the street. So Wishlist was intended both as an action research project and as a vehicle for reflecting on the potential of video in contributing to social justice in the planning of the city. The right to the city has attracted considerable attention in recent academic literature,1 but the concept has remained theoretically amorphous, rarely grounded in practical application. My project sought to examine the ways that video can advance claims to the city, drawing on theories of social justice put forth by Iris Marion Young and Henri Lefebvre. Wishlist provides a unique opportunity to ground social justice theories in a video case study, thereby expanding the range of tools available in the community’s struggle for social justice. The study of Wishlist also has important implications for the role of video in planning, a topic that will be explored later in the chapter. My argument is that the right to the city starts with an J. Hallenbeck (B) Ear to the Ground Planning, Vancouver, BC, Canada e-mail: jessica@eartotheground.ca This chapter is best read after viewing Wishlist, which is available online at http://www.eartotheground.ca/wishlist.php L. Sandercock, G. Attili (eds.), Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning, Urban and Landscape Perspectives 7, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3209-6_7, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 129 130 J. Hallenbeck Map 7.1 The Downtown Eastside in relation to the rest of the City of Vancouver Map 7.2 Street map of the Downtown Eastside 7 Social Justice and Video 131 imagining of our city as being different from its present state. Video, by engaging people in a dialogue over their rights to participation and appropriation, fosters this essential act of imagining, thereby contributing to the struggle for social justice. Wishlist was part of a larger action research project that began with three questions.2 1. What role do rights play in our understanding of social justice and the city? In answering this question, I explore certain theories of social justice, arguing that the rights to participation and appropriation are crucial to the active inhabitation of the city. 2. Can video promote dialogue? In addressing this question, I examine the importance of dialogue in affirming our right to participation. Wishlist is used as an example of an inclusive process that deploys utopian thinking to encourage new understandings of city rights. 3. What role does video play in encouraging urban imagination and appropriation? I explore how, in affirming our right to participation, we come to claim our right to appropriation. I look at how Wishlist’s visuals, vision and politics serve to empower people to imagine how they could appropriate the city. In the first section of this chapter I begin my exploration of the relationship between social justice and video by establishing Wishlist’s context in Vancouver’s political geography and planning history. I then lay the theoretical framework for the study, exploring the question of how we define the city. The next section establishes the geographical, institutional, and production context of Wishlist. Turning to the question “what is the city”? I explore the idea that the city is a site of dialogue and appropriation, and that we claim our rights to dialogue and appropriation through engaging in utopian thinking. I then expand on this argument by looking at how Wishlist, through an inclusive interviewing and production process, facilitates dialogue. By analyzing Wishlist’s visuals, vision and politics, I suggest how we can move from dialogue to appropriation. The chapter concludes by evaluating Wishlist’s applicability, reception and institutional integration, and argues that many of Wishlist’s dissemination problems are common impediments in the use of video as a planning tool. 7.2 Contextualizing It is essential to note from the outset that this chapter focuses on video and not participatory video. Participatory video is defined in various ways and its methodology is derived from participatory action research. Johannsen, in “Questions and Answers about Participatory Video”, defines participatory video as “a scriptless video process, directed by a group of grassroots people, moving forward in often iterative cycles of shooting and reviewing. The aim is to create video narratives that communicate what those who participate in the process really want to communicate, 132 J. Hallenbeck in a way they think is appropriate. Participants take part in some or all of: shooting, scriptwriting, determining content” (2000, p. 3). In order to avoid getting into a discussion of how participatory the project was, and because this chapter is more concerned with product than with process, the scope has been narrowed to examine social justice and video through the lens of Wishlist as simply a video. But before discussing the links between social justice and video, it is necessary to situate Wishlist geographically, institutionally and methodologically. 7.2.1 Situating Wishlist Geographically Wishlist, as part of the Carrall Street Participatory Video Project, is a video focused on a single Vancouver street, Carrall Street, located in the Downtown Eastside. The street runs north/south in downtown Vancouver, beginning at Water Street, and ending at Pacific Boulevard (see Map 7.2). Importantly, it connects the communities of Gastown, the Downtown Eastside (DTES) and Chinatown. The DTES3 is an inner city neighbourhood that occupies 113 hectares (DTES community Webpage) and has been the site of contested definitions, naming and categorizing. It is not within the scope of this paper to give a detailed, discursive account of the socio-economic evolution of downtown eastside. PIVOT Legal society defines it as follows: The DTES is found in the downtown core of Vancouver. It is one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods. Although it is relatively small geographically, its population is very diverse. Forty-eight percent of its population consists of members of ethnic minorities, and men and seniors are overrepresented in the population compared with other areas of Vancouver. The neighbourhood consists of five distinct areas: Chinatown, Gastown, Victory Square, Strathcona and Oppenheimer. In 2006, there were 18025 people living within these five areas (Wesley, 2009, pers. comm., 10 June) It has long been a community with a high concentration of social problems, including poverty, mental illness, drug use, crime, survival sex work, high HIV/Hepatitis infection rates, unemployment and violence (Eby, 2006, p. 5). The DTES is infamous for being Canada’s poorest postal code. According to Statistics Canada, in 2006 the average household income in the DTES was $ 25.132. While the DTES has a high proportion of intravenous drug users in its population, the area is also home to a vibrant, artistic community with many diverse social groups, including a high percentage of First Nations Peoples. Exact percentages vary. PIVOT Legal Society estimates that 30 percent of DTES residents are intravenous drug users, amounting to 5,000 users in approximately 10 city blocks (PIVOT website). According to PIVOT legal society, Aboriginal Peoples constitute 8.4 percent of the DTES population, compared with 4.4 percent in the province of British Columbia (Eby, 2006, p. 8). As a low-income inner city neighbourhood, it is the focus of ongoing contestations over the nature and scale of gentrification. 