 All righty, I'm gonna go ahead and get started right now. Howdy y'all. I think we should give it a few minutes to let people trickle in here and then after a while if they're still being loud. Yes, let's please shut the door. Oh, thank you Bobby. Welcome, you're here joining us for youth media making. I just wanna kinda welcome everyone into the space and I also want to let people know kind of some of the rules or decorum of the space. This is our only microphone and we do have a recording in the back so this microphone is for the recording. If you do wanna make a comment or ask a question, I ask that you use this microphone and if you can't tell it to me and I will repeat it back into the microphone. My first question is, well, to all of you all, is there anything specifically that people are hoping to get from this panel and this discussion today? So I'm really interested in finding out how to recapture a youth creative space so that we can bring more young people through the door and have them value public access the same way that may have grown up valuing say YouTube or TikTok and whether or not the understanding is with the new generation of the difference between a corporate media platform and a free speech platform. Awesome, thank you. Anyone else interested? Or have any questions looming over their mind before we get started? Going once, going twice. All right, well, I'm gonna just get started and do a quick, some brief introductions here. My name is Travis Washington. I work at CCTV, the Center for Media Democracy slash town meeting TV. I am the media educator there as well as a field producer. I usually like to say that I teach people of all ages how to use media to get involved in their local community and local politics. Joining me to my right here is Mary Simmons. She does conversations from the open road. She's the executive director and founder. And then we have Maceo Dotson. He's the community engagement coordinator from Urban Media Arts in Massachusetts, Maldon, Massachusetts. And then Navarro Dodge, they are a internet CCTV. They do the neighborhood media internship project and I love that they're joining us today. One of my philosophies is if you're having discussions about people always invite them into the room. So I really appreciate that they showed up to be a part of this. If you all would care to introduce yourselves in a little bit more detail, that'd be great. Yeah, as Travis said, my name is Mary Simmons and I started a program called Conversations from the Open Road about 11 years ago. It's an immersion road trip storytelling program for Vermont high school and college students. So about seven or eight students, well anywhere between four and eight students I would say, all from all different high schools and colleges in Vermont, myself and then a videographer, we're in a van. We drive to some community in the country that is exploring or enacting some kind of solution to the issue we're discussing. And then we interview tons of people for about a week and a half, two weeks and then the students each create a short that creates then a collection that we show at film festivals about the issue. That, nice, thanks for showing up. Hi everybody, my name is Macy O'Dottson. I'm the community engagement coordinator at Urban Media Arts in Malden, Massachusetts. I also run the internship program there. I've been doing that for the last four years. I started off as an intern. That's how I got into community media, literally just walking down the street and I saw MATV at the time and I was like, this place looks cool. And seven years later, I'm still in community media. Excited to talk with all of you guys today. Thanks for having me. Hello, my name is Navarro Dodge. I'm 17 and I've been an intern at Shinden Community Television for about two years now or like a year and a half. With Travis, I'm creating community media. And then I've also worked this year with Mary with conversations from the open road and yeah. As well as yesterday with Macy O as well. You've had some learning and media education experience from all three of us and that's great. I just want to, I have actually like quite a few questions but I'll try to hold it down just a little bit. My first question for all of us, specifically you all, is what are some successes you've had while working with youth in the media space? And how do we want to proceed? Does people want to just kind of be like, hey, I'm ready or do we want to go in a line? Thank you. When I think about the successes, I think there's a couple of different things you can look at. You can look at results, you can look at the impact, you can look at specific projects. When you think of results, for me, it's successful to quote Terlondo Amos from Urban Media Arts in Maldon. Don't know if you know him. If you can see it, you can hear it and it's recorded, then it's a success. All the technical stuff we can teach you down the line, you don't have to focus too much on that but if those three things are done, then that's successful to me. For me, I think the impact is probably the biggest success for me. When I think about old students that come back and they tell me what it is that they're working on related to what we taught them. For example, I had a student that came in and wanted to learn journalism and they were going to Emerson at the time, just getting their feet wet into journalism about two years ago or so they come back and they are working for the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe and they really credit the stuff that we did with our citizen journalism program as one of the things that really got them to that point. So I always think about how are we impacting the community and when they come back and they share those stories and they talk about just what their experience was, what the future looks like for them or even some of the folks that come in and don't know anything about media and don't know if this is what they want to do and then they end up gaining a skill that helps them out in the future. To me, that's success. Gosh, success. I think for me, while you could do the