Digital Arts Service Corps - media

Outreach and Collaborate!

Janet Vo — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:59:48 +0000

What to do when you have a no show for an event?

You just have to accept and learn from your mistakes. This past Saturday, our organization planned for a youth forum and introductory workshop to get students acquainted with our upcoming Spring Media program (Dorchester Initiative for Youth). We waited for over an hour and no one showed up. I along with the college students who helped organized the project had a strong feeling that this might happen when it was 12 noon.

We spent over a month organizing a youth forum and introduction workshop and to see our efforts go to waste was disheartening. We had youth express interest in the program, however never committed to showing up for this event.

Lessons learned? Outreach more and utilize networks best as possible. We outreached through our community networks, but we may not have generated enough hype for the program. And my one weakness is that I, myself don't have too much credibility in the community when outreaching because a lot of people do not know me as well. I have to problem solve on my own networking strategies for outreach and event planning purposes. Some things though, are out of your hands- winter break, students with no interest and busy schedules. We will be working harder on encouraging them to apply to the program in March.

A massive workload is piling on for me, as I take on more projects. I am continually connecting to other organizations who express interest in utilizing media to educate youth on topics such as domestic violence and immigration. I am hesitant to collaborate because I don't know if I have the capacity. At the same time, I know I will have to go with my gut and just run with something that sounds good even if I will only be around for 6 more months. So I will pursue these opportunities. It's funny because I've always seen other people take on more work than they can handle and ask why they would do that to themselves. Just have to go with my gut, these issues are important to me and the longterm needs of my org.

On a personal/career note, does anyone have suggestions as what to do post-service? I am thinking of maybe staying on with my organization part time, but would love to keep my options open.

Sensory Overload

Mira Allen — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:52:38 +0000

This morning I walked into the gallery and saw the new exhibition for the first time. It's called The Space Between The Pit and The Peak, Incarnate Two. It was put together by Lillian Harden and curated by our own Setheyny Pen, and it's simply.... well... fabulous...

It's a multimedia installation meant to challenge the way we think about human interaction. Among several other pieces, there's a life sized sculpture of a person, its over sized head slumping onto the floor. Next to that is a two bodied baby. On the other side of a partition a figure lies hidden under black velvet in front of a wooden television.

On the far wall a video plays in an endless loop. It's three of the sculptures, each toiling under the pressure of some unseen inner conflict. They interact with each other on occasion, but for the most part all seem lost in their own world.

"I'm hoping that [the audience] will be thinking about themselves and their relationships," said Lillian in a phone interview last week, "I want them to have an otherworldly experience. It's going to really encompass the senses. It's got sounds, the lights will be dimmed and there will be little mirrors and lights. It's going to definitely have a theatrical element. It's a slightly allegorical other world."

Everyone around here is very excited about the show and even more excited about all of the great press and events we have been having.

Tonight we will be hosting the first monthly installment of Artbeat. The hip hop event will feature an open table format- giving anybody who's brought needles and records a chance to sign up and spin a set. In case that isn't enough, there will also be some live art, a VJ, and breakdancers. How much for all this, you ask? Nothing. That's right. It's free.

This Valentine's Day we will hold our second Dinner & A Movie. We want to keep things spicy by serving up some delicious Indian food made by RebelChef Y Woodward. We're also bringing in the world jazz of Spiral7 (complete with sitar). After that we'll be screening a sultry Bollywood classic film. Should be a good night.

We've got a ton of other things planned too, but if I go on anymore about them this might start to sound waaaaay too much like a commercial. I guess I am in charge of marketing, but I'm sure it's starting to get obnoxious. Haha.

For now, I'm just trying to keep up. I just signed on to be a correspondent for the Boston Cyber Arts Festival which will be great, because I'm itching to do some reporting. It's been WAY too long. I'm also on the planning committee for this year's NAMAC conference in Boston (National Alliance For Media Arts and Culture) and am organizing (and acting in ) next month's production of The Vagina Monologues (I'm doing the "Reclaiming Cunt" monologue. I can't wait). To top it off, I'm about to be promoted to assistant director and have yet to start writing my "how-to" manuals for marketing.

