Civic media as a tool for place-based community building & organizing

No comments | June 18, 2009 - 9:44am

Come see a bunch of planner and community organizers share how we’re using civic media tools in communities, at our barcamp session at the Knight Foundation and the Center for Future Civic Media’s The Future of News and Civic Media Conference @ MIT today (11am Stata rm 32-155)

Civic Media & Community Building

This session stems from a gathering of a few folks from the urban studies & planning arena at MIT (and branched out to other C4 folks) who are excited to share how we’ve been implementing digital storytelling/ interpretive history / participatory media for community building in various non-profit and university-community based initiatives including:

* MIT@Lawrence’s Story documentary and SIMILE timeline adaptation for “collective” historical storytelling
* Snapshot Framingham photo hunt for network building [(http://framinghamgame.ning.com/])
* Mapping the Food Environment in Springfield’s North End
* MIT@Lawrence StoryMill at Union Crossing- 3 proposed mechanisms for storytelling to build community around a space (http://uclawrence.ning.com/)
* Community Innovator’s Lab “democratic” storytelling technique and community voices (http://colab.mit.edu/)
* Ceasar McDowell’s dropping knowledge project (http://www.droppingknowledge.org)
* PlaceBlogger / H20Town

Goals:

* how to collect individual stories in a larger narrative; how to represent a diversity of voices with one piece
* how to “sell” old school community organizers/builders on using new participatory tools
* advantages of power building by making media WITH people instead of FOR people
* how to train youth and adults on the ground in communities to make their own media as a tool for community development and leadership building
* aligning existing network or community organizing techniques with new media tools for sustained, genuine use by community members
* using new media as tools for reflective practice and institutional memory building

Tools used:

* Ning.com
* Google Maps
* Wordpress
* SIMILE Timeline

Participants:

Alexa Mills, Ilma Paxio, Sebastiao Mendonca Ferreira, and more - Community Innovator’s Lab

Ceasar McDowell, MIT DUSP and dropping knowledge

Linda Ciesielski, Sung Kim, and more - Students in the MIT@Lawrence practicum

Danielle Martin, MIT@Lawrence

Lisa Williams, PlaceBlogger / H20Town

and anyone else who wants to join us!

“Wanting to see makes you grow as a person and growing makes you want to show more of the life around you.”
- Harry Callahan

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