individual success when I see every single person I've worked with, every single young person just when they're turned on by the world bigger than school and their social world, that to me is a success. But specifically what I've been loving the last year or two, three years was injecting students into issues that are happening, that actually have traction already on the ground. So in 2019, it must have been 19 because 20 was COVID. So in 2019, we, six students, a videographer myself drove across the country and learned from people in different communities that were building tiny homes for people that needed it in their community. Grassroots built, grassroots funded, grassroots everything. And there's the spread all over the country. And then we made a film and now we show it all over Middlebury because in Middlebury, which is a town about an hour south of here, their students, their tech students are building a tiny home for their neighbors that need homes. So to me, that was a success because it had the students now are injected into this real thing that's happening. They speak at churches to talk about how great it is, why we should be doing it. So yeah, so really trying to open students up to the wider world is successful when I consider it a success. Awesome, thank you. Yeah, I also kind of struggle with what is success and I think there's a lot of tangible and like there's concrete and abstract ideas to what success is like more tangibly, like literally showing people like technical skills like teaching them media literacy so that when they look at their things on TikTok or on YouTube, they can see when things are cut and just have that understanding just a little bit. But I think one of the largest successes that like I've definitely had is like having each of the interns work in teams as well as giving them their own ownership of the ideas, the making of the content and that kind of stuff. Mainly because there's something different that happens when you have, when you're not being told, hey, go cover this thing or this is how this is supposed to look like. More so when it's like, hey, this is your idea, you have this question and as a member of the community, go out and ask other community questions, those answers because as a member of the community, you're also speaking for the community. So it's more so finding ways in which to get, like give ownership and also get people to involved. Because now when I ask, say, Navarro, to go out and capture something, they're not only capture something from their perspective of the community, but also that community member. So they're creating a environment where they're making content with people on a local level and not only just young media makers as well. I think that's really beautiful and really successful. And then Navarro, since you're not doing more media education, what are some successes you have had personally while working in media? Let me come bring you this mic. I mean, I think the first thing is definitely getting friends interested in the work that we do, whether it's getting them to like film protests with me, or an interesting example is I have this best friend of mine who makes experimental ambient new age music. And I joke with him that wouldn't it be interesting if under our videos we have these kind of scores that work kind of like in the margin cartoons of medieval manuscripts from monks. I don't know why I'm going into this, but in medieval manuscripts, monks would draw these little cartoons that would explain their personal views on the story and on the legitimacy of what was being written and stuff. So they would like draw a snail if they believed it was a mistruth, they would draw a knight if they believed that it was like a good moral value. And so me and this friend will work on these ambient pieces together that work under the films to kind of increase the kind of emotional value and connection that the viewer has to these works. And I think that's an interesting thing. And I think most public access cable stuff doesn't really do that. And I think like only a dumb ambitious teenager would kind of put that together. And I think that that is one of the special things about youth media is that like teenagers now have grown up in such a weird world when it comes to media, when it comes to entertainment, when it comes to our aesthetic sensibilities that I think it helps to give their kind of reigns to us so that we can put those aesthetic sensibilities that make make work that fits our attention spans and speaks to what we kind of value, which sometimes turns out to be something that others value whenever I edit one of my videos and make one of my weird scores, the millennials in the room will be like, oh, this is actually really cool. Or the Gen X series will be like, oh, this is actually really cool. I see what you're doing here. And that feels really special. That shows that there's a way to cut through these walls of these generational walls and these experiential walls. I think that that's powerful. That is a success of mine. And just to add to, I think one of the goals in community media is to give voice to the voiceless, is to uplift the voice of the community. And just to hear you say, to give opportunity to young people to speak their truth. And then not only do you get the opportunity to do that, but then we also benefit from that, from hearing that. So it's definitely mutually beneficial. And that actually, so I come into this space from education, community organizing, civics, kind of, you know, small democracy, which community media is, right? And so in that way I see, like often when I'm on these media education, people are coming at it from being filmmakers or, you know, they're just passionate about media. And for me, media is the vehicle to engage young people in the world. And I feel like there's a distinction there that is helpful. Yeah, like, and I appreciate you bringing that up. Cause like oftentimes I say that, hey, maybe people's interest in media may not be something that they're looking to make a career in often. However, like still having those skills, I