As you all probably know, my contract here is up in July, and that seems right around the corner. Nate and I will be road tripping it back to Oregon, heading south and then west. After that it's Maui and then Central America for some nice chill out time on the Caribbean. I've got a writing job lined up that will pay nicely while I sip aguardiente and mescal on the beach. And after this winter you know I'm going to need that. I'm a tropical girl at heart. This place is a tad on the chilly side for me. I've got a few people along the way that I'm long overdue in visiting. Now I just need to find a car... Any ideas?

TV shows and Websites

Stephen Loverme — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:18:40 +0000

I'm more or less continuing work on some of the same projects described in my last report. At Brighton High School we are finishing up post-production of the first episode of BHTV, which the TV production class has worked all semester to produce.

On the web I'm working on further developing our Drupal website that's being used at Somerville high school. Some of the things I'm adding are a grading feature which which allows the teacher to calculate grades and share them privately with each student, as well as an "assignment board" feature which will sort all projects with their associated content, due dates, groups and so on. I'm also creating a resource page on the organization website where al of our curriculum materials can be stored and downloaded.

Portland Speaks: The genesis of the idea

Denise Cheng — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:33:39 +0000

From July onward, I've spent much of my time at Portland Community Media working on a proposal for a project that would allow immigrants and Millennials to create media at low-cost anywhere and at anytime. To do this, we focused on the cell phone as a media creation device and the Internet as the primary distribution platform with the hope of television as a second one. Here's how the idea began:

After coming back from Africa, I have a deeper appreciation for the immigrant experience. As a minority, I could only superficially understand the immigrant struggle till my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho. In addition to this, there’s very little ethnic diversity in Portland, and I was curious why, out of the major West Coast cities, it had been excluded from the richness of cultural infusion.
My first day on the job as a CTC Vista, I had a talk with Jason, who managesthe government production side of PCM. I was asking about immigrant representation on PCM channels and programming done by immigrants, of which Jason said there was very little. We talked about the lack of outreach by PCM to immigrant communities in the area even though it’s in line with the mission, and we discussed the need for their presence in community media in Portland.
Having come from print journalism, I have a penchant for paper. Bea, my supervisor, shares this as a bookbinder. We discussed what would be the most comfortable and familiar medium for immigrants. Despite my position as the New Media Vista, I really wanted to bring print into PCM. We decided that, of all forms of media, paper is the most familiar in the world and probably the most comfortable form of communication that anyone can opt for.
Since I was hired on to be the New Media Vista without really understanding what the buzzword of “New Media” and “Web 2.0” were, I was also researching heavily during my first couple of weeks on the job. I read a lot about social media and also came across this website focusing on the phone as an activist tool. It was incredibly interesting for me to learn how phones were being used for flash mobbing and information distribution in third world countries.
At the time, my boyfriend was also about to replace his shitty phone and was intently scouring the Internet for new cell phone technology and customer ratings. I asked him about transferring contacts, SMS’, and other forms of data from his old phone to a new one. I remembered how all my phones used to have a voice memo feature and the short amount of time it allowed for recording. I figured this was anywhere between 1-10 minutes because I used to accidentally hit the voice memo feature on my old cell phone while on calls. I realized how that might be a possibility for new media use for immigrants and thought it might be appropriate technology because of what I saw in Lesotho: Everyone has a cell phone regardless of how remote they are, and a lot of it is driven by the phone as a status symbol. "Everyone" is a bit of an exaggeration, but I later learned that the most familiar and bestselling communicative technology device in the world is the cell phone, which suggests that the phone is at least more familiar than other new communication media.
I started to test the technical side of this idea with phones that belonged to coworkers and friends. The goal was trying to figure out the average amount of time that the memo feature records, and that’s where I discovered that, in fact, not all phones have voice memo features, and phones range in recording time from a minute to whatever amount of memory is left on the phone.
It was around that time that Bea put Jacob and me together on a project to figure out how PCM could address the needs of both immigrant communities and Millennials. PCM has a very hard time retaining Millennials at the facility, and yet they are some of the most media active and social justice oriented people in Portland.
Eventually, I stumbled upon a social networking site called “Utterz,” (now known as Utterli), and although the hope of the voice memo feature was zero-cost media creation, it seemed that a system like Utterli (people dial in to record memos and interviews) was the best compromise between cell phone plans and incongruencies in cell phone features. Utterli, however, is a free form social media site, and Portland Speaks has more of a focus in the form of target groups.
However, following a group brainstorm and dissection, Jacob and I felt somewhat confused and disillusioned since our parameters were loose and our ideas were being scrambled, so I set out to define the original idea and it burgeoned into the attached proposal and illustrations. It was then decided that the idea would be submitted for the Knight Foundation's News Challenge grant (our application can be found here).
All in all, this has been an incredible learning process with lots of creativity but also some incredibly devastating downs. Welcome to the real world, I guess.

