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Panos London closes its doors after 26 years
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Panos London, home to an international programme of oral testimony activities, is to close after twenty-six years of communications for development work around the world. The international network of Panos institutes (Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, West Africa, Asia, Caribbean and Europe) will continue the work to amplify the voices of those most affected by poverty and exclusion around the world.
Olivia Bennett, founder of the oral testimony programme, and Siobhan Warrington, current advisor of participatory communications work at Panos London, report on twenty years of international oral testimony projects:
‘In its twenty-year history, the Oral Testimony Programme has worked with partner organisations in thirty seven countries on over fifty different projects. It has supported the recording and transcription of some 1300 testimonies, in local and national languages, and the communication of these at local, national and international levels, in the language of interview as well as English, French and Spanish.
‘The development of the Programme stemmed from Olivia Bennett’s involvement in the Sahel Oral History Project and, as the then editor of Panos publications, the creation of At the Deserts Edge: Oral Histories From the Sahel. The next stage in the development of the ideas and principles underpinning Panos London’s commitment to participatory oral testimony work came with the commissioning of Listening for a Change: Oral Testimony in Development, in which oral historian Paul Thompson and international development expert Hugo Slim examined the values and potential of applying oral history in the international development context.
This 1993 publication, which continues to be on the reading lists for many international development courses, paved the way for Panos London’s first international oral testimony project. The theme was Women and Conflict, and fifteen partners in twelve countries gathered over 200 testimonies, which they communicated through publications, radio, press and public meetings. International outputs included a radio docudrama and the book Arms to Fight, Arms to Protect: Women Speak Out About Conflict (1993). Another international project resulted in production of the on-line archive www.mountainvoices.org in 2000, and a host of national and international outputs and associated activities. A third multicountry project explored the social and cultural impacts of development induced resettlement. As well as the national partner activities, the overall archive formed the basis of the recently published Displaced: The Human Cost of Resettlement and Development in Palgrave Macmillan’s Oral History series.
As well as these projects, Panos London has supported scores of partners around the world to record and amplify the voices of those affected by a range of other development issues, including environmental change, poverty, and HIV and AIDS, with the emphasis always on the less visible and quantifiable impacts, which personal testimony can so compellingly reveal and illuminate. Information about the projects and edited version of the testimonies are available at http://panos.org.uk/oral-testimonies/. The Programme has also worked to combine oral testimony with other approaches, such as theatre, photography and video, taking advantage of the developments in technology and media since the Programme’s inception. It has advised and supported other organisations, including UN agencies, wishing to adopt the methodology (see www.idpvoices.org and www.ifad.org/rpr2011/testimonials/index.htm for testimonies on internal displacement and rural poverty).
Following Panos London’s closure, Siobhan Warrington will establish a new non-profit organisation to take forward the oral testimony work, and in particular develop and fundraise for an online platform to ensure the testimonies and training resources produced by the Programme are easily accessible to all. Anyone wishing to stay informed about the company and its future work please get in touch with Siobhan at siobhanwarrington@gmail.com.
The Panos London website will continue to be accessible as an archive, so all existing on-line resources will continue to be available for all at www.panos.org.uk.
International Work is edited by Siobhan Warrington who welcomes all contributions by email to siobhanwarrington@gmail.com
Source:
ORAL HISTORY Spring 2013, Pages: 31-32
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