Gareth Benest is a communications and participatory media specialist providing consultancy services for organisations across the international development sector. He has an established track record for programme/project management, workshop facilitation, capacity-building, and multimedia production including filmmaking, photography, writing/editing and graphic design. Based in the UK, Gareth works with diverse communities and organisations around the world and has written three guidebooks based on his two decades of participatory video practice.
A leading practitioner of Participatory Video, Gareth has facilitated projects with communities around the world to explore issues ranging from indigenous cultures and representations through to corruption in the land sector and the impacts of climate change on pacific islanders.
Gareth was Director of Programmes for InsightShare for nine years, overseeing countless projects and large-scale consultancies with leading international development agencies and multilateral institutions. He is co-founder of the InsightShare Network (registered non-profit #10263988) – a partnership between diverse community groups around the world and an international team of experienced participatory video facilitators and trainers.
As someone who has worked with marginalised and misunderstood groups – to build their resilience and provide tools for self-representation – Gareth takes issues of representation, consent, privacy and control very seriously. He is acutely aware of how particular groups (women, ethnic minorities, the disabled, Indigenous Peoples, the LGBTQ+ community, the elderly, etc.) and people from entire geographies (i.e. the developing world) are systematically mis-represented across all forms of media, not least by the charity sector itself. The communications materials Gareth produces reflects this awareness and he makes every effort to ensure the images, concepts, terminology, representations, and overall approach adopted does not contribute to the mis-representation of people or communities, but upholds the dignity and respect of everyone as equals and contributes towards shifting perceptions.
