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Do It Your Damn Self! National Youth Video and Film Festival

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, where world-class universities sit alongside low-income residential districts, local teens from one public housing complex were tired of being rejected from adult festivals and decided it was time to start their own.
Since that critical moment in 1996, the “Do It Your Damn Self!!” National Youth Video & Film Festival (DIYDS!!) has been screening youth-produced films from around the country to an audience of the general public every November.
While some suggest that youth media programs should prioritize the use of media products and their impact on audiences over youth development (Sloan, 2009), we found the opposite to be the case when running a festival. Consistent among our findings is that supporting youth leadership is fundamental—even for a festival that aims to reach a growing audience.
We found that when we ran DIYDS!! in a way that put the primary focus on generating audience for the films, the needs of teens in our own program were neglected and we lost the investment of our core group of leaders. Putting youth development at the center of the festival’s goals, allows DIYDS!! to retain a true youth voice and not become a festival run by adults making assumptions about what youth need.
History of the Festival
DIYDS!! is the longest running youth-produced and youth-curated film festival in the country and attracts over 1,100 youth and adults to public screenings and workshops each year. According to its founders, the mission of the festival “was, is and always will be, to give youth producers like ourselves a place to be heard.”
The core elements of the festival have included: engaging a group of youth to screen entries and select a final reel, presenting the festival to youth-only as well as general audiences, and encouraging as many featured filmmakers as possible to travel to Boston for a weekend of events.
DIYDS!! is curated and organized by youth from the Community Art Center, which operates year-round arts programs for children and media programming and internships for teens. For many years, there was a core group of youth who had grown up in the Community Art Center’s afterschool program who led the festival each fall, supported by one full and one part-time staff member. It was the teens that provided institutional knowledge of the festival process. In its ninth and tenth years, when the festival was at its fullest capacity, up to 50 teens would surface to help make the festival happen. Among their many roles, they led discussions during festival screenings, inspiring hundreds of young people to share their stories and influencing the impact these stories have on the audience.
However, over time, the core group graduated from the program, and there was no strong pipeline of new leaders, partly due to organizational instability. Supporters and adult allies appreciated the raw voices presented at DIYDS!!, and pushed for more venues for the festival, beyond what the teens had the capacity to present.
We realized that promoting the festival had taken priority over our training program for youth, and questioned whether the festival should continue as an effort of the Community Art Center, should be handed over to another agency to run, or whether it had even run its course. Our model needed to change.
Challenges to Youth Participation and Leadership
DIYDS!! has always promoted youth leadership, but the level of youth involvement has shifted over the years as adults began taking on larger roles: connecting with schools, organizing events, and promoting the festival. As the staff and volunteers saw their work as independent of that of the teen leaders, tensions arose between responding to the input of youth leaders, and the potential expansion of the festival.
As the festival grew, the youth became disconnected. Helping DIYDS!! by increasing distribution and seeking larger venues was not addressing the needs of the Cambridge teens who presented it. We needed to resist the push for bigger, better venues, and to retain a focus on the artistic and developmental needs of the teens in our midst.
As a result, the teen program moved the curating of the reel to the summer, freeing up time and energy for other projects in the fall. In an effort to offer more space for the growth of youth leadership, we lengthened the timeline of the festival planning process to one full year. The scale has stayed relatively the same for the past few years. As a result, the goal of deepening the experience for Cambridge youth and sustaining a high level of quality has become a higher priority.
Screening youth-produced media in order to raise awareness among adults has become our secondary goal. We found that the interest of the general public is considerable, and we can leverage that interest to give Cambridge and national youth producers a larger forum to communicate their message, but it should never be at the cost of offering consistent support to youth. As one teen expressed after being asked to serve as a Festival Committee Chair, “but I just learned how to make a website. How can I be in charge of a website for a whole national festival? What if I can’t do it?”
Now, we are building a new core group of leaders, exposing a larger pool of teens to both filmmaking and media literacy, alongside festival planning and developing criteria to judge films. We have also piloted new festival events in response to youth input and will continue to increase youth investment by implementing their ideas.
Although we no longer see the influx of as many teens at festival time, we have succeeded in building a loyal and dedicated group of youth leaders invested in the festival. Fundraising and staff time will be focused on supporting this core group as they continue to deliver DIYDS!! with a unique presentation each year.

Community Art Center Video for Advocacy Day from Paulina Villarroel on Vimeo.

