What does it mean to be a fully engaged citizen within one’s community? What does citizenship mean for people with disabilities, in particular? “Citizen Chronicles,” a Field Report article published in the Spring 2014 issue of SSIR, explores those questions by taking a close look at Project Citizenship, a cross-organizational initiative based in Alberta, Canada. Led by the SKILLS Society, a nonprofit disability services organization, the initiative also draws in students and faculty members at the University of Alberta. Together, these participants work to enable and to showcase efforts by people with disabilities to flourish as active members of their community.

To supplement the article, we present a pair of items—a video segment and an online essay—that illustrate and explore the role that visual storytelling can play in highlighting the contributions of people with disabilities. SSIR shares this content essentially in its original form, and with gratitude to Ben Weinlick, director of Project Citizenship, and to the project participants who created the content.

The article introduces readers to a Project Citizenship participant named Jason—and to Jason’s alter ego, Captain Community. Jason’s exploits as a neighborhood watchman in Edmonton, Alberta, inspired the creation of a comic-book-style art piece, as well as the making of the video chronicle that appears below. (You can also watch the video at the Project Citizenship website.)

Jason’s Story: Captain Community

Hey, I can help my neighbors keep their home safe! If I don’t help, who will?—Jason

Captain Community from project citizenship on Vimeo.

As a tool for bringing to life the efforts of citizens with disabilities, the video medium has been of particular interest to Project Citizenship participants. Carmen Norris, for example, studied that topic as part of her work toward earning a master’s degree in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. What follows is a lightly edited version of an essay that Norris posted at the Project Citizenship website in November 2013.

The Power of Visual Stories

What power do stories hold and what can they do for society? What value do images bring to stories and what can visual storytelling do for a project interested in improving community engagement for people with developmental disabilities and challenging social perception of disability in our community?

These were some of the overarching research questions I was interested in exploring when I set out (and was warmly welcomed) to focus my Master of Arts research and thesis on Project Citizenship. After reviewing many of the video stories [and] interviewing key collaborators, … I am delighted to share some of my findings concerning the power of visual stories.

You Get to See It!

One of the first (and most apparent) benefits of visual stories, I learned, was, “You get to see it!” When I asked one filmmaker, Lorraine, if she thought there was anything that film, as an audiovisual medium, might lend citizenship stories that another medium might not, … she chuckled as she emphatically said, “Yeah. You get to see it! You totally get to see it. I mean film brings things to life. Yes, you can interpret it. … You could make an experimental film, … but you really can get a good picture of somebody and their life through film. You can step into their world for a minute and see them looking pretty real.”

In the video stories made for Project Citizenship, audience members are not merely told the stories of people with disabilities acting as engaged citizens, we are shown. We see the movement of bodies in motion; we witness interactions between people and come to know these individuals through observing their activities. Through sight and sound, we are granted a glimpse into people’s otherwise private worlds. More than showing, videos and films are also expressive media. While videos can and certainly do explain concepts, events, characters, etc., I have found that the audiovisual medium of video allows citizenship stories more opportunity to express their meaning. For example, when I spoke with another filmmaker, Steven, about “Daniel’s Story,” he explained how he tried to show Daniel’s connection to his friends … rather than explain it to the audience.

In this example, … Daniel’s capacity to participate in a drumming circle and the friendship he has developed with his peers [are] expressed through eye contact, smiles, conversation, and laughter. The human connection we perceive, while described in part by Daniel’s peers, is also expressed through a combination of audio and visual cues. In essence, we are witnesses, or accomplices, to Daniel’s experience and come to know the affinity he shares with others by what is expressed on-screen. This expressed meaning is a major benefit of audiovisual media.

Beyond their expressive capacity, another major advantage of presenting citizenship stories as short videos is accessibility, a longstanding hot topic in disability studies. With the abundance of new technologies such as YouTube, Netflix, smartphones, Wi-Fi, 3G, social media sites, etc., it is becoming increasingly [easy] to access visual media. YouTube alone demonstrates the popularity and pervasiveness of short films and video clips. With Internet connections spanning the globe, there is unprecedented potential for one’s home movies to “go viral,” reaching millions of viewers plugged-in around the world.

This technology presents potential proliferation of material that was unthinkable in previous generations, and this platform offers people with disabilities (and the people who support them) a new and powerful avenue for disseminating their stories. The people I spoke with for this study were keenly aware of the far-reaching potential of video storytelling. Senior Leader at SKILLS Society Ben Weinlick commented: “That’s one of the hopes for outcomes of the project … that the stories become shared. It would be great if the stories become viral, … and people tells their friends, … ‘Hey, did you see this inspiring video? Check this out.’” Similarly, Steven remarked: “I love how easy it is to share visuals online.”

Despite the excess of digital media technology, accessibility is still an issue for people with disabilities. Unfortunately, the Internet is not free, and for some, particularly those who have limited income, live in group homes, or rely on public supports and services, luxuries such as the Internet are easily considered an unnecessary expense. …

While access to technology is getting better, it is important to recognize that for many people there are still very real limitations—institutionalization and poverty being chief among them. Until these social constraints are sufficiently addressed, people with disabilities will continue to be disproportionately deprived of the tools, services, and technologies that able-bodied citizens enjoy and often take for granted.

That said, … Project Citizenship can take advantage of the benefits offered by the Internet by easily sharing stories of engaged citizenship with new and diverse audiences around the world. While there is room for improvement, the video format of citizenship stories offers a significant opportunity for people with disabilities to interact and engage with others like never before.

Videos and Pictures Make Stories More Accessible

Another finding I would like to highlight concerns literacy. To be blunt, presenting stories in an audiovisual medium is important for Project Citizenship because the majority of people SKILLS supports cannot read or write. … If citizenship stories were created in solely written form, many people could never read them, access them, or understand them.

When I asked Debbie Reid, SKILLS’s senior manager, why the project decided to use art and film as the most common medium to tell citizenship stories, she quickly identified literacy as a leading factor: … “[M]any people with disabilities can’t read, and if we hold power over people by telling stories about their lives in written form, in ways they have no access to, it’s an entirely un-collaborative and often oppressive thing to do. … [Video is] a universal language. It’s accessible to people who have really limited cognitive capacity.”

In essence, creating a written story would cut many people with disabilities off from the production (and consumption) of their own representation. In a project that seeks inclusion and collaboration, using a form that fundamentally excludes people with cognitive impairments is not only missing the point, it would only work to reinforce the oppressive power relations the project is tasked with dismantling.

To summarize, the expressive qualities, accessibility, and predominantly non-written form make short videos excellent tools for creating and sharing the stories of engaged citizenship. Using short video, people with disabilities can collaborate and participate in the creation of their stories, access them once they are made, and share their contributions with a larger, global audience. As audience members, we are shown new possibilities of citizenship and gain access to the personal worlds of others through expressive means. That’s what stories and images can do; they can help us imagine a more inclusive and accepting world with people with disabilities. Imagination is the first step on our journey to social change.

Read more stories by SSIR Editors.