The Healing Use of Community Television

The Self-Revealing Nature Of Media

Whenever somebody picks up a camera, other people get to look into that person's soul. Everyone can see what is looked at, what is focused upon, how people are reacting to the person with the camera, as well as what is not shown on the resulting film. Display a collection of portraits and one immediately senses how a range of different subjects are responding to the photographer. Is there a lot of hostility? Are people relaxed? Are children oblivious to the camera? Are all subjects of one socioeconomic or demographic type? Are all the stories reflective of one particular outlook on life?

Such inner revelation holds great potential for any of us who work with people helping them get their lives put together, and helping them grow in self understanding. It really does not matter what kind of medium is used for this purpose. There are people who work with paint and clay in art therapy. There are music therapists, and of course, the famous players theatre made up of mentally challenged people who work with black-light theatre puppets.

In regular broadcast television, these personal idiosyncrasies are deliberately suppressed, and as Television Producer, Pam Best .(3) pointed out, members of the media industry go to great lengths to cover for one another when a program is on-air. However, in the production of community television, there is opened up to a counselor, a whole range of new possibilities for working with people and helping them to move on in their lives with wholeness and healing. When personal problems emerge in the tape which is shot, or prevents a program from being completed properly, a counselor can stop the proceedings and address the problem so that it no longer interferes with the production. If the problem is interfering with production, it is likely tripping up the person's life in other areas as well.

One of the greatest advantages of this type of intervention is the indirect nature of the work with an individual. Often people do not like to be approached as needing to be "fixed". When the objective is to make a production, then addressing a problem in a matter-of-fact way, at the time of its emergence, for the purposes of enabling the production to move forward, eases the resistance of the person to having it dealt with. In counseling, it really does not matter in which context a person gets help with a problem or issue, because the benefits carry over into all other areas of life as well.

Production-Based Interventions

• The first time I tried this approach was with a group of fifteen young people at a mid-term break conference. I arranged to initiate them into audio tape cutting, for the purpose of making professional quality audio tapes. The first evening showed them such things as the editing effect of putting a variety of sound effects behind the same sentence. The next day I had them go into groups or work alone and produce a script for a small audio production. I told them to pick a topic that they were very familiar with, or something they wanted to say powerfully to somebody - a teacher, a parent, a friend - as the point of our exercise was to learn to cut tape not to think up new material. I said I would go around and help them put a script together if they were stuck. When the scripts were done, I showed them how to cut tape, edit their stories together and add sound effects. They spent a couple of days editing tape, after which we did the audio mixes, put them all onto a master tape and duped off a copy of everybody's production for each person to take home.

  As I walked around, I watched for opportunities for personal intervention. In one case, we had a number of young boys who made a funny production within which there was no issue to address. The open format allowed for such a reality, so they were able to participate fully that week as well.

  In the first group I encountered they wanted to do a program on grief, but were stuck. I asked whose "baby" it was. It turned out that the person had an unresolved grief reaction of long standing, and as it had not resolved for him, he could only get part way into the production. I stopped things, helped him by opening up the "stages of grief" material, and related them to his situation. The others listened in as the conversation went on right in front of them. The program that the team put together after the conversation truly "sizzled".

  In another case there was a group wanting to do it on teen suicide but were stuck. I asked whose program it was. I then asked 'Have you ever felt this way?" she said "yes". Then I asked "Do you feel this way now?" she said yes. So I said, "why don't we deal with it right now so that you can use the results in finishing your program?". We talked about it with her and her friends, got to the bottom of the problem and they made a program that was profoundly moving, a message from a daughter to her mom, speaking frankly about the state of mind out of which she spoke.

  When these and other productions were spun down for the group members to each take to their homes, the result of the tapes in people's homes was astounding. I had one parent look up my father and thank him for the workshop I had done. I have also had many of the participants stop me on the street and talk about the experience, and so on. All this was done in a church basement, with several borrowed tape recorders, some odds and ends of peripheral machinery , a handful of tapes and some sound effects records.

  The key ingredient in it all was a commitment to address any issues which arose, when they arose rather than suppress them for the sake of making a production. Media reveals a lot about its makers, and that aspect opens up a whole new range of possibilities for churches to help their congregants to move forward in their lives. A side-benefit of this approach is the production of programming materials which have far greater depth than would otherwise be possible.

