from Oakland Maker Day Youth Maker Showcase at Impact Hub Oakland

MONDAY, MARCH 7TH
A ‘BLOGVERSATION’ BY JASON WYMAN, MYAH OVERSTREET, AND WENDY LEVY

INTRODUCING the 50-State Dinner Party Project!

Wendy: When I first started at NAMAC a little over a year ago, I had a long conversation with Board Member Kasandra VerBrugghen, the Executive Director of SpyHop in Utah. I was bowled over by the creative energy, solidarity and conviction around NAMAC’s National Youth Media Network programming and the collective desire for growth and change—especially around the inclusion of youth voices at every phase of the process, and solidifying common goals for deeper impacts on the ground between a diverse group of regional organizations and independent working artists and educators. There were alliances as well as differences articulated between the Youth Media and Creative Youth Development sectors, as well as specific goals unique to Education and Media Literacy partners—but in all cases, the energy, scholarship and commitment to move forward together was extraordinary. We had a fantastic video roundtable where 40+ youth media experts gathered to re-ignite the movement. After receiving a generous grant from Adobe Foundation, I was able to hire Impact Producer Jason Wyman of 14 Black Poppies in San Francisco and Youth Engagement Producer Myah Overstreet to help lead NAMAC’s efforts in re-engaging the Network and laying the groundwork for a National Collective Action & Impact Initiative.

Jason: Thanks, Wendy. I am excited to be re-engaging my peers across this country and reigniting the National Youth Media Network and launching a Collective Action & Impact Initiative in early 2017. I see my role as supporting NAMAC’s vision and bringing together the youth media and creative youth development fields to strengthen our collective impact within our homes, schools and universities, localities, and nation. And I am thrilled that NAMAC is making an investment at the outset to hire a talented young woman, Myah Overstreet, as Youth Engagement Producer. It excites me that NAMAC is committed to ensuring youth voice and perspective are crucial to the building of this initiative (and not just asked to the table once it has been built.)

“We believe that in order to work towards collective action and impact, we need to start with local engagement. Through local conversations, we will be able to find, name, and connect the opportunities and challenges facing rural, suburban, and urban municipalities in our diverse fifty states.” – Jason Wyman

Additionally, through my work in the San Francisco Bay Area, two other talented young artists will be supporting the National Network locally. They are Izza Anwar and Cat Kaethler.

Myah: I must agree with Wendy and Jason—I am extremely excited to be part of this movement. As Youth Engagement Producer, I am particularly excited to learn about the youth of the San Francisco Bay Area and of our nation as a whole. Fresh, new perspectives will keep the world spinning round, and I think the time has come for youth voices to be heard. Without the voices of youth, this network and initiative would not be able to live up to its fullest potential. Because of this, I am incredibly ecstatic to build an amazing experience for the young people who become a part of this initiative — I want them to feel as welcomed as possible, with all of the opportunity they need to creatively express themselves and speak up about issues that matter to them.

Jason: To start this work, we are reaching out across the country to ask a question inspired recently by the wisdom of Kate Fowler of Appalshop: what are our desired futures?

We believe that in order to work towards collective action and impact, we need to start with local engagement. Through local conversations, we will be able to find, name, and connect the opportunities and challenges facing rural, suburban, and urban municipalities in our diverse fifty states. This will lead us toward discovering shared visions that can move our fields into more coordinated action resulting in deeper impact.

To foster this development, we are creating a simple platform around which all the generations (youth, adults, and elders) can gather in a space of peer exchange. And since we’re addressing the creative youth development and youth media sectors together, we will very intentionally co-create with one another.

Wendy: We are right now embarking on a serious Ideation & Planning phase, bringing together partner organizations and young people eager to engage in this effort. We will spend a number of months in online video conversations and small group meetings, forging common ground and language, identifying recent achievements, shared goals, new strategies and as Jason and Kate suggested, our desired futures. Once that work happens, we’ll write, document and publish it online to share with the field. The next phase will be activating the network in a clearly articulated, and exceedingly collaborative manner leading to the National Collective Action & Impact Initiative that creates new potential to leverage the power of youth voices, experiences, and stories in social & cultural transformation.

