Milena Velis with Cynthia Oka, T.C. Owens, Sheila Quintana and Jazmín Delgado – a collaboration between Media Mobilizing Project and New Sanctuary Movement
In December 2017 Carmela Hernandez and her four children took sanctuary at the Church of the Advocate, a predominantly Black church and organizing hub in Philadelphia, PA. Carmela has a pending deportation order to Mexico, and plans to live in sanctuary until she can stop her own deportation, making a public act of resistance against the criminalization of immigrants. A Place at the Table explores the relationships and community built by the people coming together to support and fight alongside Carmela and her family, and how working class Black and immigrant community members build relationships of solidarity and learn about each other’s realities, struggles, and dreams. Working collaboratively with Carmela and the New Sanctuary Movement, artists from Media Mobilizing Project will create short form documentary work focused on shared meals and the day-to-day realities of living together as a community. Inspired by the words of Rev. Dr. Rennee McKenzie: “We benefit ourselves when we stand for and with each other to fight for justice and a place at the table.”
The Stories of Strawberry Mansion
Keir Johnston with Ernel Martinez, Martha O’Connell, Chidi Asoluka
While Strawberry Mansion and Brewerytown are currently in a vice grip of speculative development and gentrification in Philadelphia, there are also new and important resources available to the neighborhood’s young people and families through vibrant community development programs. The collaborators on this project ask, “how do we ensure that the neighborhood residents are able to benefit from and access these new resources authentically, and have a say in what they are?”
The Stories of Strawberry Mansion is a collaboration between local art collective Amber Art & Design, with Fairmount Park Conservancy and The New Community Project. Through a process they call Story Exchange, the community-based artists are collecting stories from local residents, and sharing with each participant the story of one of their neighbors. They will host bi-monthly events and community dinners that will feature live storytelling, facilitating deeper connections in the neighborhood and building towards collective decision-making about how to spend the resources being allocated for local schools, parks and programs. The hope is to redefine and rewrite the relationships between the neighborhood and its institutions, creating a new support network based on participation, trust and collective voices.
Community Futurisms: Time & Memory in North Philly 002 (Progress Aerospace Enterprises)
Rasheedah Phillips with Camae Ayeva (Black Quantum Futurism Collective), Ras Mashramani (Metropolarity Scifi Collective), Danise Valentine, and Fair Housing Rights Center of Southeastern PA
In Philadelphia in the 1960’s, Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, a civil rights leader and minister at Philadelphia’s Zion Baptist Church, established Progress Aerospace Enterprises (PAE), the first Black-owned aerospace company. An innovator of its day, PAE had strong connections to the civil rights movement, affordable housing, economic stability in the Black community, passage of the Fair Housing Act, and the space race. Sullivan also founded the Zion Gardens affordable housing project and Progress Plaza. Community Futurisms is an ongoing collaborative art + research project exploring the impact of redevelopment, gentrification, and displacement within the North Philly neighborhood known as Sharswood. In this iteration, the collaborators will produce an interactive and participatory art exhibition based on this extraordinary legacy. The exhibition will feature the work of multiple local artists and storytellers, and will include writing, co-created zine production, collage art, film, soundscapes, and sculpture. The vision of Community Futurisms also includes oral history/oral futures interviews with surviving individuals from PAE, as well as a series of story workshops, affordable housing discussions, and collaborative art-making activities. https://www.blackquantumfuturism.com/community-futurisms
Re-imagining Migration 360
PhillyCAM, Brookline Interactive Group, and Gabriela Watson Aurazo,
As Philadelphia affirms its status as a sanctuary city committed to the safety of its immigrant residents, opportunities for those targeted communities to be heard and share their points of view are more needed than ever. Access to multilingual media content and training is a way that communities can tell their stories through their own means — promoting understanding and respect through cultural exchange. PhillyCAM’s Atrévete producers together with a diverse group of local immigrant artists will learn how to use 360 filmmaking to share their stories of migration in new, immersive ways. Audiences will interact with the work online and at live events. The narrative will explore aphysical environment while interweaving elements of memory, dreams, aspirations, and struggle.PhillyCAM and Brookline Interactive Group want to use this project as a way to go beyond headlines to create intimate portraits of those most affected by the current administration’s position on immigration; from the story of a single dreamer facing possible deportation to a migration story that spans 3 generations. This project presents an opportunity for PhillyCAM to become a local leader in 360 storytelling to support others working in the non-profit and social enterprise field. They hope to create a template for a strong immersive news/content sharing network, engaged communities, training programs, and collaborative, community-based VR projects.