Suggestions to the Field
Know your goals. If you want to screen youth media in order to raise awareness among adults about prominent youth issues and youth’s ability to create interesting media, throw your energy into marketing, promotion and educational supports. If your goal is focused on developing young people, spend time collaborating with local groups, organizing youth leadership and creating environments where youth can come together to network and exchange ideas.
Provide significant support along with significant opportunities. Start where the youth are and let them drive the process forward. Where youth are taking risks or being asked to lead, educators must instill appropriate supports to ensure they succeed.
Collaborate and leverage partnerships. Find partners who can help generate an audience in addition to supporting youth with internships or volunteer positions. Look to colleges, independent theatres, libraries and community centers as potential screening venues. Hold school-day screenings predominantly for youth, giving them a chance to connect with and question their peers.
Build the Field. Use the gathering of youth and their supporters to continue to build the field and address relevant issues. Survey audience members and find ways for supporters to contribute, promote or act on what they experience. Bring together adults who work with youth media producers to support and learn from each other. Provide forums for discussion of content as well as design, to allow viewers to open their minds and create bridges of understanding.
The survival of DIYDS!! speaks to the impact of youth media, and even more so to the importance of gathering youth together to share stories about their lives. Young people still struggle to have their own voices heard, to tell their own stories in their own words.
Raising youth voices, particularly those who have been marginalized by poverty, language, culture or geography, is realized in the convergence of youth who can come together through their filmmaking—learning, growing and reshaping the world around them by participating in it.
Eryn Johnson is the executive director of the Community Art Center in Cambridge, MA and has worked for more than 12 years as a youth advocate and manager in youth-serving arts programs including ZUMIX, Inc. and Proyecto Ak’Tenamit in Izabal, Guatemala. Prior to managing the Community Art Center, Eryn was director of education at Citi Performing Arts Center. She has presented on arts and youth activism for the New England Women’s Studies Association Conference, the ArtCorps Program and at Tufts University. She has her BA in Theatre from Oberlin College and her Master’s in Performance Studies from New York University.

Melina O’Grady is an education consultant with roots in Boston and San Francisco. She is on the Advisory Committee of the “Do It Your Damn Self!!” festival and currently resides in Boston, where she is working on an anthology of youth workers telling their stories.

Graphic Design: A Youth Media Strategy

Young people still struggle to tell their own stories in their own words, and to effectively use contemporary artistic media to express themselves to diverse audiences.
As we challenge teens to be more creative and more thoughtful in their engagement with the world and their communities, graphic design offers a focus for young people’s fascination with new media technologies, and an outlet for their urgent desire to make their voices heard.
As tools for both media production and consumption become ever more accessible, it is vital that we equip young people with the technical and critical skills to evaluate and take ownership of the media that pervade their lives.
Why Graphic Design
Graphic design offers young people a unique entry-point to the broad field of media arts. Contemporary design, essentially an entirely digital practice, gives teens an opportunity to make a direct connection between “analog” artistic work in the studio, and a digital product mass-produced for a large audience. Design encourages teens who are new to media studies to connect previous studio artwork with their future media production, providing tools uniquely suited to revision, experimentation and adjustment, and collaboration. Teamwork fostered by collaborative design in turn forms the basis of a teen arts community where young people support each other, articulate and share ideas, and undertake ambitious projects that cross and combine diverse artistic disciplines.
Ongoing examination of design and media in the urban landscape makes students more aware of the presence and effects of design in their lives, from advertising, to textbook layouts, to cell phone interfaces. Design can help students learn to think visually and clearly articulate their ideas to others as they learn to evaluate the success (or failure) of design work they see every day.
As preparation for higher education and future careers in many sectors, design teaches students to approach communication with others with an open mind and an ability to be flexible, to work across disciplines, and to articulate ideas that they care deeply about and affect change.
Teen Graphic Design Curators
The Urbano Project—a Boston, MA non-profit that seeks to empower urban teens, professional artists and community members to use art to affect social change in—partners Teen Visual Art, Film, Spoken Word, and Graphic Design Curators with professional artist-mentors during the school year to brainstorm themes for teen-led performances, screenings, and art exhibitions. The Teen Curators develop calls for submissions, lead outreach to teen artists from all over the country, and jury submitted works to create public events.
The Teen Graphic Design Curators—intermediate and advanced teen artists—consider their work and that of their peers in the context of Boston’s arts community, and are challenged to think critically, express their ideas in different ways to diverse audiences, and consider the role of an artist in his or her community.
The 2008-09 Teen Graphic Design Curators, Jeffrey Cott (age 18), Jake Giberson (age 19), Lauren Li (age 17), Hazel Manko (age 18), and Dianna Willard (age 19), came to the group with skills ranging from spoken word poetry, to film, to silkscreen and comic book design.
From handmade collage with found typography, to silkscreen, to digital photography, the Curators became comfortable expressing their ideas in the visual language of graphic design and working as a team to translate their thinking into digital production. Curators worked across nearly every artistic medium, employing drawing, printmaking, collage, digital imaging, and even video to complete the final work.
Suggestions to the Field
Make the leap to new media. Encourage teens who have experience with drawing, printmaking, photography, and other studio arts to become involved with a graphic design class or project. Students who my not initially feel comfortable working with digital media or working as part of a team may be receptive to design instruction that draws on their previous artmaking experience.
Develop a creative space. A traditional digital classroom can have the effect of isolating individual students, fostering the relationship of teen-to-computer at the expense of inter-personal communication and cooperation. Initiate “hands-on” projects based on design techniques and concepts, and make clear connections from digital design concepts to the production and physicality of a finished work.
Use media to play and experiment. Encourage students to see the computer and design software as expressive tools open to revision, duplication and adjustment, and experimentation. Seek out instructors skilled in other media (printmaking, drawing, video, etc) and develop collaborative lessons that add to teen participants’ repertoire of artistic approaches to design challenges. Through discussion and class projects, help teens draw connections between the “gestural” movements of drawing and other studio arts and their own design practice.
Foster a community of teen artists. Design is an ideal context in which to develop teamwork and collaborative projects. The importance of input from many different artistic media, the designer’s mandate to create work that speaks to (or for) a particular audience, and the flexibility of the digital process, all support teens to work together and become deeply invested in the group. “If the effort is put in from every individual,” Jeffrey explained, “the final product becomes more powerful and serves as the voice of all those people and their ideas.”
Explore the field. Offer teens frequent opportunities to examine and discuss contemporary and historical graphic design work. Find examples of design concepts such as composition, rhythm, and contrast in media that teens will be familiar with, for example, comic books and Japanese manga are an excellent source. Discuss connections between design movements such as Dada or Modernism and the political climate of the times, and encourage teens to consider how their own design practice responds to the current social and political moment. Visit local design exhibitions, and encourage teens to collect samples of contemporary design that they find compelling.
Next Steps
In the current era, when graphic design is changing quickly and semantic divisions between “art” and “design” are becoming increasingly irrelevant, collaboration across media during the creative process is vital to the creation of truly innovative work.
For teens who frequently feel that their voices are not being heard, and who feel uncomfortable or even threatened in an unfamiliar neighborhood, graphic design provides an opportunity to take ownership of mass communication and forge a community that crosses social and geographic boundaries.
The youth media field must expand to cater to teens interested in graphic design—a medium that affords young people a viable career option, a platform for expression, and skills to work collaboratively.
Alison Kotin is communications + youth programs coordinator at the Urbano Project in Jamaica Plain, MA. A Massachusetts native, Alison works as a visual artist and graphic designer while pursuing an MFA in Dynamic Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
[Credit: Photo by Jennifer Webb]

