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.

    $300,000 - Awarded July 2019

    Focus areas
    Archives
    Description

    This two-year grant will support the upgrade and reinstallation of the museum's main permanent exhibition, Audacious Freedom: African Americans in Philadelphia 1776–1876. Responding to students' educational needs and expressed visitor interests, the exhibit's “Conversations” gallery will be reconfigured to connect the story of 19thcentury activism to the present day, covering the lives and legacies of African Americans in Philadelphia and the surrounding region through the 20th and 21st centuries.

    $200,000 - Awarded July 2019

    Focus areas
    Movement Media
    Description

    This two-year grant will support The Village's neighborhood-based media advocacy work through two initiatives: the Juvenile Justice Media Fellowship, and the Civic Power Studio's Media Justice Lab. Through amplifying the voices of local experts—those most affected by systems of injustice and misrepresentation—these initiatives work to reshape narratives and dispel myths, bringing often unheard voices to seats of power and driving positive change for the community.

    $307,500 - Awarded July 2019

    Focus areas
    Representation in Media
    Description

    Building on a successful inaugural Good Pitch Local–Philadelphia program in 2018, this two-year grant will support two subsequent rounds of Good Pitch Local Philadelphia, with the addition of a re-granting program to fund filmmakers and to provide focused facilitation of networking and collaborations among participants.

    $250,000 - Awarded July 2019

    Focus areas
    Media Training
    Description

    This two-year grant will enable SEAMAAC to increase media training in SE Philadelphia, helping its constituencies tell and share their stories. In so doing, the “Way Forward Project” works to counter xenophobia and misunderstanding by building empathy, and by bridging and humanizing divides through the power of personal storytelling.

    $150,000 - Awarded July 2019

    Focus areas
    Representation in Media
    Description

    This six-month planning grant will support research and planning for a new television and radio broadcast series inspired by WYBE's signature series, Philadelphia Stories. In conjunction with exploring a relaunch of the series, PhillyCAM will strengthen its mentorship role, bolstering its role as a community connector and network builder for diverse local media makers and producers.

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