7.2.2 Situating Wishlist Institutionally In an always politically charged and antagonistic atmosphere, the City of Vancouver is making a concerted effort to economically revitalize the DTES.4 The redesign of Carrall Street into a greenway is intended to play an integral role in this venture. 5 7 Social Justice and Video 133 The City of Vancouver approved five million dollars for the Greenway in its 2006–2008 capital budget plan (City of Vancouver, 2007b). Additionally, the Carrall Street project is receiving funding from the private sector (City of Vancouver, 2007b). According to the City of Vancouver’s Carrall Street Greenway Webpage, the purpose of the Greenway is to foster community building and encourage economic revitalization. The redesign of Carrall Street “incorporates green infrastructure, facilitates private investments, and provides opportunities for social services, arts and culture programming to help achieve environmental, economic, social and cultural sustainability for the area” (City of Vancouver, 2007d). The City of Vancouver has held a number of charrettes and meetings surrounding the redesign of Carrall Street. The Carrall Street Participatory Video Project (CSPVP) was in part created to articulate DTES residents’ visions on how Carrall Street might be used as a public space.6 The intention at the outset was to use the videos to inform the City of Vancouver’s redesign of Carrall Street. Wishlist was one of three video productions resulting from the project. The CSPVP was a joint venture among three groups: Projections, Ear to the Ground Planning and the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning.7 A portion of the funding for the videos came from the City of Vancouver’s Planning Department. The participants in the CSPVP included five youth with “limited access to resources”, six planning students and five mentors. My role in the project was as a planning student participant. Working in the Spring and Summer of 2006 we completed three separate, but thematically connected video productions: Wishlist, The Spinning Image and Stories from Carrall Street. The whole group discussed broad themes, and then individual videos were collaboratively written, filmed and edited by groups of three to five participants. Wishlist is the result of collaboration among three planning students and one youth with limited access to resources. The conceptual framework for Wishlist was developed over the course of a weekend and shooting and editing took just over 3 weeks to complete. During production, the Wishlist team worked closely together on the vision and argument of the film, decided how interviews would be conducted and who would be interviewed. The specific aesthetic and narrative decisions addressed later in the chapter were made collectively by the four participants and sometimes a resolution was arrived at only after heated debate. Our group determined that Wishlist would have several purposes. The first was simply to get DTES residents thinking and talking about the Carrall Street redesign. The second purpose was to honour people’s ideas for the space, by incorporating them into the film. The third purpose was to communicate the ideas expressed in the video to several different parties: the general Vancouver public, officials at the City of Vancouver responsible for the Carrall Street redesign and DTES residents. 7.2.3 A Note on Methodology Planning theorist John Friedmann asks “Aren’t we all social actors?” (Friedmann, 2000, p. 461).8 This question guided my action research project. My intention at 134 J. Hallenbeck the CSPVP’s outset was to explore the ways in which participatory video could contribute to the struggle for social justice in the city. However, due to time restrictions in making the film, my initial plan to focus on understanding the relationships among participation, video and social justice shifted to examining Wishlist in the context of social justice theory. Therefore Wishlist, as a video, became my data set. Using Wishlist as a data set for the project provided a unique opportunity to integrate the two components of reflective practice: reflecting in action and reflecting on action (Schön, 1983). In what follows, Wishlist is primarily utilized as a discursive device, grounding social justice theory in a video case study. As such, it serves as a reflection on action, and later, is used as a reflexive device.9 In addition to reflecting on action, I kept a journal of the video-making process, including personal experiences, meeting agendas and audience reactions to Wishlist. My experience as a participant provided additional insights into specific stylistic and ethical choices made during the course of the project. In turn, these experiences facilitated an analysis of reflecting in practice.10 The next sections examine Wishlist through the methodological approach of a reflective practitioner. 7.3 Living: The City and Habitation The city writes and assigns, that is, it signifies, orders, stipulates. What? That is to be discovered by reflection (Lefebvre, 1996, p. 102). Cities are an assemblage of differences: places of overlapping dialogues, narratives and identities. As such, people can only engage in the city if they are able to exercise their rights to participation and appropriation. 7.3.1 Cities as Sites of Dialogue and Appropriation Cities are sites of difference, where the “being together as strangers” is constitutive of city life (Young, 1990, p. 237). This being together is often fraught with challenges, as different lifeways bump up against each other, taken-for-granted ways of doing and being are called into question, and we struggle to find ways of peacefully coexisting. In spite of the aversion of most people to such discomfort, these challenges are often useful, as they force us to question our own epistemologies, meanings and narratives (Lefebvre, 1996). The result is that we are constantly reinterpreting, re-imagining and re-making the city. The city is therefore both the site and the product of the evolving engagement of its inhabitants. Participation in city life can change our sense of meaning and belonging, our sense of place and our understanding of our right to the city. When this happens, the city becomes the site of appropriations intended to enact new meanings (Lefebvre, 1996). Through our interaction with others, we adopt aspects of their perspectives that then inform our own narratives. These moments of appropriation are unpredictable, ambiguous and playful and, for Young and Lefebvre, it’s important to embrace them as being at the heart of city life (Young, 1990; Lefebvre, 1996). 7 Social Justice and Video 135 7.3.2 The Right to Participation and Imagination For cross-cultural dialogue and appropriation to occur, we first need to claim our right to participate in the city. We must know that we have a right to inhabit the city before we can be empowered to change it (Lefebvre, 1996). Inhabiting the city means recognizing that we have the right to shape our living conditions through active engagement in the city (Young, 1990). This involves the ability to see our current environments and circumstances as aspects of our lives that we can change. Thus, the right to participation is crucial to the active inhabitation of the city. 7.3.3 Participation, Imagination and Utopia If participation is a critical component of city life, how then do we come to claim this right? Lefebvre (1996) argues that acts of imagination allow us to come together, despite our differences. It is through imagining things as being different from their present state that we begin to participate in the creation of the city. The right to the city therefore originates with the right to imagine participating in its creation. Because utopias are stories that critique the present in order to construct a better future, they are powerful devices for initiating this process of imagining (Friedmann, 2000). For Iris Marion Young, this type of thinking is the first step towards social justice. In expressing our desire for change, we claim our right to imagine things differently (Young, 1990; Mitchell, 2003). Utopias are useful tools for fostering dialogue because they allow people to articulate their visions for their future without having to make direct reference to their (often painful) present. This detachment can be liberating because it enables people to move from their present context of fear, or feelings of powerlessness, to a future context of hope. Instead of evaluating the present for what it lacks, utopian thinking insists that people imagine the future for what it holds. In this way, people are able to engage with their right to inhabit the city. 7.4 Dialoguing and Representing The preceding section has argued that one way that we claim our right to inhabit the city is through utopian dialogue. Films can engage people in dialogue and are therefore an important tool for stimulating multiple understandings of the city. Through a close reading of Wishlist’s aesthetic, stylistic and procedural choices, this section reveals the important role that video can play in fostering utopian dialogue through an inclusive process. Wishlist is divided into three parts: “Basic Needs”, “Pigeon Park” and “Community Space” (Fig. 7.1). Pigeon Park is a park located on the northwest corner of Hastings Street and Carrall Street (see Map 7.2). It is Vancouver’s smallest official park and a place where many residents congregate throughout the day. Pigeon Park is often described as being the heart of the DTES community and (as a 136 J. Hallenbeck Fig. 7.1 Screenshots of Wishlist’s three sections, video stills from “Wishlist” (2006) Fig. 7.2 Wishlist’s Screenshots of Carrall Street pan and of Pigeon Park, video stills from “Wishlist” (2006) Fig. 7.3 Screenshot of Wishlist’s first animation sequence, video stills from “Wishlist” (2006) 7 Social Justice and Video 137 recently painted graffiti tag in the park reads) it is “the people’s park”. Wishlist contains three main visual devices: a long pan of Vancouver’s Carrall Street (Fig. 7.2), three still images taken along the street (Fig. 7.2) and two 1-minute segments of stop-motion animation (Fig. 7.3). The visuals are driven by the film’s soundtrack, which contains a mix of music, poetry and dialogue. Thirteen unidentified Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents drive the narration, which focuses on re-envisioning Carrall Street. Why did we make these structural and aesthetic choices? 7.4.1 Video and Dialogue Neil Leach, a British architect and cultural studies theorist, argues that our identities are constructed around place-specific performances (Leach, 2005). Like placespecific performances, film viewing changes our individual identities and alters our perceptions of place. When we “read” a film, we make sense of the on-screen world by projecting parts of ourselves into the story. However, this is not a one-way exercise; because we have projected ourselves onto the film, we are also affected by it (Leach, 2005). Films make us cry or laugh because we have invested parts of ourselves into them. Film, through its very medium, facilitates a process of self-reflexive dialogue. 7.4.2 Dialogue, Style and Voice in Wishlist If dialogue is central to asserting citizens’ rights to the city, how can certain stylistic choices in filming influence the nature of the conversation? The Wishlist production team struggled over this question and made several stylistic and narrative choices in order to address issues around the stereotyping of DTES residents and the neighbourhood, as well as the question of representation. The first and most divisive consideration for our group was whether to show people’s faces in the film. Given the dream-like tone that we envisioned for Wishlist, it made sense on a narrative level to avoid a talking-head montage. However, we also wanted to valorize people’s opinions and worried that not showing their faces would be disempowering, especially considering that DTES residents are usually portrayed as being part of a homogeneously dysfunctional community. After many animated discussions, we finally decided that the sets of assumptions that outsiders might carry could eclipse what the speakers were saying: people would see class, addiction, or physical trauma instead of actually listening and thereby might be prevented from entering into a dialogue with what was being expressed. As one of the main goals of the film was to address non-DTES residents’ stereotypes of the area, we felt that this decision not to show interviewees’ faces was crucial