Sometimes you may simply want to illustrate what you have found out as you used other methods to explore your congregation. A picture can often help people ‘see’ the point.
In an interview, images can be used to initiate conversations, to explore experiences and emotions, and/or to elicit participants’ stories.
But more powerfully, photos can put the data gathering in the hands of your participants themselves. Capturing images on their phones (or with a regular camera!) may allow them to convey deep insight about how they understand the world and what has meaning for them.
Learning from Pictures
Using photos can help you understand many aspects of a congregation’s life. It might be an aspect of people’s everyday experience that isn’t east to observe, but would help you understand program successes or underlying needs or the meanings of important places. These methods have been explored in a series of posts in our Fieldnotes and are linked below.
Images for Program evaluation. Participants can document before, during, and after images related to a program’s desired outcomes. How did it show up in daily life or in congregational activities? Read more here.
Images for Understanding. Photos can allow new insight into how an elusive subject is understood and experienced by a congregation. A salient question can be posed to a group, challenging them to photograph places or objects that illustrate that theme. Where do they see the congregation changing? Or, where do they experience divine presence, for example? As they share their photos, their stories can uncover important meanings. Read more here and also here.
Images of Context. Photos can also help a congregation better understand its own building or its neighborhood. Facing important decisions about how a building is used, photos taken by members can be the start for key conversations. When they take pictures of the places that are most important to them – and tell those stories – decision makers have important information to guide them. Similarly, when trying to understand how a congregation fits in its neighborhood, walking the streets and taking photos is a great way to start. Read more here.
There are amazing resources available to people who want to understand — and support —congregational life. Here are a few that are worth checking out. See how these sources intersect with our Frames for Study and how they help you imagine what tools from our Toolkit you might use. Surveying the Landscape If you are…
One of the best ways to get a feel for the community around your congregation is to walk the streets. Back in 2018, I took a walk around my neighborhood in Somerville MA, and here’s some of the things I found: There are shopping areas — Photo by Ellen Childs. And churches — Photo by…
Figuring out whether or not a program works poses an interesting challenge. It’s something that leaders often want to do, but the impact of our work is often in the everyday lives of people, and it would be impractical to follow people around all day. In one recent program evaluation, we tackled that challenge using…
A variation of the walking tour is a great way to explore a congregation’s context: walking with cameras. These days most people have access to photographic equipment in the form of a mobile phone, digital camera, or disposable camera. Whatever technology one employs, one should think of cameras as tools for collecting information and photographs as a…
Photovoice (PV) is a technique that enables researchers to identify needs and stimulate social change by giving voice to groups and/or issues that may otherwise be voiceless. The acrostic V.O.I.C.E. is sometimes used to describe this research strategy: Voicing Our Individual and Collective Experiences. Frequently, a photovoice project takes place over several weeks with a…
This post is the last in a series by the Congregational Studies Visual Methods Fellow, Roman R. Williams, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Calvin College. He is an expert in visual research methodology, and his current research looks at ways in which local congregations can use visual research…
Evaluation is an important, though frequently neglected, component of any program. Some congregations use word of mouth feedback and other leaders deliberately seek out participants to assess outcomes through conversations. Others evaluate their programs through questionnaires that ask participants to rate their experience on scales of satisfaction, effectiveness, impact, or program strengths and weaknesses. Quite…
Images are everywhere and everyone—from children to professionals schooled in digital media production—is making them. Digital cameras are commonplace, standard equipment in cell phones. These devices record countless photographs and videos, which are disseminated across media sharing platforms such as Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, and YouTube. Chances are more people carried a camera (in the form…