find really beneficial because yes, you have like that interest is there and that interest is never gonna go away. So maybe it could be a hobby and not a career or it could just be something that they learn. And then they'll always take with them into their future career. We have a lot of interns that come in who are doing biology, social ecology and environmental science and that kind of stuff who just are really interested in cameras and media making and the stuff that they make is usually around the things that they're focusing on in their schooling and even seeing that they're using those skills they make when they're doing research of making videos to communicate certain issues is incredible to me. Already, well, I have another question. What have been some challenges that you have had and what are some strategies you use to deal with them? I know for me personally, like all of our interns are so creative and a lot of them come to public access television to learn the skills of the technical skills of how to do a lot of these things because that's what they've seen on YouTube or on TikTok or any other place on social media. And the role of a public access center is not necessarily to be like, well-bewed on YouTube and that kind of stuff but it is much more local and centralized. So for a lot of it is there's a lot of these really, really big ideas that are brought in because that's what they saw in a movie or that's what they saw someone do on YouTube and trying to narrow down some of those ideas into something that is more locally centered is often a challenge that we have but one way that we do it is by getting them out to ask community members on the street. We do a lot of Vox pops to ask community members on the street those very questions that they're having that might be really big. And for some people who do want to just learn those skills of how to make YouTube videos or how to make TikToks, one strategy that I use is taking those ideas and having and basically being like, all right, this is all that we can do to make this big grand YouTube video or this great film idea but what can we do today in two hours to get this done and really showing people what they can do now immediately rather than all this planning has been really helpful because the next time they come out to start filming something then they can really start to think of being like, hey, if I was going to film a shot like this from this movie this is what I would do or this is how I would spend my time getting this done or being like, hey, actually I realized I don't want to do that. I really want to continue asking people on the streets what they think about campaign finance reform. I think that's what we did yesterday and it was beautiful. I don't know, any other ideas? I'm gonna be the bad guy and just say it's so disappointing to see that the room isn't more filled. I think one of the biggest issues in community media is the fact that we think about kids like we're babysitting them. There's not much energy in giving them opportunity. We think of it just as the parents dropped them off, we do some stuff with them and that's it. I think there's so much more to working with youth and I think all of our stations would benefit from having youth programming. I don't know what all of you guys do. For us, we've had so many struggles with the pandemic. I know we all suffered but I think youth suffered the most with connection, communication, just the distance. We're social beings and when you're growing and you're young and you don't get those things, that affects you and I think that we had a really great opportunity to be a resource for the community to still stay connected. Some of the things that we did were, we did this online film program with them where we told them, take your phone to go out and record whatever the project was based off of the prompt and then they were able to work together virtually to put together a program and I think that stuff kind of died off once the pandemic ended and I think that we need to put more energy to the youth. One of the other things I was gonna say is, oh and with the explosion of social media similar to what Travis just said, let's utilize those tools. The kids are interested in TikTok. All right, well let's find a subject that's relevant and that makes sense and let's go make a TikTok styled video or let's make an Instagram styled video or let's check out what some of these YouTubers are doing and let's make it creative so it feels fun but it's also informative and I think that we just need to have more energy and believe in the next generation because you're the youngest one in this room. Let's look around after we go, who's next? Are we building them up? Are we giving them opportunities? And I think that's for me, that's probably the biggest challenge and the biggest struggle is to get other people to believe in the importance of youth in media making. I don't know where to go with it. No, are you guys on? Oh yeah, I think that's on. I think interestingly one of my larger challenges is this more like kind of philosophical obstacle and that is all narratives have a kind of sense of manipulation about them, has to have an aspect of manipulation within them and I've been struggling with it because on one hand in community media we have this kind of rhetorical argument of in this rhetorical philosophy of oh, we want it to be like free speech at all costs but of course there's always difficulties with that in that sometimes free speech is used to silence others which makes it not free speech. And so interestingly the way I've gotten through that is by kind of making the manipulation float to the surface. I'll make these like super hyper edited videos all literally like distort the visual aspects of it with these like strange filters and sometimes it's obviously too much but in some ways I've seen it firsthand that often it'll convince others who are not normally interested in something like Vermont politics or yeah, campaign finance reform and they'll be like so what's behind all this weirdness? What's behind this entertaining but very