Editors’ introduction

Collaborating with others is central to participatory methods, as we have seen in previous chapters. However, the nature of the collaboration and the role that diagrams play in the methods used also depends in part on the topic being addressed. This chapter tells the story of how a systems method for sharing perspectives on and then agreeing sustainability indicators, which makes extensive use of two forms of diagram, was conceived and then applied in a wide variety of places. Central to this method's evolution were the intentions of its initial creators and the contributions of the different project collaborators and participants in the related workshops. Central to the method's effectiveness are the way two diagram types are used to visualise, and make more relevant to specified communities, indicators of environmental sustainability. This chapter is also another example of the interplay between method and visualisation, both of the method and within the method, and that it can be difficult to say which is the chicken and which is the egg. They are complementary parts of an holistic and ongoing process, particularly where the main objective is action to improve people's lives rather than research on people's lived experiences.

Beginning at the beginning

The story begins in 1999. Professor Steve Morse and I had met at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, UK, and found compatibility in our worldviews despite working in different fields. I was exploring the use of systems analysis specifically relating to ICT. Steve was focused on the human impacts of agricultural innovation. We both worked in West Africa and were painfully aware of the regular mis-steps made by international aid agencies in their often clumsy interfaces with local people (see Sumberg et al, 2012). Where aid and development projects came face to face with local people there was often/usually a communication chasm – well-intended scientists non-communicating with local populations in what was often experienced as a complex non-iterative process (see, for example, Chambers, 1997; Fisher and Green, 2004; Cooke and Kothari, 2001). Why was this important to us at this time? First, we both saw that a key issue for us was communities and engaging with them. Second, we had, again separately, been working on metrics and measurement.