Community Storytelling

Via the 2020 Community Voice grant, PhillyCAM will offer a virtual Latinx Multimedia Reporting Fellowship in Fall 2020 to train 12 Latinx producers in multimedia reporting skills and build stronger bridges for content distribution and collaborative production among the expanding network of new initiatives supporting and amplifying local Latinx stories and information. During the Fellowship participants will work in teams to produce stories for distribution on PhillyCAM television, radio, online and on other local Spanish language platforms. The opportunity will be available to emerging journalists and community media producers looking to sharpen their skills or explore a new medium.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a virtual rendition of Theatre in the X's “West Philly Play,” a social justice people's theatre. Via community play sessions on Zoom, stories will be shared by individuals involved in the 52nd Street standoff with police following the uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Community members will share their experiences with the gentrification of their neighborhoods. These videos will be recorded and be available publicly on Theatre in the X's website and will also serve as research for the creation of a 2021 in-person “West Philly Play.”

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support continued production of “Places of Power” an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) documentary and web-based app inviting viewers to experience disinvested neighborhoods in Philadelphia anew, as a tapestry of knowledge, healing, and civic leadership. The project will feature and engage community residents in immersive media using virtual reality. It will explore themes related to the unseen power held by longtime residents and spaces in a neighborhood.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a collaboration with Raise the Bar Philly and Mighty Writers to produce a four-week intergenerational storytelling project. West Philadelphia youth journalists will interview community members about topics related to the Black experience with policing in Philadelphia as well as the community's vision of a better future for Black Philadelphians.

In support of ECBACC's Heruica publication, curriculum guide and documentary project exploring the memory and cultural history of the Black comics community.