A bit of crossposting on digital storytelling

Denise Cheng — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:48:50 +0000

Thought I'd share a more appropriate post that I wrote for the PCM blog a couple of days ago. This is probably what I should be submitting for my field reports...

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Digital storytelling: The wonders never cease

10 Oct. 2008

I've had the privilege of being part of two digital storytelling workshops at Portland Community Media: once as sort of a teacher's aide and the second time as a participant.

I first heard of digital storytelling in 2006 as I was rounding the corner to my last semester in college. I was home for winter break and decided to take advantage of my locale to learn about media centers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I met Theeba Soundararajan of Third World Majority (TWM) and Jessica McCoy, who was the CTC Vista for Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) at the time.

Both were storytelling organizations with slightly differing missions. They're media centers focused on expression, but TWM was more focused on giving minorities and immigrant communities the media tools that have traditionally been used to ignore, suppress or misrepresent them.

Theeba opened my eyes to digital storytelling as a tool for those who have been sidestepped and wrongly represented on the local and national scene. As a person who has trained in journalism, I've seen much of this and even experienced it, which can be very jolting for someone who plays on both sides.

I've had a couple of experiences now, but the most shocking was after returning from Lesotho as a Peace Corps volunteer and hearing an NPR Marketplace broadcast entitled Chinese businesses rile Lesotho locals. To establish the scene, there's a lot of resentment against the Chinese by Basotho because the Chinese have been economically successful there while the Basotho are cementing themselves in poverty. As a Chinese American, I experienced a hefty amount of misdirected discrimination. The Marketplace broadcast seemed to side with the idea that the Chinese were snatching up every economic opportunity, leaving nothing for the Basotho. Granted, there are sketchy business decisions that some Chinese have made, but the Basotho are in their particular position most of all because of lack of entrepreneurial spirit (my official title as a PCV was "Small Business Advisor"). It was disturbing to hear the NPR report not because I share a physical appearance with the Chinese, but because I had experienced both sides and could not believe the lopsided situation an NPR show represented. Talk about a group that's exploited Lesotho's economy, where was any mention of South Africa and their complete infiltration into Basotho commodities and cultural goods? In many ways, Marketplace legitimized the discrimination against Lesotho's Chinese community. I still haven't heard a peep after writing a letter to the editor, not even acknowledgement of receipt.

Of course, this goes on everyday. There are countless misrepresentations in the news, and while it's hard to combat if you have limited media resources at your hand (which I've also experienced), it's even harder when you have none. In that case, there's no reason to even cultivate an audience.

Jessica and I spent much more time talking about the role of storytellers and story holders. Storytellers in our society can be seen as journalists, filmmakers, politicians--those who don't tell their own stories but tell other people's. Story holders are the people whose stories are being told. The big question for me at the time was if storytellers and story subjects share the intent of confronting readers with a question, is it better for the storyteller to tell it or the story holder? An unresolved question, but ultimately, we came to the conclusion that as nonprofessional storytellers, story holders have much more power to eschew pretenses and rules, dramatic questions, rhetoric or otherwise. Doing personal storytelling also serves to empower people in addition to getting the word out.

Back to the present-day, where I've been a part of two digital storytelling workshops. The first digital storytelling workshop I attended was a partnership between PCM and CDS. One particular person's story was about her predicament as an illegal immigrant who grew up in the US and knows no other home than the States. She doesn't qualify for college scholarships (a heavy burden for any student, especially spotlighted now in our recent economic crisis) because she'd have to prove citizenship. She speaks of looking "American" and being Latina, of being a high-achieving high schooler in AP courses with other Americans who are blind to her ethnicity and asked why "they" don't just go "home" and immigrate legally. At worst (and it's quite a short step in the case of illegal immigrants everywhere) she risks deportation with slim chances of return. At best, she can hope for sanctuary and some financial alleviation if the Dream Act passes.

