Video Diaries

Project

Video Diaries is an awareness raising tool to show first hand the challenges children, young people and adults with arthritis/rheumatism face daily and how they could be improved.

Ruder Finn worked with PARE (People with Arthritis/Rheumatism in Europe) Manifesto to develop and a package of support materials for PARE member organisations (national patient groups for people with arthritis/rheumatism).   These included instructions on how to run the project for the group, instructions for people making a video diaries, consent forms etc.   Member organisations were also loaned special camcorders for people to make their own video diaries.   Completed diaries were edited together into campaigning films for use at a national level.  Ruder Finn edited highlights from national video diaries for European campaigning films.

Objectives

In spite of there being over 100 million people with arthritis/rheumatism in Europe at least XX percent of who are under XX years of age, the general perception is that arthritis/rheumatism is part of the ageing process and only affects older people.   The aim of Video Diaries was to create an emotionally engaging way of bringing aspects of arthritis/rheumatism to the attention of policy makers, physicians and the general public.

Results

Edited video diaries from the UK (the first country to complete the project) were shown at opening ceremony of the 2007 EULAR (European League Against Rheumatism) congress in Barcelona.  This congress attracted xx delegates and this was the first time a patient film had been used in the opening ceremony.  The film was also used at a EULAR press briefing and a longer version was created for the PARE exhibition stand at EULAR.  

In 2007 Ruder Finn worked with Arthritis Care to make the UK video diaries and these became the centre of Arthritis Care’s highly successful ‘People Like Us’ campaign.

In 2008 films from Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal and the UK were edited together and shown on the PARE exhibition stand at the EULAR congress in Paris.

Excerpts from the video diaries can be seen on the WAD website (www.worldarthritisday.org)

The development of the Video Diaries project was supported by and educational grant from Wyeth Europa and the UK video diaries were supported by an educational grant from John Wyeth and Brothers