SPECIAL WRITING COMMISSIONS
Nicolas Aziz
The Native Gentrification Project
Nic will write about his concept of “native gentrification,” a modern-day example of W.E.B DuBois’ “double-consciousness theory.” Within the context of life in New Orleans, Nic is raising compelling questions about the complications of the African-American experience of gentrification and the layers of identity narratives emerging in popular culture.
Truth As Theatrical Fiction
Imani Jacqueline Brown
Imani is pursuing an ongoing exploration of the meaning of truth in an age of fake news, alternative facts, and the resurgence of global fascism. This project brings to light a series of kaleidoscope conversations and interviews where participants share personal and social mythologies about truth, prejudice and politics. How might posing questions without answers reveal our deepest divides — and give us the visual language to heal?
The Alliance Innovation Studio provides a space to support the development of unique interactive digital media projects and other story-driven open source social justice tools and technologies that are designed to serve the field and foster new creative experiences and social impact in communities around the world.
Strategy, design, development, and prototyping in The Alliance Innovation Studio is customized and unique to each project. We bring together a team of creative and tech experts based on the needs of the project; the central requirement for inclusion in the Innovation Studio is a commitment to sharing out the development process with the the field and making the the project available for replication in diverse communities and contexts. We’re talking about publishing the code, sharing data and providing templates or toolkits for meaningful and effective adoption.
FOOTPRINT is an experience of the Refinery Corridor Healing Walks, led by Native American grandmothers (Idle No More SF Bay) who live downwind from the Chevron Oil refinery in Richmond, California. After the Chevron explosion of 2012 poisoned their air, they turned to an ancient tradition of healing walks along the oil refineries of the Northeast SF Bay, rallying local communities to reclaim their land and water. We will create a Projection Map of the walk (to project on the side of the UN?) with surround sound installation of the chants/songs and environmental audioscapes of the walk, an immersive experience contrasting the natural world with modern oil industry. Through voices and images of the Walkers we join in their prayer and song for healing, and participate in reclaiming the land. The Map will guide us in to an exhibit that will include photos of these Healing Walk leaders (power of matriarchy) with mini-docs activated via augmented reality that will share personal narratives of the grandmothers. Next year is the fourth and final series of Refinery Healing Walks; this is the last chance to document this transformative event.
Insight Garden Program, San Quentin State Prison (Amanda Berger)
The vision for this project is to bring the audience into San Quentin Prison, where the Insight Garden Program transforms prisoners’ lives through reconnection to “self, community and the natural world". We will create a participatory documentary highlighting the prisoners’ active work in the planting, growing and harvesting stages of vegetable and flower gardens as well as the journey of self-discovery, along with the raising of environmental awareness, “inner gardening” mindfulness, and global climate issues. The film will be part of a forum that brings the target audiences together with environmental leaders and incarcerated participants -- sharing experiences and passion for environmental stewardship. Collaborative filmmaking practice will underscore deep work exploring the impacts of global climate change on low-income and underserved communities, the healing effects of working with nature, the importance of “green jobs for all,” and the impact Insight Garden Program has had on shifting lives and “greening” prison cultures.
This project tells the story of a grassroots community taking control of its natural resources in a changing environment. Using an intensive participatory approach, community members in Tanzania (through partner organization Mwambao) will be trained in all aspects of short film production. These videographers will be actively working with communities to document their stories, monitoring action and changes in the marine environment during a time of unprecedented challenges. We hope to use the Ricoh Theta as part of this process to capture 360° footage of the community, and have sourced an underwater housing which will allow some unique and immersive footage to be created as part of this project − helping engage communities in the tangible benefits of conservation − above and below the water.
Part film, part book, part something new, Chasing the Sun is an immersive online story about the Arctic, told in a compelling first person narrative that makes the North’s current and coming struggles more vital and relatable.
222 Forgotten Cities is a photo series aimed at visually dissolving the disconnect between the popular, media-informed perception of a city and the reality of the people who live there.
In the Innovation Studio, Global Witness will produce a blueprint for leveraging emerging technologies, interactive online storytelling and web-based mapmaking.
This interactive effort will be an online portal that facilitates a transformative “megalogue” between a critical mass of child brides around the world.
Map Your World is an open source data/mapping/storytelling platform that empowers youth around the world to make positive changes in their own communities.
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