Collaborative Docs. (Stage 2 in Fellowship in Creative & Performing Arts originally entitled 'Chronicle 2010' now known as CollabDocs.)

Colllaborative Docs (Stage 2) is the second stage of the CollabDocs research project (formerly known as 'Chronicle 2010'.) The overall project looks at how documentary practice can take advantage of the generation of web technologies known as 'Web 2.0'. CollabDocs is concerned in particular with participatory media and collaboration. The practice-based research examines how the 'vernacular videos' that get posted, for example on You Tube, might be combined to tell larger stories, and what role a producer might play in bringing themed participatory videos together to meaningful effect.

In Stage 2 the Fellow will produce two distinct web-based participatory documentaries. The first - Are you happy? (Phase 2) - looks at what happiness means today. The second - Four Wheels Good? - looks at our love/hate relationship to cars. Both projects will start with a call to action, and diverse members of the public will be invited to contribute video content. These contributions will be edited and highlights presented in websites designed so that the video is contrasted in an engaging way with related online content. The latter content will be drawn in through publically accessible feeds. Such content could include stills from the photo sharing site Flickr or traffic news from the BBC. These various sources will be combined to produce a new kind of documentary, where the meaning is not fixed in a linear form by the viewpoint of a single director, but reflects multiple perspectives, and shifts as new data enters the system. The creative challenge for the project will be to design the flow of elements and the web interface so that the viewer can enjoy a satisfying experience; which combines storytelling, interaction and easily digestible information.

A DVD will be produced to reflect the fellowship observations, critical reflection and findings, and showcase the web productions. The Fellow will also pursue a programme of in-person events and activities throughout the three remaining years of the Fellowship, but in particular in the final year, through which she will share the fellowship work and findings with interested parties in academia and industry.

The era of You Tube has seen a dramatic increase in video making and sharing. With the prevalence of miniature, low-cost video cameras and video recording features in many mobile phones we are witnessing a dramatic increase in what Henry Jenkins has called 'vernacular video'. For the most part these recordings are isolated statements or unmediated reflections on everyday life.

The Collaborative Docs project (Stage 2) looks as how these video utterances might be brought together to constitute effective public speech. It looks at how to engage participants, what a documentary product might look like which brings participatory video together with relevant facts and figures, as well as how to produce an engaging viewer experience from collective content. If we think of documentary as a means to reflect on contemporary life with a historic relationship to the public sphere it is possible to say that the Collaborative Docs project looks at how to turn isolated video statements into documentary content.

The project thus has both cultural and social relevance. Given the wider growth of collaborative practices in society it constitutes a timely experiment in cultural form. In social terms it demonstrates how what Sonia Livingstone has called 'publics' might be able to speak in a collective way around issues of contemporary concern and thus has significant potential for citizenship and social inclusion.

It can be expected that the project will be of particular interest within public service media and the third sector. Dissemination work will therefore include presentations and events which share project knowledge and insights with both these sectors.

Additionally, while the project does not in itself create a new product it provides a proof of concept that can be built on in the technical development of a scaleable product. Dissemination will therefore also include demonstrations to relevant technology companies.

As well as general relevance the particular themes that have been selected will make contributions to important contemporary debates.

With UK Government proposals to fast-track the inclusion of well-being and happiness measures into the Annual Household Survey, it is timely to explore contemporary views of happiness by revisiting the question, 'Are You happy?' originally posed by the anthropological filmmaker Jean Rouch on the streets of Paris in 1960. The outcomes are likely to be of interest among researchers in the disciplines - sociology, economics, psychology - that feed into the emerging field of Happiness Studies.

Four Wheels Good will constitute an intervention into discourse around travel behaviour and potentially contribute to an understanding of the complex behaviours which influence individual decisions around travel. As such it potentially contributes towards a public policy agenda to reduce car travel.