Youth Media: A Professional Development Strategy

In Boston, where there is a long history of racial segregation, social realities are exponentially exaggerated by the persistently negative and stereotypical mainstream media. Young people in Boston are apt to perpetuate these negative stereotypes because media plays a pivotal role in shaping their identities and attitudes.
What young people need is a lens through which they can see all the positive representations and untold stories in their communities, and tools to tell these stories. Press Pass TV aims to provide young people with the tools to critically process the information they see on television, to rise above the influence and to shape a healthy image of self and others.
We have found that when professional development is integrated with a curriculum designed to train young people to produce powerful stories, we counteract the effects of mainstream media’s stereotypes on youth and the local community.
About Press Pass TV

At Press Pass TV we envision a world of engaged and informed individuals, where youth are leaders and our communities are inspired by media that supports a healthy democracy based on truth, benefiting the greater good.
Press Pass TV is a non-profit that trains youth to produce socially responsible video journalism, which promotes a more diverse media, empowers communities, and increases civic engagement. We partner with local non-profits and offer innovative courses which engage youth in becoming “change agents” and provide professional skills, raising young people’s chances to have a happy and successful life. Here is an example of a story that Press Pass TV youth reporters “broke” and was subsequently picked up by NBC and other major channels:

With issues such a domestic violence, incarceration, educational disparities and transportation rights, our news stories have become tools for community mobilization and organizing. Even with these difficult topics, Press Pass TV remains solution-oriented and dedicated to giving a voice to those most affected. In particular, Press Pass highlights the positive, hopeful, and untold stories of Boston.

