Community Storytelling

Focus Areas
Film
Media Training
Immigrant Voices
Archives
Representation in Media
Community-Centered Journalism
Media Policy
Movement Media
BIPOC Stories
Collaborative Audio
Community Radio
LGBTQIA+

The Greater Philadelphia region is a hub for BIPOC-led grassroots media groups and projects with deep roots in the communities they serve. At the same time, they have to go through hoops to gain access to resources that would help them grow and strengthen their organizations, support the important role they play in their communities, and give them equal footing with white-led/mainstream media organizations.

IPMF believes that storytelling builds and strengthens community resilience and brings ideas to life. Through the Community Storytelling program, the foundation supports storytelling that centers, preserves, and highlights the complex experiences of diverse and marginalized communities through a lens of care and compassion. The program supports:

  • Projects or organizations that aim to increase the representation and visibility of storytelling by communities harmed by systems of oppression and media erasure. 
  • Independent filmmaking by emerging and professional storytellers to tell their own stories and share it with a wider audience. 
  • Community radio networks and collaborative audio storytelling that report, discuss, connect, and distribute news and stories important to neighborhoods in the region. 
  • New and existing archives, community history projects, and BIPOC stories that help communities deepen their connections, reclaim narratives, and build power. 
  • Projects or organizations that aim to increase local audience engagement with independent filmmaking, community storytelling and archives.

Examples of this work include:

  • BlackStar Philadelphia Filmmaker Lab, a fellowship designed to support emerging Black, Brown, and Indigenous filmmakers. 
  • Presente Media, a Latinx collective of journalists and filmmakers producing bilingual media focused on social justice. 
  • G-town Radio, a community radio station in Germantown focusing on local news, ideas, sounds not heard on mainstream radio.

See our glossary for definitions of terms we use to describe our work

What We Support

    Projects

    $22,340 - Awarded July 2020

    Focus areas
    Immigrant Voices
    Description

    The 2020 Community Voices grant supports 2Puntos' collaboration with Philatinos Media to produce twelve stories about how the work, dreams, and goals of Philadelphia's Latinx community have been impacted by COVID-19. These stories will highlight how the community survives the challenges of COVID-19 from its own experience and Latino culture.

    $46,000 - Awarded July 2020

    Focus areas
    Youth
    Representation in Media
    Community-Centered Journalism
    Description

    The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a series of online and youth-driven programming throughout the 2020-2021 school year. Youth Set The Stage will build a strong network of organizations working in youth media throughout Philadelphia, regularly engage youth media content creators and provide platforms to showcase and present the voices and current perspectives of these Philadelphia youth, creating an audiovisual capsule of the current moment. In the process of the year-long cross-collaborations, YSTS will build an accessible toolkit for instructors working with students remotely.

    $50,000 - Awarded July 2020

    Focus areas
    Representation in Media
    Movement Media
    Description

    The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the “Johnson Park” project an exploration of the relationship between public art and power. A response to the uprisings and demands for removal of racist monuments throughout the nation, the project addresses how communities create memorials through a democratic and participatory process. Using audio-visual media to re-commemorate a public space in Camden that once depicted a racist frieze, Unmemorial will include a series of media projects that would create new and more ethical modes of commemoration that includes public critique and conversation.

    $20,000 - Awarded July 2020

    Focus areas
    Representation in Media
    Description

    The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the production of "Audio Olney," a monthly podcast featuring diverse Olney community leaders, residents and artists and designed to address arts & culture and local issues. The podcast will reflect Olney Culture Lab's mission of showcasing the diverse cultural expressions in Olney, strengthening community networks, and building social capital.

    $25,000 - Awarded July 2020

    Focus areas
    Movement Media
    Representation in Media
    Description

    The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the creation of additional opportunities and support for community-based artists, activists, and scholars through Bulletin, a collaborative, web-based editorial platform for critically reading and reimagining public monuments through stories of social justice.

    Stay in Touch

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