to the success of Wishlist as a dialoguing tool. The second concern involved deciding which members of the DTES to interview. This was a highly charged issue because the people chosen would define the content 138 J. Hallenbeck and dialogue of our film. Making interview decisions directly engages with issues of representation, voice and censorship. One of the drawbacks of Wishlist is that, given the time constraints of the project, we were unable to make new connections in the DTES. As trust and rapport are crucial to the success of any interview, it was decided that the people with whom we already had an established relationship would be willing to share their utopian visions with us and a larger audience.11 This decision meant that DTES residents who were less visible, vocal and politically engaged were unable to participate in the formal, sit-down interviews that we conducted. In an attempt to mitigate this issue of voice, we also conducted informal street interviews in the neighbourhood. Given that video crews and television newscasters have repeatedly exploited DTES residents, we decided that it was best to only use an audio-recorder.12 This decision also made it easier in post-production to integrate the informal and formal interviews. Unlike the formal interviews, the street interviews consisted of asking people one succinct question: “If you could put anything on Carrall Street, what would it be?” This question was designed to be as open as possible, while still adhering to the geographic constraints of the video project.13 In addition to recorded interviews, we employed a third strategy to include as many visions as possible. Because the DTES is an artistic community and also one with a large percentage of English as second language residents as well as high illiteracy rates, we felt that it was necessary to include non-verbal forms of expression in the film.14 We asked some of the people who felt uncomfortable being audiotaped, if we could write down a few of their ideas, and incorporated these visions Fig. 7.4 Screenshot of Wishlist’s second animation sequence, video stills from “Wishlist” (2006) 7 Social Justice and Video 139 into the animation.15 We also asked people to contribute music, poetry, and art to Wishlist. The result was a montage of visions for Carrall Street, based on both verbal and non-verbal ways of dialoguing. This montage of visions (as seen in Fig. 7.4) was made possible by our decision to use animation as the primary visual device for Wishlist. Our reliance on animation circumvented one of the main drawbacks of video, in which all too often inarticulate or camera-shy people are edited out of the final product. While using animation certainly resolved some issues of representation, we were still left with the difficult task of editing interviews. This process involved listening, (re)interpreting and deciding which portions of people’s interviews to use in the final video. In most cases, this meant that a 20-minute interview was reduced to a few words, which were then loosely categorized into either the “basic needs” or “community space” sections.16 Once again, we tried to mitigate this by writing down the ideas that were cut from the audio track and incorporating these concepts in the final animation. This ensured that every person interviewed was represented in the film and guarded against potential feelings of disempowerment or disappointment. 7.5 Wishlist’s Production: Process, Politics and Product I have referred to the stylistic and aesthetic decisions made by the Wishlist production team as decisions that “we” collectively made. While it is essential to acknowledge that Wishlist potentially empowers its viewers, it is equally crucial that the film-making process be equitable and just, serving to empower those involved in the film’s production. Any analysis of social justice in relation to video needs to include a discussion about how group dynamics influenced the film-making process, politics and the final product.17 7.5.1 Process As previously mentioned, the Wishlist production team consisted of three planning students (myself, Ian Marcuse and Elana Cossever) and one youth with limited access to resources (April Curry). The production teams were formed after an early morning brainstorming session, where group facilitators asked us to stand by our favourite brainstorming words and concepts. I and two other planning students gravitated towards a poem that April (after some encouragement from me and another student) had written. Her poem was about a city emerging from a forest, and had prompted a lot of discussion about what an alternative greenway might look like. Once the groups were formed, we were asked to brainstorm further and present our ideas to the wider group. We were then given until our next meeting to develop a treatment for our film. The treatment process was interesting because two of the planning student group members were absent. April and I were therefore responsible for co-developing the 140 J. Hallenbeck initial concept for the film. Upon the return of the other two planning students, we quickly set up a production plan and then met regularly for at least 4 days each week, until the completion of the project, 2 months later. 7.5.2 Politics Group politics and decision-making strategies invariably affect any final video product. In the case of Wishlist, group politics played a critical role in both directing the film’s content and empowering the film-makers. Wishlist’s early group politics were affected by the over-representation of planning students in the production team. Being acutely conscious of issues of voice, the planning students were frequently deferential to April during the first 2 weeks of concept development. This deference was exacerbated by our film being inspired by a poem that April had written. Additionally, one of the planning students in our group had worked as a social worker in the DTES for many years and felt it was their role to teach and support the group’s youth representative. While continual deference is rarely beneficial, I feel that this initial deference helped to give April a sense of confidence in her own decisions. In fact, April in later conversations told me that she was frightened at first to voice her opinion because she thought that we were so highly educated, but then she realized that she was just as intelligent as the rest of us!18 This initial deference abated as soon as we began to understand the talents each of us brought to the project. April and myself, as the only group members with previous video experience, became the creative and technical side of the team, while Ian and Elana naturally fell into the