Strategies
Intentionality
Key to understanding youth media-making is knowing you are part of a larger community of artists, teachers, educators, and youth leaders collaborating, sharing and exhibiting youth media around the nation. Youth media is not only a product, but also a process that engages young people in critical analysis, social activism, collaboration, and leadership. Youth media as a genre of public media has more than 30 years of pedagogy developed by artistic, social, political, cultural, and educational movements.49 It is informed by progressive educational practice, youth development, and grassroots activism. It centers on engaging youth in exploration of personal and community issues, while simultaneously developing a culture of participation and critical thinking. The work is reflexive, innovative and representative of the diversity of young people who are eager to tell their own stories; your own instructional practices in helping your youth gain skills and a voice in their communities will contribute to the growth of the youth media genre.
Creativity & Innovation
I teach with an approach of opening spaces for young people to be independent creators and producers of their own media message. As youth engages in creativity, they learn both the strengths and limitations of media. As their ideas transform into media work, they transform into literate, active participants in society and owners of meaningful work.
Youth Generate Method
Youth media making is an active process of giving youth the opportunity to build vital media literacy skills, communicate their unique perspectives on the world around them, and real hands on skills. Youth media as a practice is fundamentally project-based leaning with the creative process as an umbrella. Underneath this umbrella young people formulate project ideas, themes, plan and produce their projects, and review their work and the work of other youth makers. Unlike other student work, their original work in film is shared with an audience in hopes of affecting change.
Inquiry-based
The inquiry-based approach I use was developed by Adobe Youth Voices and engages young people with the principle of create with purpose.50 Youth driven by their own questions, by their own critical analysis, and by their own perspectives, leads youth to make intentional choices about their own media construction and even more so, create a work that is meaningful to both them and an audience. Engaging young people in this way takes advantage of the media-rich environment in which we now live.
Quality
Feedback is key to quality, and plays a vital role in the media making process.
Feedback can take place throughout the process, beginning with the initial pitch and continuing through production, post-production, and rough cuts screenings. Giving feedback is a mindful act, done in an environment of respect and support of the artistic process and not one catering to an agenda.
Comments: