Organisers chose 4 very different communities in different parts of the world, with different kinds of livelihoods and different kinds of relationship with the outside world: a fishing village in the Danube Delta, Romania; Gosh, a mountain village in Armenia; a community in Northern Ghana which has had a hippo sanctuary; and a community of Buddhist nuns in the Sagaing Hills in Upper Myanmar (Burma). These communities had been involved in NRI research projects, or were suggested by other contacts. The project leader visited the 4 communities between January and June 2002 in order to gather material. She was joined by BBC production staff and the head of photography at z360, a company specialising in panoramic photography and 'virtual tours'. Interviews were set up and carried out by through a collaborative process involving BBC production staff and the project leader (who has experience in qualitative, and particularly anthropological, research skills).

In these interviews, and the radio programmes that were produced, organisers tried to bring out issues that are particularly important to the livelihoods of people in these communities, and that have relevance beyond the community chosen. Three examples include: how to balance conservation of the natural environment with the livelihoods of human communities; the importance of interdependance between people in remote communities both within the community and beyond it; and the relative importance of self-reliance on the one hand and of links with the outside world on the other hand, for remote communities like these. Click here to visit the NRI website for the series, where you can listen to the programmes and find photographs and text, including panoramic photographs; click here to visit the Livelihoods Connect page for the series, where you will find scripts for the programmes as well as the audio.

Organisers are in the process of developing 'virtual visits' consisting of sequences of panoramic photographs with embedded audio, graphics, maps and text, of the communities focused on in the series; click here to view these. It is hoped that these will be further developed for use in educational contexts.

Economic Development.