process side of the production. Additionally, because Ian (40) and Elana (32) were both considerably older than April (21) and myself (22), April and I often found ourselves relating better to each other than to the older members of the group. This also helped to overcome the “planning student” and “youth with limited access to resources” categories within which we were initially operating. Despite this division of talents, tasks and ages, the Wishlist team used consensusbased decision-making for all production issues, including editing. This model meant that everyone in the group needed to understand, and agree with, what was being proposed. On several occasions, this led to very lengthy discussions that always involved trade-offs and compromises among the group members. One such debate was about the overall tone of the film. One planning student felt that we were making an overly optimistic piece and that we needed to be more critical of the city’s plans for the Greenway. The result was that we typed up and then printed off all of the recorded interviews. Together, the team spent 2 days cutting and categorizing people’s quotations, before agreeing, based on the transcripts, that we really didn’t have enough overt critique in the interviews to make them an integral part of the film’s narrative. While lengthy, this process allowed us all to step back from our own positions on the Greenway, and consider what our actual content looked like, before making any decisions. 7 Social Justice and Video 141 7.5.3 Product While consensus-based decision-making helped us to overcome the experience/inexperience divide with regard to video skills, we also made one significant decision to mitigate this problem. Because we were operating within a very short time frame, it was clear that I would have to do most of the editing. This posed a problem because part of the film’s purpose was to train those involved in videomaking skills. While we had collaboratively shot the interviews and edited together on paper, the three other group members would be missing out on the opportunity to acquire video-editing skills. To compensate, we agreed to use stop-motion animation, rather than Flash animation (a process that allows you to digitally animate a film). While I edited the film from Projection’s office, April, Ian and Elana, in a time-consuming process, manually altered each animated frame for the film’s two sequences. The result, I would argue, is an aesthetic that is much more in tune with the film’s tone: rather than appearing overly technical, Wishlist appears to be driven by collaboration. In spite of initial power imbalances, Wishlist’s process was overwhelmingly collaborative, based on the consensus decision-making model. It was my impression that every group member felt empowered to speak their own mind, as we openly (and sometimes painstakingly) discussed every issue. Additionally, because fundamental decisions around the skills-building component to the project were made early on, each group member walked away with a broader film-making skill set. Clearly, while video can be a powerful tool for fostering dialogue, issues of accessibility, representation and censorship need to be carefully considered at a project’s outset. Wishlist has shown that in order to make an inclusive film that fosters dialogue, a film’s style and aesthetics need to be driven by the multiple ways of knowing that exist in the community(ies). 7.6 From Dialoguing to Appropriating What do you see? Does it always have to be that way? As a utopian film, Wishlist urges people to claim their rights to participation and appropriation through engaging them in a dialogue based on imaginatively reinterpreting the present. 7.6.1 Wishlist as Utopia Wishlist opens up a space for dialogue by confronting feelings of powerlessness and invisibility often expressed by DTES residents. Wishlist demands the impossible as a way of realizing all that might be, creating a space for new possibilities while urging the viewer to add her own voice to the assemblage of voices (Attili, 2007). In asking the latent question, “What would you put on Carrall Street?”, Wishlist confronts people’s fears of powerlessness (Lefebvre, 1996). This confrontation is 142 J. Hallenbeck crucial to claiming the right to participate in and to appropriate the city; we can only truly inhabit the city once we are able to believe that things can change. Hope means believing that the impossible is possible, despite all evidence to the contrary, and this very act makes the evidence change, as Loeb (2004) has demonstrated, historically. Wishlist fosters this hope through using animation to imagine what an appropriated Carrall Street would look like. 7.6.2 Wishlist: Imagining Spatial Appropriation Through its imagined street appropriations, Wishlist establishes a dialogue based on the right to actively inhabit the city. We are alienated from our urban environments when we cannot see ourselves reflected in them. The movement from fear to hope therefore begins with imagining that we have the right to physically alter the spaces of the city so that they respond to our needs, desires, and identities (Young, 1990). Wishlist transforms Carrall Street into a place where people’s meanings are validated, projected and transmitted to others (Leach, 2005). For DTES residents viewing the film, they may hear (through the sound of a shopping cart on the street) or see (through their art appearing in an animation sequence) aspects of their lives reflected in the space. These validations and transformations are critical to initiating a dialogue over who has the right to appropriate space. For Marxist cultural critic Walter Benjamin, appropriation occurs both through use and by perception (Benjamin, 1968). Wishlist engages overtly in appropriation by perception; when people view the film, they enter into a dialogue with others over the multitude of possible uses (and users) of the street. For DTES residents, the establishment of this dialogue is crucial for changing how the DTES is perceived. As one resident states in the film, “the frustrating part for me is that the DTES is not recognized for what it is, a vibrant, artistic community”. Wishlist therefore plays an important role in empowering residents, while simultaneously transforming people’s narratives to include a broader understanding of the interplay among space, place and identity (Harvey, 1973). This comprehension is crucial for advancing the right to the city, as it opens up a forum for discussions based on the rights to participation and appropriation (Dikec, 2001). 