Encounters

The ‘Critical Mass’ is a bicycling event held in over 300 cities around the world to celebrate cycling. This time, it was Spring and I was filming Lisbon’s Critical Mass. I kept finding bicycles and eventually found someone to talk. This nice old man told me he has been cycling in Lisbon all his life. That made me head home and immediately edit my first published video! Meant a lot to me, since nowadays there is a cycle path through Lisbon and I cycle every day… Since then, and before that, I took some workshops related to video. Recently, as a scientific consultant with a rural development institution, I had the opportunity to work with participatory video (PV) for community-based development in Ethiopia. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian organisation leading the project got funding to continue to work with that community for the next five years. In my view, video can potentiate the dissemination of positive messages to deal with change and uncertainty. I have many ideas and want to do more PV projects, but also to advance technically. Yet, the question remains if I will have the opportunity to do it. This scholarship is THE opportunity.