What is the Impact Toolkit?

Toolkit Background

For several decades, film and video have been considered a powerful medium for circulating ideas, visions and discussions that frame and challenge social, political and environmental issues. They have also been a staple tool in the rights and global development sectors.

In the past decade, increased access to cameras, production equipment and new distribution platforms has created new opportunities for engagement, advocacy and social change by enabling more people to tell and share their own stories with wider audiences.

EngageMedia, together with the Video4Change Network, saw a need to gather tips, tools, approaches and resources to guide effective use of film and video for social change in this rapidly changing environment.

We also recognised that a shared set of approaches and definitions would benefit the wider field of Video for Change practitioners, helping organisations and individuals to build stronger strategies for creating impact and to better understand if and how they were being effective.

Toolkit Focus

The Video for Change Impact Toolkit helps Video for Change practitioners design for and evaluate social impact. It is not a comprehensive Video for Change how-to guide, so you won’t learn how to shoot and edit video, and it doesn’t explore using video for fundraising or crowdsourcing efforts.

But it will help you emphasise the process as much as the product of your work, and explore a wider variety of production and distribution possibilities for creating impact. It will also explore new threats and opportunities for social movements working with the Video for Change approach.

While we touch on various forms of video, we focus primarily on the use of short form video — specifically those with low budgets. These often allow video-makers with varying levels of resources and technological capacities to gain wider access for engagement and participation among communities who also have varying technological capacities.

Please visit the resource section of the Video4Change website for other valuable resources and practical manuals on topics like editing, filming and storing data.

Toolkit Framework

The toolkit is grounded in the principle that advancing positive social change and creating impact is the result of following a pathway, or taking a journey, and does not simply arise from creating a product or working toward one end goal.

This principle is important in causing or accelerating change that is both accepted and directed by communities, and therefore sustained over the long term. It is distinct to the Video for Change approach.

Furthermore, a Video for Change initiative is a holistic approach that considers all activities and their capacity to create impact, rather than focusing on the effect of a video product alone.

It is also essential that Video for Change initiatives don’t strive for impact at any cost, and that initiatives are measured for their unintended or negative impacts. To do this, the toolkit’s Values and Methods section takes you through the ethics involved with Video for Change.

The core pillars of this toolkit include:

For two of the core pillars —  Research and Planning and Capacity Building — the process involves three methods:

For Filming and Production and Outreach, Engagement and Distribution the process involves four methods:

Each Evaluate It section links you to the Evaluation section. We encourage you to carry out evaluation from the beginning of the initiative and throughout the process, even though the Evaluation section is at the end and is (often) the final step you will carry out in your process.

The toolkit will help you identify the final desired impact of the initiative, as well as what you want to learn along the way. Creating checkpoints to monitor your process throughout your initiative will assist you to better understand what is and isn’t working as you go along, allowing you to respond and adjust your strategy accordingly.