The potential of participatory visual methods in exploring transformation from below

This article explores the potential of visual and creative methods to examine how transformation is understood and experienced by coastal communities living along the coast at four sites in India and Bangladesh, at the front line of climate change and related uncertainties. The visual methods with the locals unpacked that bottom-up knowledge involves slow, deliberate and mundane processes of transformation entwined in the resilience of the ‘below’, while recognising confusion and tension at multiple levels within the community around the differential impacts of climate change. The research findings indicate that transformation is a complex process that entails structural changes at the personal, cultural and collective levels to address climate change within a given context. The authors’ collective understanding, through the visual methods, is that climate solutions are often top-down, with little representation of bottom-up perspectives, which risks further marginalising vulnerable groups. An engaged process of knowledge co-production has the potential to support broader actors’ engagement and, eventually, bring about change. The article underscores the need for inclusive, community-driven strategies that address both ecological and social dimensions. Transformation from below may happen through co-mixing of real-world and theoretical knowledge, continued engagement and ensuring that communities can transfer the practical realisations gained through participatory action research into daily practices. The problems need to be framed in ways that are seen as relevant and appropriate to the experiential knowledge and lived experiences, which helps reflect on alternative frames for marginal systems and provides moments of opportunity and policy windows.