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

    $10,000 - Awarded December 2021

    Focus areas
    Community-Centered Journalism
    Description

    To amplify local voices in the City of Chester in Delaware County, PA, and fostering individual agency and collective social action.

    $250,000 - Awarded December 2021

    Focus areas
    Representation in Media
    Archives
    Media Training
    Description

    A two-year grant to The Colored Girls Museum (TCGM) ($250,000), for general operating support and the promotion and archiving of the stories of Black girls and women. TCGM's mission is to be a public ritual for the protection, praise, and grace of the ordinary extraordinary Black girl.

    $225,000 - Awarded December 2021

    Focus areas
    Movement Media
    Description

    A two-year general operation grant to help Spiral Q remain a strong resource for the marginalized populations it serves, helping them to amplify their stories for change and justice.

    $50,000 - Awarded December 2021

    Focus areas
    Community-Centered Journalism
    Media Training
    Representation in Media
    Description

    To empower Germantown residents to tell their own stories digitally through a series of trainings focused on audio production, podcasting, show development and streaming.

    $80,000 - Awarded December 2021

    Focus areas
    Community-Centered Journalism
    Description

    A one-year grant to continue the organization's work with the Shift the Narrative collaborative which helps build power in local communities by bringing together journalists and communities members to learn from and work with one another on collaborative reporting projects, with the goal of building lasting trusted relationships and creating community-centered processes and narratives within newsrooms.

    Stay in Touch

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