In our program, youth are not bombarded with the negative statistics recapitulated by mainstream media, but instead are given the “so what” and the “now what.” In other words, we use media to build a bridge of understanding from how these issues affect them to the tools they can use to take action and change their plight. Press Pass TV offers programs that start with media literacy (using games created by the youth such as Media Jeopardy) and end in hands-on media production.
At Press Pass TV we have found a way to support both creativity and professionalism in a model where these skills complement each other. We provide professional development and time management workshops at the beginning of each program. As a result, our program runs more efficiently, gives our students valuable transferable skills and results in higher quality content. Ultimately, this approach improves the reach of distribution of the content our young people produce, while equipping them to be active participants in their community.
Our professional development workshop takes youth through a curriculum covering topics such as email and work place etiquette, resume development, and professional interpersonal skills (including how to leave a voicemail, shake hands, say no, etc.). It is important to note that this success has been achieved despite the fact that Press Pass TV only recently started paying youth for their work (the majority of our work has been done on a volunteer basis).
Suggestions to the Field
Set high expectations for youth while providing specific tools and pathways to meet them. At Press Pass TV, we have found that the low expectations our community sets for the young people we serve is one of the greatest barriers they face when striving to reach their full potential. In fact, low expectations often further victimize “at-risk” youth rather than empower them. We have watched our young people meet and exceed the high expectations we lay out for them, and this gives them a sense of pride and empowerment.
Add a broader relevancy to the work the youth are producing, by connecting youth to major decision makers and striving to distribute their media broadly. Young people are more engaged in their work when they know they have a strong voice in their field. At Press Pass TV, we encourage youth to interview politicians, businessmen and artists alike, to produce content that contributes to public dialogue and fosters healthy communities.
Incorporate the ways youth adapt to your city when designing your professional development workshops. The key to a professional development workshop is meeting youth where they are. We found that our youth had a hard time showing up on time for reasons as simple as being unable to read a map or know how to use Google maps. Therefore, we go over how to navigate the MBTA (public transportation) and discuss how weather impacts travel time in Boston.
Design professional development workshops with the help of youth or with your program alumni, to eliminate the “top-down” approach that often does not resonate with young people. Work together to identify barriers that prevent your participants from achieving their full professional potential and then create and provide the tools that will support that growth.
Avoid assuming common knowledge—just because you know the difference between “cc” and “bcc” doesn’t mean they do. You can get a sense of what they do and do not already know by observing them at work. For instance, at Press Pass TV the main reason production would slow down was around “follow-up” on leads. We observed that the majority of youth would not leave voice-mails and when they did, crucial contact information was left out. A simple remedy was to create a “phone script.”
Call to the Field
Since the implementation of our “professional development” workshops, Press Pass TV no longer struggles with program attendance and work effectiveness. By setting clear and accessible standards of production, our youth produced content now has distribution through all Public Access channels in Massachusetts as well as nationally through Free Speech TV. We have quickly built a reputation in the city for our fair reporting and our deep ties to the community.
We see professional development as a crucial cornerstone in building the skills necessary for a successful and happy life. Regardless of whether or not the youth you work with will go into media production careers, teaching them how to manage their time, skills and resources will ensure success in their higher education and will level the playing field when it comes to employment opportunities. In short, by joining a strong professional development component with media production we can achieve much needed systemic change.
“Having your voice respected and a say in your destiny is an unalienable human right. I do this work because I believe in the value of our communities, the richness of diversity, and the power of our stories to transform. I dedicate my work to giving the silenced people, issues, and communities a voice.” Joanna Marinova, is the co-director of Program and Operations at Press Pass TV. With a B.S. in International Relations and Economics from the University of Toronto, Joanna has solid corporate experience having worked for Citizens Bank and Wellington Financial Management. She was the founder and president of Women in Life Learning, a Toronto based nonprofit. Joanna has over 7 years of experience and a proven track record in management, operations and development work in nonprofits.

