Understanding Relational Values in Conservation Practices

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Dinda Prayunita is currently pursuing an MSc in Sustainable Development at KU Leuven. She has extensive experience in forestry and biodiversity conservation and has become increasingly interested in the social science domain to achieve better conservation outcomes. To pursue this interest, she recently organised a webinar on more holistic ways of doing conservation that featured Cobra Collective member Julia Jung. As her interests are highly aligned with the Cobra Collective approach, we invited Dinda to share some reflections on her … Read More

Remote working in participatory video – the UN Women experience

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The Covid-19 crisis has forced many people to stay at home and work remotely. But what are the pros and cons of remote working in participatory video projects where face-to-face communication is extremely important? Is it still possible to involve and train groups coming from disadvantaged backgrounds remotely? What strategies and methodologies can be put in place to make sure that the participatory process is still inclusive? A good learning experience came from the UN Women Second Chance project in … Read More

The Exquisite Corpse Process: Expanding our participatory art-based methods

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Since joining the Cobra Collective in Oct 2020, I have been participating in a number of Cobra Collective projects and developing my own research focus within the Collective by expanding our array of participatory creative methods. Now, I’m very excited to share the outputs from my first independent research project in collaboration with Ocean Networks Canada – the Exquisite Corpse process, a group-based multi-week asynchronous art project. The idea behind the Exquisite Corpse process is to use art and creative … Read More

International Women’s Day 2022

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To celebrate the International Women’s Day, we would like to present the free, open, online courses developed as part of our work in a project for the UN Women’s Second Chance Education and Vocational Training (SCE) Programme. The project developed, piloted and tested a participatory video approach to the development and contextualisation of online courses. We supported local facilitators in Cameroon, Jordan, India, Mexico, Chile and Australia to learn how to use participatory video to create courses targeting the most … Read More

Digital Storytelling about Community Food Growing Project: Second Insights from autumn 2021 course

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In early 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted community food growing initiatives, while also revealing and intensifying the stark social inequalities in our society. People’s social isolation prompted even greater interest in community food growing initiatives. In the ‘Grassroots Visual Storytelling about Community Food-Growing’ course, which began in spring 2021, participants gained skills in digital visual storytelling, while exploring and promoting their experiences of community food growing during the Covid-19 pandemic. From the spring 2021 films, the First Insights page described … Read More

“We feel at home” at the Calthorpe: Community garden volunteers share their experiences

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“We feel at home here” was a common view of community garden volunteers at an event hosted by the Calthorpe Community Garden, central London. This was the September Spotlight Garden of Urban Harvest 2021, organized by the Capital Growth programme. Held on Friday 24th September, the event began by screening short films made by participants in various community-gardens (see our project below). The films stimulated a discussion about volunteers’ experiences, especially getting to know different kinds of people, sharing their skills, … Read More

New online course for strengthening community mental health resilience

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The Cobra Collective is proud to announce the launch of its freely available OpenLearnCreate course on community mental health resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increasing demand for mental health services while also highlighting the key role that mental health plays in our daily lives. “Good mental health is absolutely fundamental to overall health and well-being,” as expressed by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the associated economic recession, … Read More

Digital Storytelling about group food growing – Invitation to Participate

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Have you experienced benefits in your everyday life through group food-growing activities? Are you involved in community food growing and would like to share your story? Can you help us investigate how community food growing has helped people and groups to cope with the Covid-19 crisis? Then we want to hear from you! Starting in February 2021, we are recruiting participants for a collaborative digital-storytelling project organised in partnership with the Open University, Sustain and RISC. More details can be … Read More

Mental health project kicks off in Guyana

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Over one billion people globally struggle with issues related to mental health, including depression, substance abuse and self-harm. Lack of research in implementation and policy change is further impeded by stigma, capacity shortages, and fragmented service delivery. In collaboration with Guyanese communities and stakeholders, and funded by the British Academy, the Cobra Collective is participating in ARCLIGHT (‘Action Research Community Led Initiative Guyana Health Team’), an ambitious new research project which will develop, implement and evaluate a capacity building and … Read More

Travelling South: my first field trip

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Betsy Alvin, an intern on the Darwin Initiative Traditional Knowledge in Conservation in Guyana project, reflects on her visit community visit. Well! This was my first experience on a field trip going anywhere to do project work. Mr Bernie couldn’t go because his mom was ill and Ms. Rebecca couldn’t go by herself so they called me and said to pack because you are heading south. Going along with us would be Mr Neville Adolph, the new project community liaison … Read More

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