7.6.3 Wishlist’s Vision for Inhabiting the City Wishlist grounds spatial appropriation in a vision of inhabiting the city based on a politics of multiplicity. This framing is crucial to the film, as insights and revelations come not from recording and transmitting stories but from weaving them together (Gurstein, 2007). On Wishlist’s Carrall Street, social groups intermingle while resisting homogenization, embracing the differences of opinion and understanding that are constitutive of city life (Young, 1990). On this imagined street, ideas for change (“I think there should be an area for play, where children and adults can interact, like a fair that’s always happening, where the multicultural, multiinterests can be expressed”) are juxtaposed with demands for leaving things as is (“Honestly, I’d just leave it the way it is. I like it. It’s real”). Because Wishlist is a compilation 7 Social Justice and Video 143 of overlapping images, ideas and soundscapes, it demands that the viewer engage with the film as an active listener and mediator. The result is that Wishlist allows the viewer to move from an individual analysis of place to a collective, politically charged critique of space, thereby rendering the act of viewing a highly political one (Harvey, 1973). 7.6.4 Wishlist’s Politics There are no inevitabilities in this world. . . there are always responses, resistances, attempts at shaping and reshaping the historical forces that impinge on our lives (Friedmann, 2000, p. 461) When we use our imaginations, we are playfully engaging in appropriations that are often deeply political. In creating Wishlist, the production team was keenly aware that direct action could be one of the film’s outcomes. Because the Carrall Street redesign process was already well underway by the time we were editing, we decided that Wishlist’s potential was in asserting a vision that did not so much depend on mobilizing to address or respond to the current political regime, but rather depended on individuals and social groups mobilizing for their right to appropriate space in spite of political power. As one resident in the film argues: “Using that space in a productive way, socializing there, we can take something that we didn’t really ask for and turn it into a community building tool”. In other words, the Carrall Street redesign process could act as a catalyst for multiple forms of (re)appropriation. By spatially appropriating Carrall Street through perception, Wishlist establishes the context in which such a physical (re)appropriation could occur. Wishlist is therefore less of a “Wish List” for City of Vancouver planners and more of a do-it-yourself (DIY) “Wish List” for current and future users of Carrall Street.19 Conceivably then, Wishlist, as a utopian film, empowers DTES residents to imagine how their acts of participation and appropriation might affect Carrall Street. Relying on animation, Wishlist challenges both DTES residents’ and non-residents’ perceptions of Carrall Street, thereby initiating a dialogue over who has rights to the city. This dialogue describes the possibilities for the creation of a more diverse Carrall Street based on the principles of DIY or (in Lefebvre’s language) appropriation. 7.7 Conclusions: Imagining as a Right We’ve seen how Wishlist fosters the right to inhabit the city by engaging people in a dialogue over their rights to participation and appropriation. This last section moves away from this discussion to evaluate Wishlist for its applicability, reception, institutional integration and relevance as a planning tool. 144 J. Hallenbeck 7.7.1 Applicability When I have had the opportunity to screen Wishlist to city planners and community organizers, the question I am asked first concerns the film’s applicability to wider social and geographical contexts. My first instinct is to answer that it does not matter, that broader applicability was not the purpose of the film. After further consideration, I usually explain that because the film is relatively short (just over 5 minute in length: an imposed project constraint), it does not contain the necessary space to frame Carrall Street’s social, geographic or political context. For example, the film does not even mention that Carrall Street is located in Vancouver. The reason for this is because Wishlist was never intended to be screened separately from the other Participatory Video project films and that “package” of films includes a 10-minute process piece that contextualizes all three films. This is a point which was much debated amongst the participatory video group: some of us felt that it was important to be able to screen the films separately, but organizers emphasized that this would undermine the collaborative nature of the project. If Wishlist were to be screened separately, it would be quite easy to put some text at the beginning of the film to explain the overall context in which the film is set. Without establishing the relevant context, it has been difficult for some people to see how they could use a similar film in their work. However, others have suggested that the film’s aesthetic and narrative characteristics could be applied to different planning contexts. I have two main comments regarding applicability. First, I would argue that many of the ideas expressed by DTES residents are relevant to communities in other cities: the desire for safe drinking water, emergency pay phones and even farmers markets are all items that most people would want to have access to in their neighbourhoods, although, of course, each neighbourhood has its unique and context-specific needs. The second and more important question is whether Wishlist’s approach, its aesthetic and narrative choices, are artistic and political strategies with wider applicability. The two preceding sections suggest that they are. The real challenge, however, is related to scale. For a large neighbourhood, or city, can such video-making principles be applied? And what would be the cost implications of such an expanded scale of engagement? I would suggest that a large-scale video-making process would need to be carefully evaluated and planned before being undertaken. Examples, such as Igloolik Isuma Productions,20 suggest that video can be a valuable tool for ensuring cultural survival and community cohesiveness. 