RIUtv revisions
25 January 2011
Duncan Sones
One of the key components of the RIU programme is to experiment with different forms of communication.
Duncan Sones
One of the key components of the RIU programme is to experiment with different forms of communication.
As the communications team reviewed the literature about making change happen or making messages stick from the likes of John Kotter or Chip and Dan Heath, the idea of using stories kept cropping up. Storytelling is an ancient tradition and pervades most cultures. So, we came to believe that a communications strategy which facilitated people telling their own stories should be at the heart of the communications experiment. But we also felt that technology offered us new and exciting opportunities.
The first way we addressed stories was through the RIU blogs (which we call updates) - so far the stars of this have been the RIU Director Ian Maudlin and the Tanzania Country Coordinator Vera Mugittu.
As someone new to the sector I was shocked by the practice of using photographs of nameless African farmers, so we set out to address this too. Once people have a name in a picture you read the picture differently. But we wanted to go further - where we used pictures of individuals we wanted to have them named, but we also wanted to hear what these individuals had to say. So we started filming short news items for the RIU website giving people - from low-income farmers to the political elite - the opportunity to contribute to the story of putting research into use and the challenges that are inherent in this task.
Over the past 15 months or so we have produced around 120 RIUtv films - some produced by the Africa Country Programmes themselves using the video equipment and training provided by the project. The first of these was the mechanisation film by Tanzania team, but others have followed.
Producing short news items and films has been useful in unexpected ways. We discovered that explaining a complex programme intervention to camera in a couple of minutes was an excellent discipline. We had to understand fully what was going on and be able to explain it succinctly. In longer reports it is easy to evade the core issues - but short filmed stories didn't give us this luxury. Second we found that by having a camera on hand we could get people to reflect on what they had seen. A good example of this is the films made by the UK MPs as they travelled around Kenya - at the end of the day they were asked to sum up what they had seen and I think this moment of reflection and sharing of their stories consolidated what they had learned. It also gave us great material about Shujaaz and FIPS, two of the RIU-backed programmes they saw at first hand.
In August the communications team produced another innovation - a monthly broadcast-quality RIUtv News bulletin. This is a celebration of RIUs achievements over the previous month and a look ahead to what's coming up. To help to find the material on the website we also produced a complementary listings service called RIU highlights.
Within the longer film reports we often have comments from a number of individuals. We realised that these comments make up a great resource in their own right. So this month we are launching a new section of website called RIUtv meets... with around 70 short films listed by named interviewees. The films are usually a couple of minutes long and are a collection of stories in people's own words.
Over the coming months new RIUtv meets... will be added, helping us to complete the story of the journey of RIU and how individuals have contributed to or benefited from the UK government's investment; real people with names and a story to tell.
The first way we addressed stories was through the RIU blogs (which we call updates) - so far the stars of this have been the RIU Director Ian Maudlin and the Tanzania Country Coordinator Vera Mugittu.
As someone new to the sector I was shocked by the practice of using photographs of nameless African farmers, so we set out to address this too. Once people have a name in a picture you read the picture differently. But we wanted to go further - where we used pictures of individuals we wanted to have them named, but we also wanted to hear what these individuals had to say. So we started filming short news items for the RIU website giving people - from low-income farmers to the political elite - the opportunity to contribute to the story of putting research into use and the challenges that are inherent in this task.
Over the past 15 months or so we have produced around 120 RIUtv films - some produced by the Africa Country Programmes themselves using the video equipment and training provided by the project. The first of these was the mechanisation film by Tanzania team, but others have followed.
Producing short news items and films has been useful in unexpected ways. We discovered that explaining a complex programme intervention to camera in a couple of minutes was an excellent discipline. We had to understand fully what was going on and be able to explain it succinctly. In longer reports it is easy to evade the core issues - but short filmed stories didn't give us this luxury. Second we found that by having a camera on hand we could get people to reflect on what they had seen. A good example of this is the films made by the UK MPs as they travelled around Kenya - at the end of the day they were asked to sum up what they had seen and I think this moment of reflection and sharing of their stories consolidated what they had learned. It also gave us great material about Shujaaz and FIPS, two of the RIU-backed programmes they saw at first hand.
In August the communications team produced another innovation - a monthly broadcast-quality RIUtv News bulletin. This is a celebration of RIUs achievements over the previous month and a look ahead to what's coming up. To help to find the material on the website we also produced a complementary listings service called RIU highlights.
Within the longer film reports we often have comments from a number of individuals. We realised that these comments make up a great resource in their own right. So this month we are launching a new section of website called RIUtv meets... with around 70 short films listed by named interviewees. The films are usually a couple of minutes long and are a collection of stories in people's own words.
Over the coming months new RIUtv meets... will be added, helping us to complete the story of the journey of RIU and how individuals have contributed to or benefited from the UK government's investment; real people with names and a story to tell.
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