“By asking what the future looks like to young people and what steps should be taken to get there, we are including them in a world that, for the first time, has their names written in bold print across the front for everybody to see.” – Myah Overstreet

Myah: As simply stated by many people across many platforms, the youth are the future. By asking what the future looks like to young people and what steps should be taken to get there, we are including them in a world that, for the first time, has their names written in bold print across the front for everybody to see. The coordination between young people and adults simply means a chance for youth; it means an opportunity for them to become leaders and representatives beyond our reach. As a young person, I must say that it feels good to work with adults who listen and are eager to improve the world of arts and media for young people, and I am positive that other young people will feel the same. The combination of a simple conversation and action through art is a powerful tool to ignite a movement, and I am eager to see what responses youth from around the nation and world will input.

Jason: So how are we starting and what’s our big idea? For us it starts with a dinner party. Yes, it really is that simple. We want to gather around a table, share food and conversation, and build across the generations. A good dinner party feeds more than just bellies; it also feeds hearts and minds. It has the potential to unlock unimaginable visions and connect on core values that lead to collective action.

Once the funding is in place, NAMAC will fully launch a 50-State Dinner Party Project leading towards National Collective Action & Impact work. Myah and I with the support of Izza and Cat will be throwing a kick-off event to test the model on Tuesday, March 22nd at The Mix (the new Teen Center) at the San Francisco Public Library—Main Branch. We will be bringing together youth artists, organizational leaders, teaching artists, thought partners, and public institutions around a single table. It is going to be an intergenerational experience for the ages.

And, since this is a community of mediamakers, we will document the dinner and share out a short video of what happens, what’s discussed, what’s discovered. We will also publish a simple guide to how you can host a dinner party in your locality.

Myah: The dinner parties, on a local level, will be simple. When I envision the dinner parties, I see a beautiful bouquet of food, representing the coming together of all of the attendants. I also see people genuinely conversing, connecting to, and inquiring about one another in order to learn and grow. I see people absorbing new ideas and accepting new perspectives over effortless conversation, a meal, and questions to provoke ideas about our initiative. I also see the making of a collage, with pieces of each attendee to represent the unity of our ideas, visions, and perspectives. The experience will be a rewarding one, allowing each member to learn about the youth, youth media, creative youth development, what needs to change in all areas.

Wendy: When you join NAMAC, and sign up to participate in the National Youth Media Network’s 50 State Dinner Party Project for Collective Action, you’ll get the Guide and we’ll work with you to host and document your local dinner party. It’s a lot to plan, eat, socialize, talk, process, edit, collect data, share & remember. Jason has shown me how the Dinner Parties will actually model the values upon which we are building our National Collective Action framework. Believe it.

If you’d like to get involved or learn more, we are hosting the first national conference call on Thursday, April 7th at 10AM PT/1PM ET. Please CLICK HERE and fill out a short survey to stay in the loop.

Jason: We will have two online conversations between now and June 2016—to help set us up for an engaging and lively discussion and discovery session at Alliance 2016, the NAMAC Conference in Oakland June 9-12, 2016.  We hope you can be there!

If you’d like to get involved or learn more, we are hosting the first national conference call on Thursday, April 7th at 10AM PT/1PM ET. Please CLICK HERE and fill out a short survey to stay in the loop.

Myah: Additionally, we will be launching a blog to document the evolving conversations. Put as simply as possible, the blog is for the network. It is a way for all participants in our initiative to actively follow along with the progress of the movement and to learn about who we are and what our goals are. Our monthly publication is our way of communicating about the initiative nationally and locally, and to share our experience and the experiences of others in order to constantly keep our followers up to date. More importantly, however, we are utilizing the power of the written word to speak about people’s stories and to share our vision. On our blog we will explore diversity, share the stories and visions of young creatives and teaching artists, share the details of our dinner parties that are to come, and discuss controversial topics that are necessary for progress and change. We are so overwhelmed with excitement from the possibilities of this blog, as we believe we can truly unite people across generations and ignite genuine conversation that can lead to a better future for youth media and creative youth development.

Jason: Whew! There’s a lot here. So let me recap it all: we are reigniting the National Youth Media Network by inspiring local conversations around a shared meal through our 50 State Dinner Party  Project, which will lead toward a Collective Action & Impact Initiative launching in 2017. Our progress will be documented through monthly blog posts edited by Myah Overstreet, and on Thursday, April 7, 2016 at 10am PST we will host a national conference call to strengthen connections among the National Youth Media Network and to launch the Dinner Party Guide. Finally, we will bring everyone together at Alliance 2016, the NAMAC Conference from June 9-12 in Oakland, California.

Myah, Wendy and I look forward to building this initiative with you. We believe that there is power in a network of peers across the generations. We can’t wait to see what is discovered.