constrictive surface of the like abstraction of what's being shown here and I think that that is an interesting aspect of community media that there's some freedom there that I'm able to do something like that. I mean obviously I can't take it like too far but that's actually better because then there still is that underlying surface of there is this content there. So yeah, that's what I think is an interesting challenge is how do we move past the manipulation of narrative? We should attend to your question which is kind of the big elephant in the room of nice. Would you say that that idea of narrative manipulation because I haven't actually heard it defined this way but it's something that I think everybody here would be aware of. Is that something that you'd see is an agreed upon point kind of generationally? Do you think that people of your age and younger they pick up on it and it's like a negative to them because there's a difference in my world as the elder millennial of narrative manipulation to make an emotive concern within art and a manipulation to misrepresent news. So I have to compartmentalize it but do you kind of just see it all as one thing? So I think within our generation, within the information age where we're seeing a hypercritical-ness towards information because we're getting so much of it at once and but we're also in this world where things can be so subtly edited that sometimes we don't know if the waves of information are genuine if even our consuming of these waves of information will help anything. And if our reciprocal communication of what people tell us to reciprocate, yeah, it works. And I think that also comes out of this kind of nihilism within our generation that I don't know if it's a majority but it's a very large vocal minority. I think has this interpretation of this world as we're going to be buried under a million photos of nothing. That's how I phrase it. And I think that that's sad and I think that community media and pushing people to create community media actually kind of breaks down that nihilism because it gives people control over the manipulation of the narrative and it makes them able to see under it as they're kind of creating the narrative for themselves or are deep into it, working with the people affected by it. And I think that that is super powerful because we're seeing within the internet age everyone wants to escape reality. We're seeing people who are just... It's a problematic term but the joke within Gen Z is is chronically online people. Like you're so obsessed with your phone, with social media, with everything that's happening on the internet that you can't actually see the real world. Community media allows people to actually be part of the real world. And interestingly, and Gen Zers are the most at risk for escaping or for trying to escape the real world. And that's really dangerous because Gen Zers in order to save the world have to be in it. Yeah, where do we go from there? That was beautiful. I just wrote down the thing, community media allows people to participate in the real world. I was just like, I wanna, I don't know, I'm gonna chew on that for a few days. For me, I mean, yeah, I definitely think social media plays such a large role and is definitely a hindrance in a lot of aspects for young people to get involved in community media making. However, I also feel that it provides a space for a lot of these folks that we often see as underrepresented in mainstream media, that place to be, as well as like public access centers as well. But I just remember growing up where I didn't really have a lot of folks that looked like me on regular TV or like I think the first time I saw a young black man getting a college degree was in community on that TV show. So I was like 10 years old, nine, 10 years old, and that was a big deal for me. And like even with my experience on YouTube, like I also often say I was raised on YouTube because like when I eventually started to see people that looked like me onto YouTube, I actually felt like I had a space like online and in the media space where I could actually go and do these things, which just continued to foster my love for media making and eventually brought me to public access. So I think in a lot of ways that social media really is such a commercial difference in compared to public access. I also think that it is also changing the marginalized groups of people who don't have access to these forms of media making. So I think maybe 20 years ago, and we were probably talking about this more at the Plannery that black folks were really using public access. Well, now we have multiple places to get involved in multiple different like community media making spaces that of course black folks are still prevalent and present in public access. However, we also have a lot more different places to go. So it's really, I think a big challenge for us is still trying to find more of those people in those margins and also recognizing that those margins have changed. So now a huge problem that I face is a lot more socioeconomic barriers for folks where like we have a lot of youth who can't necessarily participate because they're taking care of their family or they need a job so that they can pay for their family and that kind of stuff. One way that we have addressed it at town meeting TV is by providing stipends for our interns so that they can spend those two, three hours a week to really come on in, learn these technical skills and then move on. And then I think also my job as a media educator is to really eliminate as many barriers as possible. For a lot of my interns, we have a couple that literally cannot come to a meeting if they do not get a ride. And so I think the smallest thing I can do is give a little extra time to give these people a ride to our studio so that they can also have an equal chance of being involved. And I don't know, I think that's all really, really important and these are like separate challenges that we also face like not only in the media space and not only in the virtual space but also in a real tangible like local community