Visual narratives and storytelling are powerful tools in research, especially within action research and research-creation, as they allow for complex ideas and emotions to be conveyed in accessible, relatable ways. By visually depicting stories, researchers can engage communities in meaningful dialogue, making research findings more understandable and relevant to local contexts. This approach fosters an inclusive environment where community members can see their experiences and perspectives reflected, which can lead to a greater sense of empowerment and ownership of the research process.
Storytelling encourage participants to become co-creators, rather than passive subjects, which can be transformative in addressing local issues. Through this collaborative process, community-based research becomes not just about gathering data, but about generating solutions and fostering a collective response to challenges. As such, visual storytelling is an effective way to bridge gaps between academic research and lived experiences, catalyzing action and social change at the community level.
Back in the 1970s, an interdisciplinary team led by sociologist Fals Borda and the Caribbean Foundation in Colombia developed a pioneer Participatory Action Research (PAR) project in the departments of Córdoba and Sucre, in collaboration with the National Association of Peasant Users (Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos – ANUC). The goal of the project was to research and retell the history of land struggles in the Colombian Caribbean coast from the perspective of the farmers in a collaborative and inclusive way.
The collaboration among social science researchers, historians, farmers, activists and artists adopted an innovative methodology that combined interviews, photography, archival research, with dialogue and visual storytelling. One of the main outputs of the project was the “Graphic History of the struggle for land on the Atlantic Coast” (Historia Gráfica de la lucha por la tierra en la Costa Atlántica), a series of comic books drawn by the artist Ulianov Chalarka and published in 19972, that provided a contextualized and grounded history of the land appropriation in this Colombian region.
The legacy of this project, and the series of comics that compose the “Graphic History of the struggle for land on the Atlantic Coast” has inspired creators, scholars and activists in Colombia, Latinoamerica and the Global South. In the particular context of rural Colombia, characterized by the extension in time and space of the processes of colonization, violence, and displacement, the knowledge documented by this project remains present in memory and popular education initiatives in the 21st century.
As Colombia tries to transition towards a post-conflict society, engages in social dialogue about an agrarian reform, and promotes grassroots civic engagement the participatory, community-based and visual storytelling approach continues to be re-visited and adapted in new interventions. An example of that is “Arraigo y Resistencia: Dignidad Campesina en la Region caribe 1972-2015” a comic book published in 2015 by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica that updates the history of land struggles in Colombian Caribbean coast, making visible the continuities of a colonization and resistance processes in the region from the perspectives of the peasants, and advocates for the urgent need of land policies and agrarian reform in the country. Another example is the graphic novel “Caminos condenados” co-created by geographer Diana Ojeda in collaboration with writer Pablo Guerra and artists Henry Diaz, and Camilo Aguirre, and which is based on interviews and field work conducted in Montes de María.
Visual Storytelling Workshop in Buenaventura
Last august I had the opportunity of co-facilitating a workshop on visual narrative and storytelling in the city of Buenaventura, the main Colombian port in the Pacific. The workshop was hosted by the Escuela Popular de Formación Política (Popular School of Political Formation-EPFP) de la Casa Social Cultural y Memoria (Cormepaz) and offered to a group of young local leaders that are involved in a Participatory Action Research (PAR) diploma program.
Buenaventura confronts several challenges related to human rights, violence, and structural inequalities. Despite its strategic economic importance as a major port, the city suffers from extreme poverty, violence, environmental pollution, and the systemic marginalization of its primarily Afro-Colombian population. The city has experienced waves of violence, driven by armed groups and criminal organizations vying for control of drug trafficking routes and territorial dominance. Persistent insecurity and political corruption has impeded development and limited access to basic services, particularly access to public health, electricity and drinkable water, making Buenaventura a critical site for promoting peace and environmental sustainability and empowering vulnerable communities.
The group of local leaders and students from the EPFP has been researching environmental problems across the city from a community and grassroots perspective, exploring solutions and interventions, applying a range of methods and techniques with the goal of helping to build public policies. My colleague and friend Julian Jaramillo from Universidad Javeriana, who has supported the program in the past, invited me to participate in the co-design and co-facilitation of a workshop that could provide new tools and techniques based on visual storytelling to the group, and open a space for discussing the potential of research-creation and the arts in community-based research projects.
The workshop allowed us to engage in a productive dialogue with the group of young leaders, learn about the wicked environmental problems they were researching, and share with them some of the visual and participatory research-creation methods. Their ongoing community-based research projects were grounded in different neighborhoods (“comunas”) of the city, and tackled a range of issues, including waste management, water pollution, and access to recreational parks and drinkable water.
For learning about visual storytelling tools and methods, we socialized, read, and saw some of the comics included in the “Graphic History of the struggle for land on the Atlantic Coast,” particularly, “Felicia Campos,” and “El Boche.” To our surprise, none of the local leaders knew about these visual narratives, although they have studied the some of the PAR methods developed by Fals Borda’s team. We engaged in a collective reading of the comics, projecting the pages on a screen, and allowing the participants to read the dialogues of the characters.
While reading the stories, we made pauses to analyze both the form and content of panels and pages, reflecting on the choices made by the artist Chalarka to represent of the local communities and tell an alternative history of the land struggles. For the participants of the workshop, it was powerful to see and hear the voices and faces of indigenous and afro-descendant peasants in the comics and to recognize them as protagonists and heroes. Addressing questions about who tells the story, who is seen and heard, and how the context is portrayed, they reflected on the potential of visual storytelling to communicate the findings of community-based research processes, make visible complex problems, and persuade the local communities about the need for taking action.
In the second part of the workshop, participants prototyped visual narratives using the materials and data they have collected during their research in the different neighborhoods. Working in groups, the local leaders created plots and build characters for telling their own stories about the environmental problems they communities confront and the actions and policies needed to solve them. Taking advantage of the observations, interviews, social maps and archival documents they have collected in the previous months, the groups designed visual narratives on paper, and discussed the possible formats they could use for producing and circulate them.
Although some of them complained about the lack of drawing skills, all the groups were able to design basic storyboards they could later use for producing videos, infographics, and even comics. Visual storytelling through storyboards is an invaluable tool in research-creation, particularly for making community problems visible and guiding the production of audiovisual content. They break down complex narratives into sequential, visual representations, which can highlight local issues and everyday experiences in a compelling, accessible format.
The visual narrative prototyping enabled participants to organize ideas clearly and identify characters, while also providing a collaborative platform where community members could actively contribute their perspectives, shaping the narrative to reflect their realities. Given the popularity of smart phones with multimedia capabilities among the participants, some groups felt inclined to continue to produce the stories as videos. We look forward to seeing the final outcomes of the research-creation process that started in the workshop and the materialization of their visual narratives in any format.
