Dagmawi Yimer’s Participatory Video Pedagogy

ABSTRACT Over the past ten years, Ethiopian filmmaker Dagmawi Yimer has conducted participatory video workshops in secondary schools in Italy. In this article, we engage in a dialogue with Yimer about these workshops, which involve collaboration and community building, and address issues of racism, equity and social justice. By relying on participatory filmmaking pedagogies, Yimer creates an inclusive space where students can create and tell stories together. He also empowers students by teaching them the technical skills needed to make a film so that they can continue experimenting with digital storytelling. By so doing, Yimer enables students to tell stories in the future both of and for their communities without his guidance. We especially focus on Yimer's work with a group of high-school students during a participatory video workshop at the Liceo Statale Carlo Montanari in Verona in early 2020. We discuss a short film, Io sono, made by these students about daily racist micro-aggressions against a young Muslim girl, Aisha, on her way to school.