space. And yeah, so those are all my thoughts. And I think one of the most obvious issues is like how do we as access media remain relevant in 2023 and moving forward like people consume media in so many different ways. And I think honestly, you really answered it is just like continuing to just give that opportunity to the younger generation. We really have to lift them up and let them know like if you can get on to YouTube but let's teach you the skills, let's teach you how to articulate the message that you want to display. And I think that's how we remain relevant. We have to make a clear distinction between what we see on mainstream media like you were mentioning and how it can be manipulated like you mentioned and then take those and do right by it in access media. So kind of answered my struggle. I think one of the interesting things about community media is as you said, it's community media, which means it is, because of the people that will consume it are is like a much smaller sample size. And I think that's kind of to me what's attractive about it with YouTube. It's like your viewers could be like from Slovenia or like anywhere. And that means that interestingly though, that means that it's so large that there's a high probability that no one will watch your stuff. Whereas community media, it's just like people you actually know that are going to be watching you. And I think that's really special because then you feel more special. You're like everything I put on this screen is gonna matter to someone because it is like a friend of mine or someone that I buy my bread from that's on this screen. And that feeds into my larger thing about I think the creation of this media, the audiences of it is the message itself. You know, most CCTV videos won't get that many views. But with the magnitude of it, they do get a lot of views because each little video is important to one person even if it's just the person who made it. And that is special. That is something that I think isn't shared with the disposable nature of YouTube and Instagram. I think that that is interesting. The fact that we try to archive every single little thing physically is so cool. We don't have that in social media. Social media, it's like you post a story and then it's deleted. And I think that that aspect of disposability of our mass communication systems is kind of constrictive and mentally oppressive. I don't even know where to go. I mean, it's grounded in the local, right? It's grounded, it's actually grounded, right? So that's what's beautiful about it. Actually, Navarro and I spent a week and a half this summer went to New York City to talk to people about our relationship with our phones in social media. And I remember William, I'm gonna visit in a few days. William said he was a media educator in Harlem. And he said, what kills me is that when I'm talking to the young people I'm working with, they don't even know where we are. Like they don't look out the window to see their neighborhood they're in. They're just so in this world. And so I think just to build off, that's what community media does, right? It's combating these forces that are homogenizing and removing us from being grounded, so. Wow, thank you. That was one question. So my next question for everyone is has there been any moments that surprised you, made you rethink or affirmed your approach to youth media education? And for Navarro, I'm gonna be like, are there any moments that surprised you or made you rethink about what you were doing? I'll just say, yesterday I got to spend some time with Travis and some of the interns at CCTV. And for me that was such a special experience to go somewhere else and see somebody doing some of the things that I do. And not only that, but then just to see how, how do I say this? I feel like it was touching just to see how brave you guys were. You guys went out there, came up with the concept in a couple minutes and were able to get really, really great content. I have social anxiety, I'm nervous right now, shaking under this table. And just to see like these people way younger than me going out and, hey, can I ask you a question? Tell me what you think about this. And the content was so like, they were talking about politics and social justice and just the knowledge that you had specifically and then some of the other folks that you were with was just, it just, as an educator, it really, it touches me because it's like, we're doing our job. We are really helping this next generation out. And so just being able to witness that and to support it and then I got asked a couple of questions. I love that, that was just a great experience for me. And I think that we need to continue to give these young people the opportunity to go out into the community and speak and say what it is that they need to say, ask the community the questions that they want to ask them. And it doesn't have to always be led by us, it can be led by them. So for me that was super just impactful yesterday. And overall, some of the most surprising moments for me is working with college students and that go to school for film and media and they're teaching me stuff that I didn't know. And I'm like, I've been out of school for a couple of years now, I won't say how long. And just to be able to educate myself through them, it reminds me once again that it's a mutually beneficial relationship and we have to continue to look at it like that. There can't be a hierarchy when we're learning, in my opinion, we learn from each other. So, yeah, yeah. I think this is kind of a question for Navarro first and then the two of you, but do you think you and your peers are being taught or learning on your own, sort of the media literacy skills to know what's real if you're on a phone or on a screen? Because I think my generation growing up, fake stuff was a little more obvious, but we're getting to the point now where fake can look really, really convincing and I'm interested in where AI is going with video creation and if you guys could talk about that a little bit. All right, Navarro, I'm on the hot seat. So I think one of the