Our instructor for the second workshop played this person's story as an example of digital storytelling. Several participants mentioned how uncomfortable the story made them feel, how her voice was trembling so much they thought she'd shatter into tears at any moment over her situation. They didn't know what to make of the story. Aside: I love awkward movies (The Squid and the Whale is a fantastic one), the tension around the white elephant in the room; I'm certain that awkwardness is an art itself in the art of film and acting. But that day in the second digital storytelling workshop, as I listened to the person's story again and heard the comments after, I realized that story holders have a power that storytellers do not. Because they're not ideas represented by actors and polished words, story holders have the power of truth in the voiceover room through the emotions they can't mask. It would be a shame if they could remove themselves.

Check out:

The Oxford Project - A fantastic example of what storytellers and storyholders can do together.

Breaking the Surface

Sarah Pierantoni — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:08:51 +0000

This is a video entitled "Breaking the Surface". It's a documentary of the GET: Girls Empowering Together project. Working with 15 students from central high school, the young women were taught leadership skills and worked with community mentors this school year. Program was a partnership between Aquinas College, the GRCMC and GRPS.

Sarah worked with these young women to produce, shoot and edit this documentary.

Posted by Ben Sheldon

Orientation

Dianne Curtain — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:32:32 +0000

Arrive in Boston, June 19th, first trip to the city. Looking forward to working with CTC and Head on Fire, San Diego. Orientation is great so far, alot of good useful information. Just miss my baby.

Danielle on TV! on CCTV's Critical Focus

danielle martin — Wed, 30 May 2007 03:12:23 +0000

Check out my appearance on a panel about changing the media on Cambridge's cable access station, CCTV Critical Focus show. As it says on their blog, "Critical Focus: A Forum on Media Today is a series of six one-hour videos investigating how representations in the media affect culture, politics, and behavior. Each episode features a diverse panel of experts from academia, journalism, the broadcast industry, and social action agencies assessing the impact of media on our society." This episode focused on discussing some concrete ways citizens can learn about and change the media landscape. Of course, I plugged both the CTC VISTA Project and MassIMPACT's work doing digital storytelling with housing developments in the Boston area. I felt pretty privileged to sit next to fellow panelists like Nettrice Gaskins, Lauren-Glenn Davitian, and Steve Provizer, who've been working on community media, technology, and activism for YEARS, and have folks interested in what I had to add.

Click To Play

WAM! It's more than just onomatopoeia...it's women media

danielle martin — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 18:56:08 +0000

I'm here at MIT (my fall place of graduate Urban Planning studies, btw) at the 2007 Women Action and Media (WAM!) conference this weekend, a yearly conference that combines a bunch of topics that interest me - media, activism, social justice, and women's issues. I read BITCHfest for my book club recently (selections from BITCH magazine), and it got me more interested in feminist media related issues, especially in that the techniques and lessons learned by feminist activists around framing in the media relates to many other issues (such as poverty, network neutrality, and more).

So far, I've gone to three very different sessions. The first pre-conference session attracted me around the idea of framing class more effectively in the media. [I mean, come on, we're VISTAs fighting poverty, right?] Ellen Bravo (and her book, Taking on the Big Boys) suggested a few interesting hooks to change the way the mainstream media frames issues of class and work:

The Snow Day - The kids don't have to go to school, but many low-income parents do; that means that a snow day really means a day home alone for many youth.

The Flu Epidemic - The media is always covering stories about people not staying home to stop the spread of the flu virus. But if you really think about it, people with low paying and/or part-time jobs can't afford to take sick days and they usually have service jobs like cleaning public spaces or handling food.

"Best places to work" lists - We need to probe more about these lists, because the companies on the list often give money to associations that give awards.

I went from thinking about poverty's media image, to the image of social change on the web. Allison Fine, and her book Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, has been getting a bit of buzz at Project HQ because it's basically what the CTC VISTA Project is trying to do only a daily VISTA basis. Mostly the session fueled more questions than answers:

? Is MoveOn.org really just a reflection class organizing techniques?
We need to tap into the core fundamental ways of behaving by successful social change organizations and how they convey to using new media/tech. Primarily, we should focus on how to start and facilitate conversations to build a movement. You can start with an online conversation but they can be better implemented combined with in-person discussions.
? Why are there no comments on our organizations blog?
There was a frustration around not getting any interactions on blogs and listservs, because they get put out there and they don't get used. This can be combatted through connecting these conversations to in-person interactions and by also participating in other nonprofit's online networks.
? Are we blogging/podcasting just because it's cool?
The challenge is that there is an array of tools to have two-way interactions but are non-profits really taking advantage of that? Are they really offering up space to comment, but they don't respond (listening deficits)...behaving still one-to-many communication scheme?
? Are we liable for things said in blogs/forums on a site if we host it on our server? Many participants were afraid of not having enough control of the message if the movement building happens in an online social network.