7.7.2 Reception One measure of the success of a film is the audience’s reaction. For films like Wishlist, intended to promote dialogue, people’s responses are crucial to evaluating effectiveness. Due to circumstances described later in this section, Wishlist has been screened only on a few occasions and only twice in the DTES. The Participatory Video group screened preliminary versions of all three films at the Interurban Gallery, located at the intersection of Carrall Street and Hastings Street 7 Social Justice and Video 145 in the DTES. Participants from all three films were invited to attend and were asked for their feedback. Wishlist was shown last and, unlike the other two films, was met with some degree of apprehension. A few residents expressed concern that this video, unlike its predecessors, was uncritical of the Carrall Street Greenway redesign and seemed to accept gentrification as a fait accompli.21 What this reaction underscored for us was that Wishlist successfully challenged residents’ narratives of place, power and agency. Instead of “preaching to the converted” by focusing on the negative actions of city planners and developers, Wishlist seriously challenged residents to move beyond their anger and to imagine that they had the power to affect the street. Essentially, I would argue that Wishlist caused such a stir because it had successfully urged people to move away from their fear of displacement towards the hope that they could change Carrall Street. Wishlist has also been screened to non-DTES residents.22 The first reaction amongst non-residents is to ask about the logistics of undertaking animation; most people are curious about the process and often express the belief that animation could be used in their own projects. At one screening, audience members began to brainstorm about the different spaces in Vancouver that could be used for a sequel (they finally settled on the Vancouver Art Gallery steps).23 This reaction shows that the film is successful in getting people to imagine how they can appropriate their own spaces. Non-DTES residents also commonly express surprise when they find out that the articulate, educated voices in the film belong to DTES residents. This reaction usually instigates a conversation over people’s misconceptions and stereotyping of the DTES. This reaction is another indication that Wishlist is a successful dialoguing tool. 7.7.3 Institutional Integration Patsy Healey argues that imagination needs to be coupled with proper institutional analysis in order to bring about change in the public realm (Healey, 2001). In the case of Wishlist, several problems occurred with the video’s dissemination that significantly hampered its ability to be used as a wider dialoguing tool. It is important to underscore that many of the problems pertaining to Wishlist’s dissemination are problems frequently experienced when people attempt to use video as a planning tool. The first issue for us was one of project timing. The CSPVP began when the City of Vancouver was wrapping up the public outreach component of the Carrall Street redesign. In a meeting with a senior planner at the City of Vancouver, we were informed that the physical design of the street had already been decided and therefore, our videos could only have a minimal impact on the street’s design. While it was suggested during this meeting that the videos could potentially contribute to the programming of the space, there was no formal agreement between the City of Vancouver and the Carrall Street Participatory Video group. Consequently, there was no structured venue in which to screen Wishlist. 146 J. Hallenbeck The second problem was one of flawed communication between the Carrall Street Participatory Video group and the City of Vancouver. As already mentioned, Wishlist was one of three films produced about the Greenway. Upon project completion, some of the staff of the Planning Department within the City of Vancouver deemed one of the other films to be controversial and inappropriate. In response to their concern, the School of Community and Regional Planning, Projections, Ear to the Ground Planning and staff of the Planning Department of the City of Vancouver agreed that none of the films would be publicly screened or distributed until the controversy was resolved. Unfortunately, this decision meant that Wishlist could not be used to inform the last part of the Greenway planning process. Patsy Healey explains that when we critically imagine, we enter into new dialogues about governance and decision-making (Healey, 2001). The Wishlist story told here has shown that without proper institutional buy-in, this dialogue can never get started. An important lesson, therefore, is that future video projects negotiate opportunities for engagement with planning and governance institutions at the outset of the project. 7.7.4 Relevance The experience of Wishlist suggests that, in the proper context, video can serve as a powerful tool for stimulating conversation over people’s rights to inhabit the city. DTES residents are often unable (or unwilling) to engage with institutionally driven public meetings, workshops, design charrettes and council reports. Video, as a visual medium, offered them a different way to engage in an inclusive and locally based discussion over their rights to the city. Community-based videos such as Wishlist have the potential to serve as an a priori policy document, in which discussions about changes to public space can occur in the public domain, without people having to form interest groups.24 To this end, community control over the medium and its dissemination is crucial in ensuring its legitimacy and applicability (Gurstein, 2007). Issues of representation and censorship need to be carefully considered in a project’s scoping and venues for dissemination need to be confirmed at the project’s outset. While there is great potential for multimedia to influence policy and promote community development, video is only one of the many tools at the disposal of city planners, community organizers and residents (Sandercock, 2007). Because video has come into fashion as a way of disseminating information and ideas, there is a tendency for it to be seen as a brave new way forward in difficult planning contexts. Our experience with the CSPVP suggests that video be approached from a critical standpoint and, like other planning tools, be tailored to different community contexts. This chapter has argued that the right to the city originates with the right to imagine participating in its creation. Video, as demonstrated by Wishlist, has the potential to catalyze this right to participation. Wishlist establishes a dialogue based 7 Social Justice and Video 147 on utopian imagining and visual appropriation, thereby contributing to the struggle for social justice. But even though video has the potential to foster innovative modes of participation, relationship building and decision-making, it is clear that institutions and communities need to develop their capacity to incorporate video into their governance structures. More theoretical and practical research is needed in order to encourage governments and institutions to take risks in incorporating video into their governance processes. Notes 1. For a detailed account of why there has been renewed interest in the right to the city and in the thinking of Henri Lefebvre, see Purcell (2002). 