Communicative Interfaces for Participatory Disability Advocacy in East Africa (REF mock 2026 practice output)

Abstract:

This practice portfolio conceptualises and implements participatory audiovisual practice as a communicative infrastructure for disability advocacy, activist pedagogy and social change within East African contexts. Developed through the Youth Disability Advocacy and Research Network (YDAR) project, it comprises an integrated repository of 36+ audiovisual outputs, including workshop films, webinar recordings, advocacy campaigns and audience-segmented impact videos disseminated through a public website and YouTube platform. The research investigates how audiovisual communication can facilitate disability advocacy, transnational knowledge exchange, leadership development and impact evaluation across interconnected stakeholder groups.

The portfolio draws on communication-for-social-change scholarship and Brylla and Reuben’s communicative interfaces framework (2025), conceptualising advocacy as a network of relational interfaces linking disability communities, activists, NGOs, researchers, educators, funders and wider publics. Practice functioned simultaneously as research method, advocacy intervention and evaluative process. Observational filmmaking, reflective interviewing, participatory production and audience design methods enabled the documentation of embodied experiences, advocacy processes, and affective transformations that are difficult to capture through conventional evaluative approaches alone.

A significant contribution lies in the portfolio’s implementation and testing of non-stigmatising representational strategies developed in Documentary and Stereotypes (Brylla, 2023). Through cross-ability collaboration and the representation of warmth, competence, everydayness and shared identities, the impact videos demonstrate how evidence from social psychology can inform audiovisual approaches designed to challenge disability stigma and foster more inclusive attitudes.

The portfolio develops an original practice-research methodology integrating participatory filmmaking, activist pedagogy, digital archiving, audience-segmented communication and impact evaluation. By transforming communicative interfaces into an operational audiovisual methodology, it offers a model for future research and practice in communication for social change, disability studies, documentary practice and participatory media. Disseminated through disability advocacy networks across East Africa and beyond, the repository recorded over 14,500 website page views and more than 10,000 user sessions between 2022 and 2026.

Source: Manual