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
    There are no grantees to show right now.

    $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.

    $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.

    $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.

    $95,000 - Awarded July 2020

    Focus areas
    Movement Media
    Description

    The 2020 Community Voices Fund grant will support a “Spiral Q Community Cohort” using storytelling, art and artmaking toward collective justice and liberation through their participation in the Art for Action Pipeline and the Peoplehood Parade & Pageant in 2020 and 2021. Cohort members will amplify their own communities' stories and messaging, build community beyond their group with a wider demographic striving for justice, and educate themselves in new techniques and practices integral to social justice movements.

    $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.

    Stay in Touch

    Sign up for our Community Zine to get notified of available grants and stay up-to-date on grantee work.