Language and Education: Photovoice Workshops and the !Xun and Khwe Bushmen

Abstract

ABSTRACT Photovoice is a participatory research tool that facilitates the hearing of marginalised communities to instigate social change. Many Bushmen are concerned about the maintenance of their language and culture, while their educational needs are not being met. As these individuals often profess to feel unheard, photovoice workshops aim to bring such voices out into the open, with the resulting visual images often providing more powerful and emotional messages than script alone. Workshops were facilitated within the !Xun and Khwe communities at Platfontein in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The aim was to elicit the views and concerns of participants regarding indigenous language and education to facilitate seminar presentations, and publications, made more powerful through the use of visual images coupled with captions written by participants. This study is an evaluation of how these workshops were received by the participants.