Using Media Literacy to Combat Racism

Boston has a storied past, and race has played an important part in a number of those stories. From abolitionists and the early NAACP to the ugly scars of bussing, Boston has a reputation. Even with about 50% of the population made of people of color, Boston remains a segregated city. For years, many community groups and initiatives have worked toward racial amity. How Boston learns to overcome barriers of racism and come together in a new era of race relations can have important lessons for other communities as America approaches its own majority-minority shift.
For example, in the spring of 2003 I was teaching media literacy classes once a week at a small charter school in the Mission Hill area of Roxbury. We had been talking about stereotypes and magazine ads one afternoon when Nancy, a young girl, normally boisterous, came creeping back in after the others filed out. I could tell she had a secret question that she didn’t want her friends to hear. She sidled up to the desk and covered her mouth when she informed me, “I want to ask you something,” in a low voice.
“What am I?” she said, eyes intent on mine.
Confused, I asked, “What do you mean what are you. You’re you, you’re Nancy.”
“No, but I mean, what am I? See, my mother’s white but my father’s black so I wanted to know what that makes me.”
We talked for a while about this question present for so many “mixed race” youth, but before she left, I had a question of my own: “Why ask me?”
“Because I always wanted to know, and you were the first person I found to ask.”
I was floored by her comment. Her parents had different responses to issues of race, and outside the house, she had no opportunity to talk about the issues of race. From a media lit class, for the first time she found the space to dialogue with her peers about race, what it meant to act white, or be too light or too dark. But she wanted to examine not just how race was represented in the media, but how it showed up in her own life and family.
What does media literacy have to do with race?
Teens spend hours a day consuming media, much of it with messages about race and culture. What does it mean to be black or white, who are the heroes and villains? Without the ability to understand these messages, powerful political and corporate press machines too easily sway teens. Many like to think of Obama’s ascension to the presidency as the herald of a post racial America. But a look at media in 2009, from Professor Gates, to the guidettes of Jersey Shore showed us that prejudice and racism are still alive and well. How can we expect youth not to repeat the prejudices of the past if they are consuming the same stereotypical messages that have existed for years?
Organizing to address media content is important to creating lasting change, but in the meantime, we have a responsibility as educators to aid our students in thinking critically about how race is constructed, and prepare them to participate in shaping the conversation about race in this country.
Media can powerfully shape ideas about people or groups. Media messages are too often a poor substitute for real world multicultural experience in a society still as segregated as America.
Like Nancy, many students have no place to talk about race. Because mainstream media is rife with the stories and stereotypes that support racial prejudice it provides a perfect opportunity for students to examine and create messages about race. Since so much of the national debate about race takes place in the media, media educators have a special opportunity—and responsibility—to help students understand the way that ideas and beliefs around race are socially constructed.
Addressing Race in Afterschool Programs
I began my work in media literacy at Youth Voice Collaborative (YVC), a nonprofit youth serving after school program. YVC was created in 1991 by Marti Wilson Taylor, who had the vision to see that youth of color would need—and love—programs that helped them understand and make media. When I became the program manager in 2000, my job was to recreate YVC with renewed focused on media literacy to better connect to the YWCA’s larger mission of addressing racism.
With grant funding to support development, I created the Media Minds curriculum: an eight session media literacy curriculum designed for after school programs. The curriculum, which we continued to adapt over the years, has served as the core content for YVC.
YVC helped teens understand how media shapes the way they see themselves and the world around them, especially around issues of race and gender. We begin the program cycle for our on site after school program in the summer, hire a group of peer leaders and train them in media literacy, cultural competency and community organizing. During the school year, the peer leader works with adult staff to facilitate groups for teens at other programs, in addition to producing media and hosting events such as talent shows, poetry nights, conferences and discussion groups.
I also train small cohorts of teachers and youth workers to identify ways media literacy can advance their work, and each trainee choses to use the curriculum in different ways. For example:
• Start the school year with a section on critical analysis that becomes the framework for examining text and media throughout the year.
• Hold weekly media lit groups that apply critical analysis to class material.
• Create documentaries and community PSA and newsletters that increase cultural awareness
All the trainees reported that students enjoyed thinking and talking about media, making critical analysis skills fun to build. The challenges in training staff are numerous, from time and resources, to turnover and resistance, but the potential payoff makes addressing these challenges worth it.
Media literacy is an important strategy to open a dialogue on race and culture. Teens are hungry for a place where they can think and talk about issues of identity and the important role race and culture plays in their lives. Our discussions about the news reporting of youth violence, or the latest music videos, were inevitably discussions about the teens and their values.
By examining media, we examine ourselves, and the experience is life changing. One teen leader, Jamal, starred in YVC’s feature length docudrama on civil rights and the Voting Act, called Selma 2050. After researching, interviewing politicians and activists, and editing the film, he found—like his character in the film—a new awareness around race: “I used to think that being black was some kind of curse or something. Making this made me feel better about not just being a black man, but about black people period.”
Prepping Educators to Facilitate Race and Media Programming
As the director of the communications and media literacy program at Wheelock College and a trainer for Culture Shop I help train the next generation of media literacy educators. I can see their anxiety around addressing race and culture in their work with youth. While the issues of race and culture are real and complex, we can address these issues in simple ways.
The following are tips for any educator interested in addressing race and culture with youth. I call these Zen tips, because they’re simple, but take reflection and practice to make them work.
Check yourself: Race is still a taboo topic in many ways. You may be afraid to offend someone, or just unsure about how to talk about it. Take a deep breath, relax, and give yourself permission to talk about race. Reflect on your own ideas, experiences, and attitudes. No matter what your intentions, attitudes and beliefs about people of different backgrounds may be uninformed. That shouldn’t stop our work or make us feel guilty, but it means we must constantly debunk these messages and stereotypes internally.
Ask yourself questions to begin to get a sense of your own starting point:
• What do I mean by race?
• Do race and culture play an important role in my life or the lives of my students?
• What stereotypes and limiting beliefs do I hold about different cultural groups?
• How are my beliefs shaped by news, movies, and blogs?
Remember, race includes whites as well as “minorities.” Answering questions like these in a thoughtful reflective way can prepare us and make us feel more confident addressing issues of race.
Get real: Now that you are ready to begin talking and teaching about race it’s time to set some realistic expectations. If charge your group with eradicating racism in your community this year, you are setting your group up to fail. No matter how hard we work, none of us should expect that we can dismantle the system of racism on our own. When you honestly talk about race in a meaningful way you should expect that it is not going to be easy or get solved in a week. Be prepared that members of your group are likely to disagree when talking about their racial attitudes and assumptions.
Just talk: If it is going to be hard, and your group may not be able to affect widespread social change, you may be wondering what you can accomplish. Just by opening up dialogue and giving students the tools to think and talk critically about race and representation is creating a space for awareness. Many of the college students I see in classes have not had the chance to have thoughtful critical discussions about culture and race during their high school experience. When you develop an environment where youth are actively talking and thinking about race, you are making a difference. The conversation is enough to affect social change on the personal level.
Create culture: With your expectations clear, set a culture in your program that supports deep discussion around personal values. When we talk about personal values naturally it gets personal, so facilitators must be able to make the group feel safe. Educators should take the role of a neutral facilitator to be sure that everyone’s voice is heard, and to allow the students to carefully listen and consider each others views. Make sure that you have strong ground rules that are clearly and fairly enforced. Participants should be willing to speak and listen to each other respectfully. Without disagreement, your group will lack the chance to explore alternative viewpoints. The group should agree to disagree, leaving room for dissenting voices.
Keep calm: Finally, once your group begins to talk, think and create around issues of race, you may find you run into some opinions that you just do not like. Resist the urge to tamper with youths’ values. No matter how strong your own personal view, your role is not to tell youth what is right and wrong, but only to give them the tools to search for the truth themselves. Create an environment that encourages and accepts multiple viewpoints. You can stay neutral and be prepared to relate the historical, social and political context the message is created in. Helping students understand the societal factors that contribute to media messages will give students the information they need to make their own informed decisions.
Next Steps
Issues of race can be layered and complex, but there are small actions each of us can take each day to improve awareness in our own environment. Youth need tools to begin to peel back the layers now while they are still developing their own values around culture and diversity. The very idea of race is socially constructed—race is whatever we say it is, and mass media is where we say what it is. Media literacy and youth media production can provide a powerful pair of skills that work together to help youth analyze the way that race is represented in American culture, and participate in creating change through youth media production.
Armed with her new critical analysis skills, Nancy got her own surprise: the answer was hers to give.
Media literacy, critical thinking, and media production are powerful tools for youth to combat racism. Whether we have the chance to address it in the classroom, after school program or community, we have a responsibility as educators and citizens to work toward that more perfect union—a truly post-race society.

