Discussion starter from East Timor

Development pictures are usually made by the community for the community. They deal with issues that are relevant to the local community such as health, rural and social development, environmental conservation, sex or gender issues, water and sanitation.
A development picture, also called a code picture or discussion starter, is used by the facilitator in group work to initiate and stimulate a discussion about a particular theme. It is a picture that focuses on a local problem. It shows learners that any problem can have a number of causes. The picture helps learners to be critically aware and helps them to analyse the root causes of a problem and discuss and find solutions.

Teachers designing visual aids for their school, Liberia

There is a wide range of interactive pictorial material, which can be used to support processes of empowerment. Development pictures can be used at individual, group or community level. As a facilitator using these pictures one should adopt a people-centred, participatory approach to training, so that the participants expectations and their local needs form the basis for the discussion. As Paulo Freire pointed out, ’People must learn to read their own reality and write their own history’. Pictures can help in both these processes. The following are some types of technically simple, low-cost pictures that can be made and used locally for people-centred communication.

• PICTURES FOR ART- AND TRAUMA THERAPY AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION- pictures made by individuals who have suffered from mental disturbances, experienced trauma (e.g. war, bereavement...)

• PICTURES FOR CREATIVE THINKING- materials such as flannel boards, unserialised picture cards and other open-ended visual aids; abstract and representational images to encourage the use of the right hemisphere of the brain.

• PICTURES FOR INVESTIGATING NEEDS- community pictures and maps, picture cards (e.g. for ranking).

• PICTURES FOR ANALYSIS/ CRITICAL AWARENESS- picture cards (e.g. sorting cards), discussion starters, flannel boards.

• PICTURES FOR PLANNING- community pictures and maps, before and after pictures, past, present and future pictures, discussion starters.

• PICTURES FOR INFORMATION- posters, wall charts, manuals, educational games, comic strips.

• PUPPETRY- communicating sensitive issues or bringing ‘boring ‘messages to life, storytelling, and drama.