VISUAL EXCHANGE

Visual Exchange strengthens the capacities, agency, and autonomy of underserved communities and groups through dialogue, participatory and creative methods, action-research, training, and efforts to reduce unequal access to knowledge. We design and deliver structured projects combining transmission, capacity building, and locally grounded innovation in health, culture, social development, and sustainability. We also support NGOs and institutions through field-grounded approaches that bring community perspectives into decision-making and strengthen program relevance and accountability.

Our approach of Participatory Creative Methods such as Participatory Video, Photovoice, Cellphilm and Participatory Digital Storytelling combined with other art-based practices can be considered as a form of mediated process of research and empowerment. We use a set of visual, sensorial and embodied methods, participatory techniques and creative actions to provide caring spaces for dialogue and agency between individuals or groups. This can bring to light underlying dynamics behind general outcomes and enables individuals, groups, communities or organizations to become more resilient through the exploration of their own resources, contexts, experiences and representations. It enables them to co-create a common ground and share solutions through a powerful process of practical co-creation that can take shape as co-created media outputs, extending the dialogue process to wider audiences. This enables stakeholders to better know their fields, better understand each other’s needs and views and thus stimulate a dynamic of change that emanates from within.