Susan Owusu was born and raised in and around Boston. She started working with young people in 1993 at the Charles Hayden School, a residential placement site for boys with emotional and behavioral disabilities. She supervised a 12 bed unit for students with ADD and trauma histories for 5 years before seeking a more empowering pathway to supporting youth. After two years organizing youth leaders in the Boston Public Schools, she had the opportunity to mange Youth Voice Collaborative. Susan joined YVC in 2000 and spent 10 years rebuilding one of Boston’s first youth media programs. She worked to develop the Media Minds curriculum, combining media literacy with cultural awareness for urban teens. Now as director of the communications and Media Literacy program at Wheelock College, Susan hopes to inspire a new generation of teachers, youth workers, and independent producers to user the power of media to tell a new story the reshapes and supports our communities, making them stronger and more connected.

Join Appalshop at MoMA in a conversation that celebrates 40 years of Appalachian voices…

We’re bringing the Appalshop archive and new releases to New York City. Come out and visit us at The Museum of Modern Art.
Appalshop’s work will be showcased at Documentary Fortnight, 2010: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film. We will be celebrating 40 years of independent media making and multidisciplinary arts activity that amplifies the voices and reflects the concerns of people living in rural America. For the most current information, please visit MoMA and Appalshop.org.
Join an intergenerational group of producers and educators for panel discussions examining Appalshop’s experiences and approaches to place-based media, featuring a wide range of work, including archival films, recent coal-focused documentaries, youth media, and collaborative productions from Appalshop’s Appalachian/Indonesian Exchange Project.

Media that Matters Film Festival at the Brooklyn Museum

Please join the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, February 20, from 2-4pm, for selections from the Media That Matters Film Festival: Short Films That Inspire Action. The short films will highlight Black History Month and feminist issues. A conversation with the films’ directors follows.
This event will take place in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd floor.
Please contact the Brooklyn Museum for more information, (718) 638-5000.

VIDEO INSTRUCTOR NEEDED FOR COMMUNITY VIDEO PROJECT

In partnership with Mercy Housing, The Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), one of the nation’s leading nonprofit media arts centers, seeks a dynamic and experienced video maker to lead a community video production on the history of the Sunnydale community. Video Instructor will work in partnership with a coordinator from Mercy Housing to provide after-school video workshops for youth twice a week for 16 weeks, starting March 2010 and to engage community participants in an oral history project.