good things about Vermont is that we have such a good public school system. Don't ever listen to a propaganda from conservatives who are like, oh, we need to use our tax dollars to fund private schools. Because first off, that's obviously bad and we'll get a wise whole communities of people. But anyway, my public school was actually really good in kind of at least getting a little bit of a push for people to rethink the media they're consuming. I remember in my junior year English class for whatever reason, well, I guess I know the reason, but we actually got the English teacher had all the kids read on photography by Susan Sontag, which is a bizarrely relevant work, even though it was written in the 60s. In essence, it's saying the issue of photography is that it seems like it's saying the truth and it's saying a lot, but it actually isn't. It only just is used to reinforce your analysis of the situation and cannot really carry its own belief and also is easily manipulatable. And a lot of the kids, I'd read it, but a lot of the kids hadn't and we had a really good discussion after about media and about social media and how the themes of this essay from the 60s fit along with it. At the end, she says, we've become a bunch of image junkies, which is like, I don't know if I would agree with saying that, but I think it does carry a certain amount of correct analysis of this current moment. But I think, yeah, one of the weird things about these constant waves of massive information is that they pass quickly. So there'll be this one falsehood that gets pedaled and blows up instantly and then one person will be like, actually, no, this is fake and then that accusation of it being fake will blow up and then nothing happens. So the weirdness of our current information age is whether not just is a lot of this information fake is if this information is real, will it help us do anything? And that's why once again, yeah, community media is so good because it forces kids to confront that aspect of our information will make, makes information feel less disposable because it takes a buttload of work to actually create and it makes it, yeah, feel more tactile, I guess. Like you're actually experiencing the narrative being created and you're being a part of the narrative. And I think that that's actually special and one of the best ways to educate the youth. I love that you keep talking about how community access is relevant because it's local. I do think that's an awesome point. And I, it's amazing. And I was trying to think of like what I, where I come into this and for me, it's really just working with young people to be able to hold, engage with and almost really enjoy nuance because I feel like that's, if you can get that, then you can start to unpack what truth and where it could be manipulated and all that. So I don't know if that means anything, but it's Kurt, good to see you. One thing that I definitely try to, with all of our interns is definitely try to use different forms of media and really go over what does it say, what does it mean and why did they say that? To really go over, especially that story analysis side. So for a brief time, maybe we had a media literacy podcast where every single week I would show a whole bunch of the interns, a TV show that I was watching and I was chewing on for a few weeks. And I was like, hey, you know what? This is dealing with a lot of relevant problems that they may also be experiencing online. And one of my favorite ones was we did one on the nuance of racism and colorism in the United States. This was with a group of students who were all new Americans. And for many of them, English was their second language. So to really talk about some of the nuance that we have in the States when it comes to talking about race and how we identify people racially and whether or not that's accurate or not was really great. And I showed them an episode of Atlanta that really dealt with colorism and whiteness and what's it like to be mixed or what's it like to also be African and not perceived as black as well. So there's a lot of really, really different approaches and stuff. For the most part, I come from a long background of storytelling. So I often am like, hey, let's focus on what truths are they telling you in these stories? And now with AI and that kind of stuff. Part of me is relying on this younger generation to help tell me what's fake and what's not fake. But another part of me is also trying to show them the same tools that I have already been using for other mediums so that when a new medium does come up they can still follow those same kind of tracks of what does it say, what does it mean and why did they say it? So the AI aspect of the question, which I unfortunately forgot about, that is like really important now. I think the introduction of these insane AI algorithms that can make things look so real and fit in with our kind of Western criteria of what makes something true. I think how we as media creators must deal with that new aspect of our society, of our culture is by putting pathos on a kind of new pedestal. I have this one essay where I argued profusely that there's this need for the human touch now in all our media to see the kind of shaky cam, to see the grain on the camera, to see kids joking around in between takes and in between interviews and this kind of messiness, this very human paradox and dirtiness that I think in our education systems and in how we've taught media are kind of pushed away from us. Part of progress, it seems to me historically has been kind of dehumanizing our art, our how we communicate. And I think that that history is why AI seems so scary to us. It's because AI is this perfect form of dehumanized communication. And I think we need as consumers of media, of art, of communication, we must start looking for that messiness as what actually communicates meaning, not just the like bare content underneath. Alrighty, any other questions? Yes. No, I have tons, so please ask questions, otherwise I will steamroll you. Hey, my name's Nate. I'm coming from Provincetown, Mass. I'm really interested