On Saturday, I became "press", helping Alana, a very capable young woman of the Project Think Different Media Watch Team, video several sessions over the course of the day.

In the Our 21st Century Bodies, Our Multimedia Selves session, the presenters spoke about how their transporting information dissemination from a published book (Our Bodies, Our Selves) to online (http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org). I liked how Elana Hayasaka simplified how new online media are taking advantage of the weaknesses of classic print media for activism:

- update quicker and more often
- more accessibility / web search function
- avoid cost page limits
- dispersal to a wider audience
- involve the reader (interactivity)
- appeal to younger readership

Yet again, the topic of the "freedom" of blogging versus having a moderation scheme came up. But I like that they admit that the focus of the blogs shouldn't just be just a public relations tool for the organization, but instead give a framework (social, political) for further discussions of women's health. I also really like one example blog they referenced Hollaback Blogs, that encourages people to blog a photo/video (from your camera phone) of a person that sexually harass them on the street.

"For some fun, go listen to the HOTGirls (Helping Our Teen Girl in Real Life Situations) version of JT's "Sexy Back." It's a good way to start thinking about framing media for young women of color (YWOC), as demonstrated by this project out of Atlanta, GA. I was really impressed by the materials from the presenters in this workshop, from the Advocacy Institute - they have some great handouts on Designing Effective Outreach Strategies. More so, I was impressed by the media examples from the Pro-Choice Public Education Project (PEP) Recognize campaign. Most interestingly, both HOTGirls and PEP have campaigns/programs fueled by youth leadership councils and did extensive research ahead of time on tailoring the message effectively for YWOC.

[Download the powerpoint from the Do You Know Who You’re Talking To?: Effective Messaging for Young Women of Color, with Nicole Clark, Candace Webb session here.]

Finally, I ended the day in the "On the front-lines of Media Justice: Transitions in Policy and Movement Building" - which really meant: how do we change gears in a social change organization without causing a crash. Hannah Sassman presented a great case study of how Prometheus Radio Project decided if they were going to expand their community radio efforts into community wireless efforts. They made the hard decision to not go with the community wireless buzz because it didn't fully serve their constituents.
"We made the decision to put off expanding into wireless advocacy efforts until when the time was right, not when the time was sexy." Sari Gelzer also alluded to the decision making process of the Global Action Project to update their efforts to train youth-led organizations in media skills, in an environment where the part-time implementors of programs in non-profits didn't necessarily have time and/or opportunity to participate in decision-making.

[We had a great discussion on some specific examples of how non-profits approach transitions and sustainability, but I had videotape the session so I'm hoping Hannah posts the notes soon on her blog http://hannahjs.worpress.com.]

On that note, I'm pooped. I'm off.

Some Examples of Digital Media Curricula Created by VISTAs

lauren bratslavsky — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 19:08:25 +0000

Here's some curricula and/or handouts created by VISTAs:

Shot Composition Packet (Media Bridges - Lauren)
MOSAIC, Digital video bootcamp (english high school) (HOME Inc - Kevin/AJ)
Digital Photography Course Packet (Media Bridges - Lauren Bratslavsky)
Media Literacy (Project Think Different - Colleen)
Basic Computer Skills (Shaneka)
PhotoBooth (Media Bridges - Lauren)
Digital Storytelling (Center for Digital Storytelling - Jessica)
?? (Computers 4 Kids - Ray)
Video (Reelworks - Will)
After school Curriculum with a Radio Station (Lashanda)
Creating a Youth Online Radio Station (Pink House - Renae)
tips/forms for student project management

Also, here's some curricula used/recommended by VISTAs from other sources:

Adobe website
Youth Learn (EDC)
CTCNet Resource Center
Danielle's Curriculum links on Delicious

Need basic curricula templates/guides?