About the Sunnydale community: In the Visitacion Valley neighborhood, at the foot of the City’s second largest park, McLaren sits San Francisco’s largest public housing site, Sunnydale-Velasco. The 50 acre, 785 unit site is home to more than 1700 residents. Sunnydale’s 50 acres is surrounded by an ethnically diverse, family-oriented community residing largely in single family homes.

About BAVC’s Next Gen programs: Since 1999 BAVC’s Next Generation programs have offered a flexible pathway for youth who may lack parental support, school support, and the extra-curricular and leadership opportunities that can help to teach and reaffirm learning and communication skills. Our programs help young people develop their artistic talent and provide them with advanced, industry-standard training in new media while helping them develop life skills to successfully collaborate on and produce a high-quality creative product.
About Mercy Housing: Mercy Housing is one of the top not-for-profit developers of program-enriched affordable housing in the country, and has developed four family and senior properties and three community-serving facilities in Sunnydale’s vicinity. The Related Companies of California has successfully developed master planned, mixed income communities throughout California utilizing the HOPE VI program.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES include the following:
§ Partner with Mercy Housing staff in participant outreach, recruitment and retention.
§ Work collaboratively with BAVC staff and Mercy Housing staff in the development and delivery of the video project.
§ Provide direct instruction to youth in video production and digital storytelling, two afternoons a week and occasional weekends.
§ Provide quality instruction and safe space to youth in the program.
§ Outreach to community members to participate in workshops and interviews.
§ Assure quality of final product, including design and production of final DVD.
§ In partnership with Mercy Housing and BAVC staff, produce and end-of-program community screening and distribution plan.
Must be versed in filmmaking, storytelling and youth cultures. An individual with an understanding of the power of stories told by youth and the use of media they’ve produced for social change and education; able to appreciate their everyday experiences and use them to create inspired work.
Desired Qualifications
· Filmmaking and producing experience.
· Experience in youth programs.
· Experience working with diverse communities.
· Excellent leadership, group facilitation, written & oral communication, and organizational skills.
· Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and DVD Studio Pro expertise a must. After Effects and Pro Tools experience is a plus.
· Spanish-speaking or second-language fluency a plus.
· Familiarity Visitacion Valley/ Sunnydale community a plus.
· Weekend and evening flexibility is a must.
Schedule and pay:
Program duration March 1 – July 1, 2010. Video Instructor will be contracted for up to 180 hours, including prep time and meetings.
Hourly rate $25- $35/ hour DOE.
APPLICATIONS MUST BE RECEIVED BY THURSDAY FEBRUARY 11.
Please submit a resume and reel/ link, with cover letter to:
Moriah Ulinskas
Director of Next Generation Programs
Bay Area Video Coalition- BAVC
2727 Mariposa Street, 2nd Floor SF, CA 94110
or moriah@bavc.org

Media that Matters Film Festival: Call for Entries!

Media That Matters 10

REMINDER: Our regular deadline is fast approaching! Complete entries must be postmarked by January 22, 2010!
ALERT: We are extending the call for entries for a late deadline. Complete submissions must be submitted online / mailed with a postmark no later than January 29, 2010.
Please be aware that there is a fee increase of $5 from midnight, January 22nd. No waivers will be granted.
Media That Matters: Screen. Act. Impact.
Arts Engine celebrates ten years of Media That Matters — the premier showcase for short films with big messages.
“We no longer have to rely on major corporations for things to be seen — we have Media that Matters to distribute new material and new voices and new points of view.”
— Tim Robbins, Actor
Submit your film for the chance to work with us in creating social change through film. If selected, your film will take become a part of Media That Matters — an international, multi-platform campaign streaming and playing to thousands of people at screenings across the globe. Media That Matters creates discussion guides and screening materials to promote conversation and encourage educators, activists and organizers alike to Take Action around these films. Join us in our TENTH year and submit your film now!
CRITERIA:
* Short films — the shorter the better—no longer than 12 minutes max, but 8 and under would be great!
* Social issues — Any and all issues will be considered. This year we are focusing on Media Literacy, Human Rights, LGBTQ & Sexual Identity, Youth Activism and International issues in particular.
* The film should encourage the audience to be engaged and take action around the issue.
* All genres — Documentary, animation, public service announcement, narrative, music video, drama, comedy. Creativity is encouraged — but your film must focus on a social issue.
* Open to all ages — Youth-produced projects encouraged!
BEFORE SUBMITTING:
* The film you are submitting must be cleared for NON EXCLUSIVE home video, educational, online, broadcast and theatrical distribution. If you have signed a contract with any other entity for this film that includes EXCLUSIVE rights to this film, please review prior to submitting to our festival. Media That Matters seeks the widest possible audiences for your film. To do this effectively, we use a non-exclusive contract, so unlike many media entities, we do not ask for exclusive rights. This flexibility helps our outreach team go further with your film, creating even more opportunity for distribution and exposure of your work.
* All footage — including music and other referenced video pieces — must have all rights cleared and secured. Please refer to the Center for Social Media’s set of Best Practices for more information on how to use licensed materials. Creative Commons is also a great resource for license-free or flexi-licensed music and media alternatives.
HOW TO SUBMIT:
Step 1: Choose submission method:
*Submit via URL
This year we will be accepting online submissions. We prefer a link to watch online. Please remember to send us a password if necessary to view private videos. You can follow guidelines on Vimeo or Youtube for this.
* Submit via DVD
Submissions must be sent to us on DVD and programmed to play as a DVD Region 0 (region free) or Region 1 (US, Canada, US Territories) Please note that the following formats will not be considered this year: PAL, VHS, mini DV or CD-R (QuickTime MOV or MPG files).
Step 2: Fill out details in the film submission form for each film.
Step 3: Process payment (see submission fees below):
Regular Deadline postmarked by: January 22nd 2010
* Individual Filmmaker: $25 / each film submission; Max: 2 submissions
* Student Filmmaker (18+): $10 w/ Student ID; Max: 2 submissions
* Youth Filmmaker (18 & under): FREE w/ proof of age; Max: 2 submissions
* Non-profit / Youth Media Organization: FREE; Max: 5 submissions
Extended Deadline postmarked by: January 29th 2010
* Individual Filmmaker: $30 / each film submission; Max: 2 submissions
* Student Filmmaker (18+): $15 w/ Student ID; Max: 2 submissions
* Youth Filmmaker (18 & under): FREE w/ proof of age; Max: 2 submissions
* Non-profit / Youth Media Organization: FREE; Max: 5 submissions
Step 4: Your submission will be complete once you receive a confirmation email including a reference number for each film and any further instructions.
Questions?
Contact festival@artsengine.net

