WHAT?

The Sea and Shakti is a participatory transmedia project that will provide a digital advocacy platform for traditional fisherwomen in India demanding changes in national development policies to improve resilience and productivity of small-scale fisheries. The initial phase of the project is a series of gender-based participatory audiovisual workshops with artisanal fisherwomen and local girls (mothers and their daughters) to share their stories and engage audiences across castes and socio-economic classes. These workshops will produce videos created by the women featuring stop-motion animations by their daughters providing firsthand accounts to the exploitation of coastal resources and gender inequalities. With this content, our goal is for local partners to use these videos in facilitating workshops that motivate more traditional fisherwomen to share their powerful stories and create an infrastructure of support connecting remote fisheries along roughly 8000 kilometers of subcontinental coastline. We will provide the framework for fisherfolk affected by the exploitation of coastal resources to tell their story in their own words and engage an international audience, archiving contributors’ narratives publicly online.

The Sea and Shakti workshop series will also produce a short documentary film promoting explicit national and international policies supporting small-scale fishers and the recognition of fisherwomen as legitimate stakeholders. Our short film also focuses on India's rising generation of empowered girls through three rather unconventional creative means: surfing, skateboarding, and art. The participatory documentary project highlights three young Indian women utilizing their passions as tools to empower a rising generation of girls (and boys) who attend school, stay healthy, break poverty cycles, and overcome violence as inspiring leaders with the power to transform their own lives, families, communities and beyond.

HOW?

Through monthlong participatory audiovisual workshops in three distinct community-based fisheries along the Arabian Sea in Southern India, local fisherwomen and their daughters learn the basics of filmmaking from storyboarding to camera operation. Each location will produce media created with the fisherwomen sharing their stories and feature stop-motion animations created by their daughters. These workshops focus on the power of storytelling and gender transformative approaches that challenge social norms (such as surfing and skateboarding) and gradually bridge the gaps in access to resources, promoting gender equality and economic development across artisanal fishing communities in India.