“The Camera Rolls, Everyone, Shhh!!”: Power Dynamics in a Participatory Video Project With Older Adults

This study contributes to the call for more reflexive accounts of arts-based participatory research by offering an in-depth account of the backstage processes of participatory video (PV) research projects with older adults. Drawing on two projects involving older adults in the context of research on age-friendly cities, we investigate how different film roles influence power dynamics within participatory video research. Using a responsive evaluation approach, we analysed various forms of data, including field notes, notes of group reflections, and focus groups transcripts. Our findings show that flexible film roles on the one hand, such as camera operator, interviewer, editor, or overall member of the film crew, offered diverse and meaningful pathways for engagement. Communicative spaces were fostered by flexibility, playfulness, and relational responsiveness. However, these same roles also introduced new power dynamics. Film roles carry specific associations of skill, talent, ascribed attributes, and authority, enabling co-researchers to negotiate power and to amplify voices in distinct ways, while marginalising and silencing others, within and beyond the group. Where art-based participatory research often (implicitly) claims or suggests to represent “the voices” of the communities involved, power imbalances undermine the legitimacy of such representative claims. This can have far reaching implications when the output of such projects inform public policy, advocacy and quality improvement, and this can contribute to epistemic injustice. We argue that in order to navigate these power dynamics participatory video research requires attentiveness to power, needing situated work and reflection throughout the process.