Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Seeing as an Act of Hearing: Making Visible Children’s Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through Participatory Animation

Lomax, Helen; Smith, Kate

Seeing as an Act of Hearing: Making Visible Children’s Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through Participatory Animation Thumbnail


Authors

Helen Lomax

Kate Smith



Contributors

Kate Smith
Other

Helen Lomax
Other

Abstract

‘Our Voices’ is an animation co-created with children aged 9–11 during the 2020–2021 global pandemic. A short, stop-start animation of children’s visual, audio and textual representations of their experiences offers a visceral account of the pandemic in England from their perspectives. In making available the animation in this inaugural issue of ‘Beyond the Text’, we have two key aims. The first is to enable children, who have been barely seen and little heard during the pandemic, to voice their experiences in accordance with their aspirations. The second is to reflect upon the process of transforming creative data made by and with children into an animation that is representative of children’s diverse experiences and acknowledges their contributions in ways which enable audiences to engage through ‘seeing’. Accordingly, our accompanying text explores how, through a feminist ethics of care, we sought to co-produce an animation with children which delivers key messages from them and acknowledges their role as co-researchers while maintaining their anonymity. In describing our methodological and ethical practices, we aspire to make visible the relational, dialogic processes inherent in co-production, offering viewers a way of seeing the complexity of children’s experiences through the multi-layered affordances of participatory animation.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 16, 2022
Publication Date Oct 6, 2022
Deposit Date May 19, 2025
Publicly Available Date May 21, 2025
Journal Sociological Research Online
Electronic ISSN 1360-7804
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804221087276

Files





You might also like



Downloadable Citations