Measuring Felt Social Integration

• I once ran a workshop for a week at Brandon University in which we trained a number of academic advisors from the northern reserves in "Academic Advising", so they could better assist their High-School students prepare for University. On the first morning I sent them out with video cameras to take a couple of minutes each of video showing what they saw when they came on campus. At the end of the week, I sent them out again to repeat the exercise. In the interim they had met a large number of the staff and Student Service professionals, and had lived in the residence facilities. Just before they departed I showed each of the groups' two tapes back to back and asked them all to watch for differences in the before and after tapes. In every case, the first tapes had almost no people in them, and the people were distant or with backs turned. The second tapes all were with cameras right in people's faces, full of interviews with people they knew, and riotous with laughter and jokes. It was obvious that their level of comfort had risen over the week. I pointed out to them that video was a great way to find out how well their students were fitting in to their new environment. Just send them out with a camera and watch what they "saw".

"Healing" And The Residential School Issue

• Ten years ago, a Mohawk friend of mine, Rod Dignean, then Director of Adult Education at the White Bear Post Secondary Program, pointed out to me in the course of a conversation that the key difference between the White and First Nations' approaches to education lay in who was held to be responsible for learning. In the white K to 12 system, the responsibility for learning was on the shoulders of society, through its school boards, principals, and teachers. In the First Nations approach, the responsibility for learning was squarely on the shoulders of the student, and great pains were taken to ensure it remained there. It was felt that this one factor was the central aspect of "cultural violation" by which the Residential School System worked its devastating effects on First Nations children over the past decades, which they are just now trying to address.

  A few weeks later, I was conducting a workshop on academic advising with a group of counselors in Winnipeg, and talked about this factor with them. After the session a city High-School counselor said, "Yes, we know that we need to get students to take responsibility for their own learning, but how can we get them to start doing so?" I blurted out, " I'm sure there are a hundred ways, but I know video works, because it is a self-learning (autodidactic) sport".

  When I returned to White Bear and recounted the conversation to Rod, he noted, "That's fine in theory, but nobody is even going to understand what you are talking about until they see it happen". I said, Great idea, do you know anyone who wants to make a demo-project video?"

  That week we started into the production of "Hide The Bannock", the account of a former residential-school student talking about their family's tendency to hide the bannock every time a white person came to their house, because it was considered "poor man's food". The intent was to make a sequel called "the making of 'Hide the Bannock'" in order to bring out the features we wanted to demonstrate. Although the multi-year "White Bear Media Project" emerged out of that production initiative, the second production did not happen for two reasons: first, our initial funding ran out. Second, the "self-revelation" aspect in the film of its principle character was so profound and visible within the First Nations community that the film was pulled after a couple of showings. That incident spoke to me of the potency of community television as a tool in so many aspects of healing in community development.

Multi Camera Production Context

• One of the main reasons I chose to return to Community Television over the past nine months was to be alert to whether the multi-camera production context would be as conducive to the healing activity as audio and single-camera work was. I was delighted to note that it too had at least as potential as the other media formats. Because multi-camera production is a team sport, and most activity takes place "in the here and now" rather than shooting over a long period of time for an editor to assemble at a later date, it offers many opportunities for numerous small interventions in addition to the larger conversations. For example there are:
  • convesations over the headsets between director, camera people, and other staff,
  • the multiple staff interacting in the control room,
  • the many preparatory meetings leading up to the event,
  • the unpredictable nature and unexpected occurrences of mobile productions,
  • the long waiting times for many personnel,
  • and the teamwork in doing setups and tear-downs.
  • The multiple screens visible to the director simultaneously from each camera
  • The spontaneous shot selection by switcher and director.

  I feel that the potential of multi-camera production for individual and social healing is hardly tapped. Regular contact with a crew gives ample opportunity to develop relationships over time which form the basis for such interpersonal interaction.

Brandon Issues Which May Be Addressed In Part By Media Based Healing

Healing Town The fact that Brandon is generally regarded by many people as being a healing town may well make this context one in which the healing use of video is a natural byproduct of normal community television production.

A Pass Through Center Involving pass-through social service staff in some of these healing projects might well both enrich your activity as well as provide them with another tool to take to other parts of the country.

"Shoots" Its Leaders Support caregivers by doing programs related to their felt-needs, indicating concern for their work, drawing on their expertise, and assisting them in their work. Sometimes the social service based content of a program can stimulate new types of conversation amongst the crew, which opens up opportunities for their healing and growth.

Mediocre Standards Sometimes mediocre production is due to problems amongst the crew who have not dealt with issues which are now interfering with their production. The surfacing of those problems and addressing them can also enable producers to develop productions of excellence.

Exports Its Youth In one church-sponsored set of programs, we worked with youth of another denomination as well as our own. That led to one of their young people spending a summer in Toronto doing volunteer work for the Canadian Council of Churches, sponsored and arranged by our local church. On the strength of that experience, that girl spent a year overseas on a Rotary exchange before graduating from High School. One never knows where the youth one works with (especially in a small town) end up.

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