From the Executive Director

AI is taking up so much brain space these days. My conversations with friends and colleagues reflect a widespread adoption of AI tools and a growing tension shared by nearly everyone about our responsibility to hold corporations accountable while we provide access for our communities to the technology. I am pleased to be part of many new groups of folks exploring the creative possibilities of AI as well as its limits, ethics, and dangers. Toolkits have been published, research is ongoing. I do admit that questioning and assessing images, words, and sounds to determine their human or machine provenance clenches my heart like a little fist.

The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture’s board and staff are in an evolutionary set of conversations about how we as an organization navigate this moment in time, and how our work as a national media arts service organization should adapt. We, and our members and our partner organizations, face tough fiscal times. New operational models and reduced programming and staffing are leading indicators of our shared resilience — the visionary work goes on.

This is National Apprenticeship Week. As many of you know, during the final year of the Obama administration, the Alliance designed, developed, and launched Arts2Work, the first registered Apprenticeship program in Media Arts + Creative Technologies. We created the first ever national model for paid Apprenticeships for Multimedia Producers, Digital Editors, Multimedia Graphic Designers and Digital Archivists, committed to equity, diversity, and access for all. We created opportunities for media arts organizations across the country to participate as certified workforce training centers, to serve low-income and justice-impacted trainees and receive their own federal and state funding for which they were previously ineligible. Even in these current dark times, amidst corporate consolidation, strikes, AI-related staff reductions — we are a community that shows up for one another and builds for the next generation.

As always, now is a really good time to join the Alliance, GIVE to support the programs you love like Arts2Work, our Innovation Studio, and the Open Archive Initiative —  and show some love to the artists in your life who tend our collective spirit.

~ Wendy

wendy@thealliance.media

Notes from the Field

Wide Angle Youth Media Screening Breaking the Blue Wall
Join Wide Angle Youth Media for screening, director interview, and Q&A of the film Breaking the The Blue Wall, Friday, May 1st, at their studio in Baltimore. Breaking the Blue focuses on activists and lawmakers working to repeal the Maryland Law Enforcement Officer’s Bill of Rights, a piece of legislation that limited investigation into and prosecution of police misconduct. The event’s speakers will include director Alissa Figueroa, and Wide Angle Production Staff, who were involved in the production of the film.

It Will Be Seen: Indie Distribution in 2026
This Thursday, April 30th, the Alliance will be hosting a virtual conversation about independent film distribution. The conversation will introduce participants to lesser-known film distributors and offer the opportunity to ask questions about the process. Speakers present will be Annallisa Shoemaker, founder and CEO of Suncatcher Productions, David Averbach, leader of digital distribution at The Film Collaborative, Orly Ravid, founder of The Film Collaborative. The conversation will be hosted by the Alliance’s Taylor Jett.