Save the Date! 12th Allied Media Conference

The 12th Allied Media Conference will take place June 18-20 in Detroit, Michigan.
Vision of the Allied Media Conference
Participatory Media to Transform Our Selves and Our World
The Allied Media Conference advances our visions for a just and creative world. It is a laboratory for media-based solutions to the matrix of life-threatening problems we face. Since our founding in 1999, we have evolved our definition of media, and the role it can play in our lives – from zines to video-blogging to breakdancing, to communicating solidarity and creating justice. Each conference builds off the previous one and plants the seeds for the next. Ideas and relationships evolve year-round, incorporating new networks of media-makers, technologists and social justice organizers. We draw strength from our converging movements to face the challenges and opportunities of our current moment. We are ready to create, connect and transform.
Create
The AMC supports learning of all different kinds and at all different levels. The workshops are hands-on and participatory. Knowledge is passed horizontally rather than from the top down. Everyone teaches and everyone learns. At the AMC, media creation is not only about personal expression, but about transformation – of ourselves and the structures of power around us. We create media that exposes, investigates, resists, heals, builds confidence and radical hope, incites dialogue and debate. We demystify technology, not only learning how to use it, but how to take it apart, fix it and build our own. We do it ourselves and as communities, connecting across geographic and generational boundaries.
Connect
The AMC is a network of networks – youth organizations, international solidarity activists, anti-violence organizers, technologists, educators, media reform advocates, alternative economists, musicians and artists, disability activists, and many others – all using media in innovative ways. Some of these networks have sprouted from the conference, grown over the course of the year, then reconvened in Detroit larger and healthier. Others have adopted the AMC as an annual point of convergence and a space to forge new relationships. Through cycles of collaboration, question-asking and experimentation, our networks continue to grow, bringing new analysis, and new tools to the AMC every year.
Transform
The deeper our networks grow, the greater our capacity grows to take collective actions to transform our world. We recognize that transformation happens through our everyday movements. At the AMC, we develop new leaders and new forms of leadership, design new methods of problem-solving, cultivate the visions of our communities and build our power to make those visions real. Our strategies for transformation don’t begin or end with the three days of the conference. They evolve in our lives and our work throughout the year.
For more information, please visit http://alliedmediaconference.org/.

2010 Talking Pictures Festival: Call for Entries Now Open

The Talking Pictures Festival highlights independent films from around the world mixed with brand new offerings by local filmmakers. The 2010 Talking Pictures Festival will once again be jam packed with animated films, shorts, new fiction films and documentaries that promise to offer something for everybody.
The Talking Pictures Festival invites independent films and videos of any genre or length to participate in its 2010 edition. We are looking for films that are challenging, intriguing, entertaining, personal, thought-provoking, or unique in perspective. From dramatic films to hard-hitting documentaries, comedic shorts, experimental films, or music videos, we invite independent filmmakers to send us their work for consideration.
Entries must be completed works, accompanied by an entry form and fee. Selected films screen in the festival and compete for cash awards.
You can download the Entry Form and Guidelines here, or check the website for more information.