This manual is based on the workshops organised in February 2010 for the Transition Finsbury Park association. Participants are invited to choose places that are important to them, optionally within a defined perimeter, and to welcome viewers through videos. http://bruchansky.name/2010/05/09/welcome-to-finsbury-park/

1. Welcome to My Place: Video Workshop Manual Page 1
Welcome to My Place: Video Workshop Manual
By Christophe Bruchansky and James Thomson, May 2010
Aim
This video activity is meant for people of any age and background to share the places that matter to
them. It can be used as:
a. A tool to better understand the identity of a place or area (e.g. in the context of an
ethnographic study).
b. An introduction to a collective urban planning effort (e.g. a design charrette,
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charrette) or in combination with a community mapping
exercise (see for example http://www.mappingforchange.org.uk).
Case study: Welcome to Finsbury Park
This manual is based on the workshops organised between February and March 2010 with the
Transition Finsbury Park Association (http://www.transitionfinsburypark.org.uk/).
The Transition Finsbury Park Association wants to find ways of
living that are based on localised food production, sustainable
energy sources, lively local economies and an enlivened sense
of community, rather than on cheap and polluting oil. It was
looking for new ways to engage with local communities, and so
organized these Welcome to My Place workshops.
 See the videos made at the workshops: http://bruchansky.name/welcome-to-my-place/
 Read more about the Finsbury Park use case and the conclusions we drew from the
workshops: http://bruchansky.name/2010/05/09/welcome-to-finsbury-park/
Concept
The concept is easy to grasp: participants are invited to choose places that are important to them,
optionally within a specific area marked out on a map by the organizers. The participants are then
asked to create videos of less than one minute which welcome viewers to their place.
It is designed to be easily understandable by both children and adults, while offering enough
freedom for creativity and artistic expression. The concept is the result of a series of brainstorming
sessions and tests made in collaboration with Nathan Johnson from the small world project
(http://www.smallworld.wiseman.com.hk/). The welcome practice is very rich and expressive, and
participants can welcome the viewers in many ways.
Here are two variants of the activity.

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Option 1: Conducting a workshop
1. Prepare the material:
a. Find someone who has a digital camera or a mobile phone that can capture videos.
Make sure the videos can be transferred from the camera to the computer where
they will be edited. The simplest way is to provide the participants with your own
cameras.
b. Choose your video editing software. We recommend Windows Movie Maker for
Windows, which is free and easy to use. We used Sony Vegas Studio, which requires
a little more practice but provides more functionality. Many other options are
available on the market.
2. Introduce the project to the participants and ask each of them to think about a place that
matters to him or her. We advise you do this introduction a week before the day of the
workshop. From our experience, the results are better when the participants have time to
meditate on their choice.
a. Insist that the places they choose need to hold personal value to them.
b. Make any restriction in choosing their place clear. Should it be in a specific area, or
can it be anywhere? Should it be a public place? Can the same place be chosen by
other participants?
c. If they need help choosing a place, offer a wide range of examples but insist that the
choice is up to them. The place can be a room, a street, a park, a building, a
neighbourhood, or even the whole city – anything the participants can think of.
d. Explain how the participants will create the videos (see point 3)
e. Mention whether the videos will be published or not, and where. Being part of a
public exhibition can be motivating, but it can also worry some parents in case you
are working with children.
3. Shoot the videos:
a. Split participants into small groups of between two and four people, each with one
camera and accompanied by one facilitator. (5 minutes)
b. Ask the groups to choose between two and four places where they would like to
film. Draw a quick itinerary on a map before leaving. (15 minutes)
c. Make sure the groups have enough time not only to film their places, but also to go
from one place to another. (something like one hour)

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d. When you give the camera to a participant, you are handing over power, so do not
ask for it back during the session: as the facilitator, you should help the group only if
needed. Filming a video requires a cameraman, maybe a presenter and/or actors,
even a director, a writer, and some technicians – depending on the group’s
ambitions. Negotiating who gets these roles within the group is part of the creative
process. It is up to the participants to choose how they welcome the viewers to their
place, whether by standing in front of the camera or talking from behind.
i. A short presentation before heading out to make the videos might help the
participants – show them a few examples of videos (from our Welcome to
My Place database for example). If you have children in your group, show
them photos of television/film sets and give them a brief explanation of
each role (presenter, actors, director, technicians, etc.).
ii. While you are on your way to the first location, ask who is going to be
filming, who will be presenting, etc.
iii. On location – it is a good idea to use sentences like ‘3..2..1.. action’ to get
the ball rolling. As facilitator, you may need to play the director at first -
particularly if you are working with children. However, the participants will
quickly pick up the rules of the game, and fingers crossed, start playing on
their own.
Initially, participants might find it difficult to describe their place. If this is the case,
ask them questions that can help to prompt them into action: Where are you? Why
do you like this place? Why is this place important to you? What would you say if
you welcomed a friend to this place?
4. Edit the videos
a. We edited the videos ourselves, but if the participants are keen to edit their own
videos, it could become part of another editing workshop.
b. We decided to organize a second workshop for our group of children where they
watched their videos and made drawings of the places they had just seen. You could
then add pictures of the drawings at the beginning or the end of the videos, further
adding to the children’s perspective.
Option 2: Asking for individual contributions
1. Prepare the material and introduce the project, see option 1
2. Make the videos

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o The most effective approach is to ask participants to film the places that matter to
them while commenting on what they see from behind the camera. It provides more
insight into their perspective and is easier for beginners.
o That being said, participants should still be free to film their places the way they
want and present them in front of the camera, in one or several shots.
o Keep an eye on the one-minute time limit. It might be challenging, but it is necessary
in order to make the screening of all videos manageable.
o Participants can either edit the videos themselves or let someone else do it. The
second option may alter what they initially wanted to convey, but is necessary to get
people who are less interested in video-making involved.

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What to do with the videos
The usage of the videos depends on your objectives.
1. Organizing a screening for the participants and others to talk about the places that have
been filmed is a good way to kick-off a discussion about a place’s identity (e.g. an area, a city
or a building). This is what we did to introduce the subjective maps workshop described
here: http://bruchansky.name/2010/05/09/welcome-to-my-place-workshop-manuals/
2. Collecting of wider range of documents about a place that could inform further research on
its identity.
3. Creating of a public exhibition. The videos could change the public’s perception about a
place, raise awareness, or provide informative insights. Make sure you have the permission
of the authors and the people that were filmed (or in the case of children – parental
permission). This manual has been written as part of the Welcome to My Place project and
we encourage everyone to publish their videos in our Vimeo group, so that it can make up a
global catalogue of what places mean today: http://www.vimeo.com/groups/welcome.
We hope that this manual will be useful. If you plan to use it for one of your own activities, please let
us know how it goes: contact@bruchansky.name.
Thanks for reading,
Christophe Bruchansky and James Thomson