Visual Community Organising: A Graphic Account of the Use of Visual Tools and Methods in Grassroots Organising

This document is the written element of a practiced-based PhD. It contains descriptive and analytical aspects of research conducted with the use of visual methods. Those methods have been used to explore and visualize a specific form of grassroots or community based organizing. Organized by and for communities of struggle, this form of community organizing - that I refer to as ‘visual community organizing’ (VCO) relies on the collective use of visual tools, exercises and activities. The use of these tools is meant to facilitate the creation of a shared, common understanding of a problem faced by what I call a community of struggle. In order to approach, analyze and understand this form of community organizing, the research that I conducted draws on the concept of visuality as a guiding tool. This concept allowed me to produce an adequate response to work that is otherwise difficult to describe in words. This is why the PhD relies on a narrative visual structure and methodology to approximate the work of those collectives. The concept of visuality is understood in this research as a form and expression of the different ways in which hegemonic power manifests itself. The specific manifestations of hegemonic power addressed in this dissertation are based on the experiences of seven collectives. The visual and organizational work of those collectives is the basis for this study. Presenting their experiences in visual form, the research will show how these visual community organizers use graphic and visual methods with the objective to imagine, facilitate, build and promote different expressions of counter-hegemonic visuality.

The PhD is divided in two elements: a visual narrative in the form of a comic, and the written element that you are reading now. This document, the written element of the PhD, will narrate context and the methodology applied to approximate the work of VCOs. The visual element of this work on the other hand will show that each collectives’ expression of counter-hegemonic visuality as well as their organizing modality is adjusted around the specific situations in which they facilitate their work. To present these, the dissertation is structured methodologically in a way that draws together the processes that underpin the visual production of each collective. In order to do this, its focus is on a visual narrative that describes an account of histories that empower groups and build solidarities.