Our Programs
How we work with coastal communities
Project Seen and Heard runs three interconnected programs — research, filmmaking, and knowledge sharing — documenting ground-up community-based solutions to small and medium disasters.
Coastal Ethnography
Understanding risk where communities live it
Long-term fieldwork embedded in low-income fishing communities across Negros island. Researchers observe how slow violence and recurring disasters shape daily life — not as exceptional crises, but as conditions people navigate every day. Doctoral research developed at the National University of Singapore Department of Southeast Asian Studies.
- Slow violence in coastal livelihoods
- Recurring small-scale disasters
- Local networks in everyday risk management
In partnership with NUS Department of Southeast Asian Studies
Read the dissertationJust One Door Away
Ground-Up Community Based Solutions in Response to Small and Medium Disasters
A project supported with a seed grant from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Institute of the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR) and supervised by Dr Serina Rahman, NUS Department of Southeast Asian Studies.
- Community-led storytelling
- Participatory filmmaking
- Small and medium-scale disasters
In partnership with NUS Institute for Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR)
Public Knowledge Sharing
Bridging academic research and public understanding
Research and films are shared through university engagements, academic conferences, and public forums across Southeast Asia — making community experiences legible to policymakers, scholars, and wider audiences.
- University partnerships
- Academic conferences
- Public forums on disaster risk
In partnership with Universities and research institutions across the region
Documentary Framework
Three lenses on disaster
Our filmmaking program is structured around how communities actually experience risk — not only catastrophic events, but the medium and small-scale disasters that shape everyday coastal life.
Large-scale
3 filmsMajor events like typhoons that reshape entire neighbourhoods — examining mutual aid, resource sharing, and how communities rebuild when official systems are slow to arrive.
- Typhoon response
- Community resource centres
- Post-disaster solidarity
Medium-scale
2 filmsLocalised emergencies such as fires — where mothers, youth, and informal networks form the first line of response before outside help reaches the community.
- Neighbourhood brigades
- Youth first-responders
- Informal early warning
Small-scale
5 filmsThe everyday risks woven into coastal life — fetching water during floods, kinship obligations, dinner gatherings, and the quiet habits that become lifelines when disaster strikes.
- Kinship & care
- Everyday neighbours
- Domestic resilience
Cross-cutting Themes
What our programs look for
Across all three programs, we return to the same questions — who helps whom, through what channels, and with what resources already at hand.
Kinship & Care
In difficult conditions, care becomes a responsibility shared across the whole community — not confined to immediate family.
Youth Leadership
Young people who grow up navigating disaster gain insight and urgency that official preparedness programmes often overlook.
Informal Networks
Gossip, social media, dinner gatherings, and neighbourly routines — channels of information and support that formal systems rarely account for.
Peer Mentorship
Trusted figures — manong, mothers, college students — who pass on practical knowledge about survival, independence, and navigating systems.
Our Approach
From fieldwork to public understanding
Embed
Live alongside communities through sustained ethnographic fieldwork
Listen
Identify the networks, routines, and responses that matter most locally
Co-create
Develop documentaries shaped by community voices and experiences
Share
Bring findings to universities, conferences, and public audiences
Explore the communities and stories behind this work.