in media literacy for youth and building that program. So this is like the most impactful panel that I've seen. It's really awesome. And to hear you speak just gives me hope for the whole generation that's amazing. And I just wanted to make kind of a comment but in build off of what you were just saying that really it feels like I've been having this realization lately, like I've made film and television with people. I've made my own projects over many, many years, like 25 years and always it's like the connections that happen in the process. And I've just been thinking about that lately that really it's like the humanizing, like you were saying kind of it's those connections that we have in the process of making things that almost seems like the more important part. And so because community media is doing that with your neighbors, it's like that's why it feels so good maybe. And then there was one more thing I was gonna say about that. Just the fact that you could take five people and go out for a hike in the woods and have like this amazing experience without a camera. In some way it's like, it's an excuse to get those people together and like talk and have a real human connection. So I just wanted to build off what you were saying. Thanks for this panel. Yeah, and I mean, well related to that too, like I've had tons of experience doing boxpops with the high schoolers and college age students that I find like absolutely beautiful. Especially because sometimes as someone who is often behind the camera, I forget how empowering being in front of the camera can be sometimes. Like I remember one time we were doing one on people's right to choose and abolishing slavery. And at the end, one of our newest interns was like, hey, can I speak real quick? And then grab the microphone and I just turned the camera over towards her. And she went on a long tangent about why she should have the right to choose. And she felt like that was really a moment to not only advocate for herself but also combat some of the things she was hearing other people say while she was doing this whole process. And just to see the smile and the empowerment come off of this young person just when they're in front of a camera was absolutely amazing. Along with that, like community media is so valuable. Like you did something not too long ago where you were walking down the street asking people questions like graffiti and you went to go talk to someone and get to know their entire life story on inside their man cave and everything. But like what's beautiful about that is like when watching the footage, like at the very end he's like, thank you, I feel so much better. Cause he must have been having a rough time. He had just lost his partner. And like just to see the effect, the genuine effect that these people have that youth are having for our community access center specifically and also getting other people involved and even having people be like, wait, you do this? Can I come make a show? And seeing that their excitement makes them even also more excitement or more excited is spectacular. So that brings me into my next question is what do you think the value youth media education has for public access for the students specifically, the community and your organization? I just want to follow up on what you were saying though. That's what we're going to do. Just to really honor the process as much as the product. I'm in on a project right now and they're really stressing the product, product, product. And I feel like that's really undervaluing what it could be, right? The process is so gorgeous and could be so gorgeous with the empowerment that one person feels or the connection that people feel and even the person that we're listening to for an hour and a half interview, right? So I'm glad you brought that up. And in that way, I don't know if this is what you were saying, like bringing people on a hike. I'm not sure what, I don't know, but I wonder what that made me think of was like a camera often holds an event. Like I'll have a conversation with students and if I have a camera there, it brings us to a deeper place, which is strange because for a long time I thought, oh, if I have a camera that's going to make people perform and they already have plenty of performance so I was concerned about that, but I feel like it almost creates more of like a reason for us to be almost real with each other too. So I say that to say that that's part of the process of working with students, but I can't remember what your question is. I'm not right. Yeah, I'll just repeat it real quick. What do you think the value of youth media education is for public access, the students, the community and your organization? I think the ability to understand how narratives are formed with media is really important, especially now. And then I also think, yeah, this is just a summary of a lot of the thoughts we've covered, but yeah, just being in your community, talking to people, oftentimes that you normally wouldn't talk with, especially is really interesting and really, really, really important now. And I'd say in terms of the value of media education for the students, it's an opportunity to build their skills, further the skills that they may already have and also give them opportunities for the future for employment. Like if we teach them the skills here, they are able to find jobs in that field. In terms of our organization, we get to represent the community and we get to represent the voice of the community and with youth and giving them that platform, like we, once again, we benefit from their talent and their skills and they benefit from being able to utilize our resources. And I think that's invaluable, especially to not just the students in the organization, but also to the community. I have one last thing to add and that is, okay. Well, so last year, I did this really fun video where Travis and I went to the Capitol building, the Vermont Capitol in Montpelier and we interviewed lawmakers and lobbyists, senators and Congress people for like 30 minutes and it was really fun. It was really fun for us. But