I've been working with visual communications for over twenty years in the UK and in over 25 countries in the South. My focus is increasingly on Sustainable Development - whether it concerns communities or corporations. Communications are always about making a change, but my question has always been . . . how?

Telling it like it is?

I've been working with large corporations (Astra Zeneca, British Gas, BT, Centrica, Co-op, IGE and JCB to create training, attitudinal change and induction resources. I've also worked with organisations including B&Q, DFID, Kingfisher, SAB Miller and Tearfund in the developing world. Many of the programmes, presentations and events I've devised have been 'linear' with the aim of 'telling it how it is'. It' s widely acknowledged that while doing communication like this can be valuable (for example as part of campaigns or to complement other activities) it doesn't usually do much on its own to stimulate change attitudes or behaviour. As the saying goes 'the wind will bend a sapling, but the sapling will bend back'.

Turning the camera round

Two projects have been critical in my thinking. In both I 'turned the camera round':-

'On Solid Ground' was a pack capturing the experience of a number of agencies

responding to the 'Hurricane Mitch' disaster in Central America so that other agencies could learn from their practice. Rather than taking in film crews I decided to work with partners Arca Associates to train local people to tell the stories themselves. It would be easy to claim more for this project than was the case, but there were striking examples of people in storm-affected villages interviewing each other and capturing their concerns and ideas about the impacts and about their hopes and fears. One snippet created in this way made its way all the way up the 'media foodchain' to UK terrestrial TV.

'The Global State of Kingfisher' was a high level workshop addressing Sustainable Development issues for Operational Company and head office directors of Kingfisher PLC - parent company for B&Q, B&Q International, Castorama etc.  I proposed that we turned the workshop, held on site in Hong Kong and Guangdong, into an interactive 'loop learning' event and we filmed peoples thoughts and discussions at each stage - setting goals, debating the issues and going on site to striking manufacturing locations. Importantly this material was played back at various stages, supporting a journey of ideas and attitudes. The results in terms of changes in business behaviour were measurable and striking.

What's really going on?

These projects and others have moved me from working with visual communications as a 'passive' 'linear' tools to communications as an integral part of change processes  in different communities, whether geographically defined or organised by interest, practice, purpose or any other 'boundary'. This is the focus of my practice and research . . . Change Communications