Step Aside.

Where This Started

My personal connection to what we now call Community-Led Storytelling (CLS) started in 2022, during the work on the Impact Diaries – my last project before I joined Fairpicture and the first time I collaborated with a local visual creator and experienced first-hand what it means to let contributors tell their stories themselves. That changed something in me.

From there, I started paying close attention to what was happening in the space. There was a striking study from AMREF around that time comparing charity-led versus participant-led fundraising campaigns – with convincing arguments to go for the second. And there were always a few pioneers who have come up with something truly innovative.

Yet beyond these few pilot projects and showcase initiatives the discussion remained largely theoretical; under pressure from powerful interest groups – like us, Ibex Ideas or The New Humanitarian, who states that "what journalists owe to those they report on goes right to the heart of the colonial power imbalances”.

The truth is: Our sector largely continued as before. Yes, more and more iNGOs and Humanitarian Aid Organisation are collaborating with local creators, informed consent processes have been embedded. In that respect, the situation has improved.

But what about the way stories are collected, what about the power dynamics? It seems that for most organizations, actually giving up control is still a step too far – even though everyone knows it’s the right thing to do.

And they gave rise to further questions we needed to address:

What does a good CLS team actually look like? If contributors develop the visual material themselves – how do we ensure our clients also walk away with professional photos and videos their organisation can use? And how can we give our customers the confidence to willingly take a step aside when it comes to co-decision rights and ownership?

The deeper I looked at existing approaches, the more I noticed the same pattern: most CLS models I came across relied on western facilitators. And that brought me to the Gretchen question: if we have to fly in western facilitators every time our clients want to carry out a project like this, aren't we simply perpetuating the very patterns we set out to address? Where is the decolonization and localization in that?

So the question stopped being whether CLS was the right thing to do. It became: how do we make it work without repeating the patterns we were trying to change.

The Missing Piece

What had been missing in all previous Community Led Storytelling (CLS)-approaches we were aware of was a real transfer of knowledge – and the ability to offer clients cost-effective monitoring follow-ups of their project development without compromising on depth or quality.

Until now, most CLS-projects were initiated by Western consultants (exceptions prove the rule) who tended to be rather protective than collaborative, which is understandable, since most are run by dedicated individuals. However, this protectionism runs directly counter to our mission and theory of change.

Then we found the missing piece of the puzzle, and suddenly everything made sense.

Our shared goal: to support every CLS project with professional visual content and to empower our local network on our methodology.

Working with Tom also introduced me to someone I hadn’t come across before: the Brazilian theorist Paulo Freire. His argument – that people don’t learn by being treated as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge, but only when they’re active co-creators of it – is intended to serve as the philosophical foundation for everything we aim to achieve with CLS.

Tom Martin is a humanitarian photographer and senior lecturer. Together with Michelle Walsh, a senior lecturer and photovoice practitioner, they developed Collective Storytelling methodologies for Social Change – built on one core conviction: that contributor ownership is not a nice-to-have, but the whole point.

In Morocco, they worked alongside Indigenous Amazigh women to document the devastating effects of climate change on their land – a project that won the Emerald Publishing Real Impact Award. In Rwanda, their participatory filmmaking gave young people a voice around mental health stigma – and that work directly shaped the country’s National Youth Mental Health Strategy.

The combination of experienced facilitators and a global network of local visual creators dedicated to ethical storytelling is what sets us apart.

With this in mind, we are taking a further step toward localization and decolonization while ensuring our clients receive high-quality visual documentation – from stories in which contributors are the directors. Over time, our network of visual creators will become increasingly able to facilitate Community-Led Storytelling workshops and assignments independently.

And just how much that shift means to our creators themselves? Laura put it well:

Looking Ahead

Let’s be honest: The market for ethical visual communication remains unstable. Budgets are tight. While some still doubt that AI-generated images actually undermine trust in organizations, the IFRC has already reached this conclusion in its latest World Disaster Report:

«Harmful information is no longer a peripheral communications issue but a de facto humanitarian crisis.»

In fact, harmful information can undermine access to aid, erode trust in organisations, destabilize social cohesion and increase risks for staff, volunteers and communities. That's why I believe it will become increasingly important for iNGOs and Foundations not only to demonstrate the authenticity of their visual material and the informed consent of the people depicted, but also to adopt approaches where their contributors own the stories they share and not just appear in it.

Stories that will serve as insightful project evaluations for program and M&E teams supplemented by visual communication materials that bring them to life.

I'm genuinely excited about the conversations ahead – for example at our next FairTalk on Tuesday, May 26th, where we will introduce Fairpicture's CLS – together with our facilitators, creators, former contributors and clients – save this date!

After our first big milestone – shifting from imported to local visual creators – we are now ready to take the next one: empowering organisations to work with storytelling that is wholly in service of the contributors' perspectives.

And that’s why – amid all the chaos and destructive energy out there in the world – building something like this makes me actually really hopeful.

It’s time to step aside.