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Visual Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Social Science, University of Tromsø, offers training in research on and dialogue with human cultures and communities, local/and or global. It emphasises film and other visual and auditive means as tools in the promotion of successful communication between researchers and local/global communities/networks. The communication is actively sought to generate shared knowledge, written, oral and visual, about human conditions, cultures and cultural expressions. Together with different social groups the students decide on the how/what/when to film everyday events. The filmed material is then used as a starting point for discussions between local populations and students. Through these discussions, the students are expected to identify whether their perceptions are compatible with their partner’s perspectives and actions or not. When a student tries to tell a fisherman what s/he thinks happens and to show by imitation "correctly" what they do in a particular filmed situation, a unique possibility emerges. By receiving corrections and listening carefully to the fisherman's explanation of the filmed scenes, the student is offered a golden opportunity to understand the fisherman’s s way of thinking.
There will always be aspects of a meeting or, as in this case, a fisherman’s activity that the student may not have understood properly. Thus, the projection of filmed interaction gives a unique possibility to go into the depth of the processes of learning, which actually reflect the establishment of knowledge. The sharing of practical and theoretical knowledge is fundamental to social research. When the student, through filmed events and dialogue, discusses his understanding of a filmed social situation with the people of interest, a valuable relationship is developed and reciprocal trust is a potential outcome. The student will in this case get an opportunity to convey his analysis and findings to the people who opened their doors and gave him access to their lives.
In this way filmed stories from around the world are made by students in the VCS programme. The programme's profile has already prompted awareness about didactic devices. Students from different cultures increasingly learn about each other’s point of view and are able to comment upon each other’s particular ways of understanding as it is conveyed from the work-in-progress.
The VCS programme has now existed for 7 years, and many students of different nationalities have collaborated on "researching with camera" in Northern Norway and around the globe. It has proved an exciting and challenging process, not at all easy. Film as a scientific medium is different from academic written and oral traditions. Therefore the programme emphasises close collaboration from “all good forces” and has organised the education through team-based seminars. Specialists within the areas of film, humanities and social sciences take part to make this possible. In this way the acquisition of social scientific knowledge means not only sharing of knowledge but also a shared competence for storytelling with sound and pictures. The different genres of storytelling, written, oral and visual have proved to offer different forms of knowledge. The specific storytelling techniques/forms of knowledge of the social sciences and the humanities are also analysed and discussed.
Through its building of competence, the VCS programme not only offers education in cultural studies but also in dissemination and mediation of knowledge, in all kinds of social development.
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