Documentation is useful only when it remains connected to context.

Context before content

A record separated from its origin, purpose, permission and conditions of production can become misleading. Its context must remain associated with the record in order to support an interpretation faithful to the conditions in which it was produced.

Trust creates responsibilities in both directions

Trust is part of fieldwork itself, not a stage completed before it, and it creates responsibilities in both directions. It should never be treated as a resource for obtaining better information. Building trust may require time that a schedule did not anticipate, and that time should not become an unpaid cost imposed on local participants.

Consent is specific, ongoing and truthful

Consent should be informed, specific, understandable and connected to the intended use. It is checked throughout the project and may be clarified or withdrawn for future uses, within the limits stated from the outset. Agreement to a conversation, recording or photograph does not automatically authorise publication, fundraising, press use, commercial reuse or indefinite retention. The absence of refusal is not consent.

Individual consent and collective authority are not interchangeable. Where the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples are engaged, free, prior and informed consent must be approached through the relevant representative institutions and applicable rights framework. Between Grounds will not describe a process as FPIC unless those conditions are genuinely met.

Authority must be identified, not assumed

The person funding, commissioning or facilitating a project may not be authorised to permit every form of documentation. Permission from an individual does not necessarily authorise the circulation of collectively governed knowledge, and collective approval does not replace the consent of an identifiable person.

No community is treated as a single voice. Relevant authorities, internal differences, third-party rights and the exact scope of each permission must be identified rather than assumed.

When obligations conflict, the work pauses

When obligations conflict, the work is paused rather than resolved through convenience. The order of consideration is: applicable law, immediate safety and fundamental rights; valid individual consent and legitimate collective authority; agreed project governance and contractual commitments; then documentary or scientific interest, which cannot override the preceding conditions.

If no defensible resolution is possible, the record is not made, retained or published. A refusal concerning personal representation or collectively governed knowledge is not overridden merely because an institution or funder prefers publication.

Restraint is part of the method

Not everything observed should be recorded. Not everything recorded should be retained. Not everything retained should be shared. Permission to enter a place does not automatically include permission to record, retain or publish. In some situations, the responsible decision is not to document.

People are not visual material

People are not visual material, and no outside collaborator can claim to show them fully “as they are”. Images and narratives should preserve complexity, agency, context and the right not to be made visible, rather than reducing people to hardship, rescue, disappearance or cultural difference.

Suffering may be documented when it is relevant, consented, safe and useful, but it should not be aestheticised or used to make the outside collaborator the central moral actor. Neither a poverty narrative nor a saviour narrative is acceptable.

Local contribution carries authority

Fieldwork should avoid a structure in which knowledge, images and value leave a place without return. Relevant local people and organisations should be involved early. Their expertise and contributions should be clearly recognised and remunerated on fair terms agreed in advance. Co-authorship and other forms of attribution should reflect the actual contribution and the wishes of the people concerned.

Skills, files, resources or equipment may be transferred where this is useful, safe, agreed and sustainable. Such transfer should respond to a real need and should not be reduced to a symbolic gesture. International travel is justified when it brings a useful capacity to the project and does not unnecessarily replace expertise already available locally. Where local capacity can carry out the work responsibly, it should be preferred.

Not everything recorded is for everyone

Knowledge may be governed by locally defined conditions relating to role, time, place, relationship, cultural status or intended audience. Access and use should follow the relevant protocols and authorities.

Differentiated access may be more appropriate than open access, and uncertainty about authority is a reason to pause rather than publish.

Records carry continuing responsibilities

Creating a photograph, recording, interview or dataset also creates responsibility for its storage, access, description, reuse and eventual deletion. Sensitive identities and locations require additional protection, and data minimisation is preferable to collecting everything and deciding later.

Where Indigenous data are involved, the CARE principles may guide governance by bringing collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility and ethics into decisions that open-data standards do not resolve on their own. CARE complements rather than automatically replaces FAIR, and neither framework replaces locally defined governance, applicable law or project-specific agreements.

Community-controlled platforms or Traditional Knowledge Labels may be used only where the relevant Indigenous community or organisation chooses and governs their use. Between Grounds cannot assign those labels on a community’s behalf.

Land, sea and living systems are not backdrops

Documentation should take account of local environmental realities and comply with applicable scientific and safety protocols. Activities should be prepared so as to limit disturbance to wildlife and habitats, avoid disclosing the location of sensitive sites and prevent additional pressure on fragile areas.

Its own footprint must also be considered: each journey should be justified, missions grouped where possible and suitable local capacity preferred.

Return is part of the work

Return is built in from the start, budgeted and adapted to real access conditions. The people and organisations concerned should receive usable copies in forms, languages and access levels that are useful to them. Publication to a distant audience is not a substitute for return.

Return should include a route for factual correction, contextual clarification and decisions about restrictions within the agreed authority and governance. It does not give any one party unrestricted power to rewrite an independent record or a scientific finding.

Withdrawal needs a procedure, not a justification

Participants, relevant collective authorities and project partners may request correction, restriction or withdrawal without having to provide a moral justification. The procedure and its technical, legal and archival limits should be defined before recording or publication.

Where complete deletion is no longer possible after lawful publication, irreversible anonymisation or deposit in an independent archive, appropriate alternatives may include correction, restriction, de-indexing or prohibition of future use.

Accountability must be able to change the work

Between Grounds is accountable to the people directly affected by the work, to the relevant collective authorities and to the institutions responsible for the project, within applicable law and agreed governance. Those responsibilities should be explicit rather than hidden behind a general claim of good intention.

Uncertainty, mistakes and unresolved obligations should be recorded rather than hidden. A decision not to record or publish is a legitimate and complete outcome. Ethical review is meaningful only when it can change a decision, a method, an image selection or a publication.