2. These questions were derived from the author’s own initial questions as part of a larger action research project. 3. For a history of the Downtown Eastside, see Sommers (2001). For a critical look at social movements and space in the Downtown Eastside, see Blomley (2004). 4. For more information on the economic revitalization plan for the DTES, please see City of Vancouver (2007b). 5. The City of Vancouver has a greenways plan for the city. Their greenways website explains: “Greenways in Vancouver are linear public corridors for pedestrians and cyclists that connect parks, nature reserves, cultural features, historic sites, neighbourhoods and retail areas” (City of Vancouver, 2007c). 6. Because this video project was a participatory video project, the intent was never clearly delineated. Furthermore, due to time constraints, the actual ability of the City of Vancouver to use the videos to inform the public design process was limited. For an extended discussion of this, see Vallillee (2007). 7. Projections provide skill building and video mentorship opportunities to “youth with limited access to resources”, mainly from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The term “youth with limited access to resources” is used by Projections, who developed the term in partnership with the youth involved in their video projects. Ear to the Ground Planning is a planning consulting company that uses video as part of the planning process. 8. John Friedmann has written extensively on the role of utopian thinking and insurgency in planning. Particularly relevant to this thesis is The Prospect of Cities (2002), in which Friedmann discusses the usefulness of utopian thinking. 9. I am relying on the following definition of reflexivity: Reflexivity involves applying our critical thinking to practice, therefore changing contexts, projects and people: “examining critically the assumptions underlying our actions, the impact of those actions” (Cunliffe, 2004, p. 410). 10. Schön (1983) describes reflecting in practice as a reflecting in action that is about the thinking involved in doing. 11. It is important to note in this regard that having a youth who worked and sometimes lived in the community was essential to building trust and setting up interviews. 12. While using an audio recorder made some people more willing to be interviewed, there was still significant reluctance from people to be recorded. Consequently, a large proportion of the voices in Wishlist come from the formal interviews that we conducted. 13. In the formal interviews, we chose not to start with a set list of questions: we began each interview by asking what the interviewee would put on Carrall Street, but the follow-up questions were based on our knowledge of the person. For the informal interviews, we only asked one 148 J. Hallenbeck question: “If you could put anything on Carrall Street, what would it be?” In conducting informal interviews, the device of making a film allowed us to discuss openly the Carrall Street Greenway in a non-institutional environment. It raised awareness of the changes occurring on the street and consequently encouraged people to reflect on how they have used the space in the past and would want to use the space in the future. According to a report released by the University of British Columbia’s Learning Exchange, the DTES has a higher number of people who have less than a Grade 9 education when compared to the rest of Vancouver (Newman, 2005). We would write down peoples’ ideas and then read them back to them, to ensure accuracy. Editing requires the selection of specific ideas that work with the narrative coherence of the piece. As such, while we tried to incorporate either visually or audibly something from everyone with whom we spoke, that was not always possible. It is also important to note that these categories were developed by the Wishlist team and that interviewees did not describe which categories they thought their ideas fitted into. Please note that the following discussion about group dynamics stems only from my own observations and is therefore a highly subjective account of the film-making process. What is interesting about this conversation is that at the end of the project, many of the youth with limited access to resources expressed a strong desire to return to school, and April was determined to become a midwife. For more evaluation of the project’s benefits, please see Hunt (2006) and Marcuse et al. (2006). The idea for the title of the film came from one group member, who liked the idea of naming the film Wishlist because the film, unlike so many planning processes, demands that residents see themselves (rather than the State) as agents of change. Igloolik Isuma Productions describes their company as follows: “Our name Isuma means ‘to think’,” as in Thinking Productions. Our building in the centre of Igloolik has a big sign on the front that says Isuma. Think. Young and old work together to keep our ancestors’ knowledge alive. We create traditional artefacts, digital multimedia and desperately needed jobs in the same activity. Our productions give an artist’s view for all to see where we came from: what Inuit were able to do then and what we are able to do now. While this was the sentiment expressed by three vocal residents, it is unclear whether everyone who attended the screening shared their opinion. Several other members of the audience approached me afterwards and expressed their happiness with the piece. Clearly, screenings in the future need to be facilitated in order to generate a variety of responses. The film has been screened at the World Urban Forum, the World Planners Congress, Planners for Tomorrow, DOXA (a curated and juried festival comprising public screenings, workshops, panel discussions and public forums) and at community consultations. This comment is interesting because the Art Gallery used to be Vancouver’s courthouse and was traditionally the place for political protests. Young (1990, p. 73) explains how the formation of interest groups depoliticizes public debate. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. References Attili, G. (2007, March). Digital ethnographies in the planning field. Planning Theory and Practice, 8(1), 89–114. Benjamin, W. (1968). Illuminations. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. Blomley, N. (2004). 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