at the intro, I was like, you know, it'd be really funny. And I made this whole long spiel about how, did you know that there's people that care about Vermont politics? Well, behind me in this weird building, there's some weirdos who do. Let's go speak to them. And every time I show that video to someone of my generation, they burst out laughing and then proceeded to watch the next 30 minutes in complete silence. And it's like a really dry video. We talk about like PCB testing and the clean heat standard, just the most boring stuff. But under it is like this gorgeous ambient soundtrack that my friend and I made, which has some humor in it. At one point we spoke to this Republican lady who started talking about how she hated the Vermont Clean Heat Act. And my friend sent me this song that starts with like this horrible like horn, low horn sound effect. It's like, and this lady's talking about how she hates the clean heat standard and how people are like too scared about it. And so I think that's part of the reason why you need youth to make media about something like politics because normally kids aren't gonna be interested. But if they see a familiar face and a familiar kind of communicatory style and similar like aesthetic sensibilities, I'm a high school student, they'll actually kind of connect to it and also be interested in actually speaking with those lawmakers and lobbyists and getting involved so that they have a better understanding of this stuff. So I think that's also why I really like community media when specifically youth media is it actually gets kids to get involved because everyone loves to hold the camera. It's kind of fun. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Well, just the value of getting young people to be aware of what's going on in our communities. Like I feel like we don't consider them, you know, valuable members until maybe 18, 19 when they've graduated high school. So that just, yeah. I don't know why we're locking them away in schools, I guess. And you have something to... And you're 17, you can't even vote right now. And I think it's so special and important and impactful, the fact that you're so educated and you get the opportunity to become more educated through media. So big ups to you. I mean, for me, I think having youth in our office is completely invaluable. Like I think it's phenomenal. I think for the most part, for our organization, for Town Meeting TV, is just having that useful presence in our office is not only good for our mental health, but it also helps bring more young people in when they start to see people that look like them, as Navarro was saying. Like, I mean, for me too, like I would never have walked into Town Meeting TV by myself, but now that there is someone that either looks like me and also can speak my dialect, then I'm more interested in walking in and seeing what it's staying and seeing what it's about. So I think that also works for ages as well. And actually seeing young folks in media. I also think like, you know, there's been multiple times where we are doing pieces around elections and we're doing exit voices to get the voters to talk about like this whole process of voting. And we've actually had multiple interns go out and vote for the first time. Like these are like direct to me, these are direct like tangible things that have happened that I think are really, really important not only for the students, but our organization and our community. We're having like young people be informed and then go to make an informed decision after talking to tons of voters about all the topics. I also think a huge part of it is like, it takes a village to raise children and youth. And so I think being a public access center and a community public access center is that we are part of that village. And so really making sure that we're providing them with a place to be and being that third place outside of school and home for a lot of students I think is really important in building these small community connections. And I wanna teach them enough skills so that they can replace me. Like I don't think that there should be someone who maybe not belong to a part of their affinity groups, making TV about their affinity groups when we do have these interns that belong to all these different groups and hold these different identities. So I think like having those people replace me in those situations is really what we're doing is we're actually lifting up the youth to continue to create media. I also think it's hopeful. When you listen to tomorrow, you have felt that. Someone's even mentioned that. It's hopeful to realize that they're thinking. I don't think we even really come to terms with that. And I also in my work, I found that it's disarming to have a young person to show young people grappling with real things is almost disarming for adults to then be able to do that kind of grappling. Like I feel like we sometimes can get into our rootinized ways and do-do-do, but if you show young people really thinking about these issues, I hate calling them issues because it's all connected, but if you have them really thinking, then I feel like that helps us all think better, if that makes sense. All right, I do wanna do a time check. We do have about 15 minutes left and I do also, I asked at the very beginning, if there's anything people wanted to learn and I just wanna double back around and see did we answer your question? Given all of that and given the fact that there's so much of a similarity and understanding of what our media does, how do I get outside of an internship or an organized situation or walking by and seeing a sign on the door? Like most access centers, like I'm a closet, I'm still technically an access center, how do I get y'all through the door? Because I'm fighting a consistent battle of all of these different things that are easier than going through the door at an access center, even though I know for a fact that ours is gonna be more fruitful than the easy solution. Like I have a hard time, my son's the same age as you and I have a hard time convincing him that what I do is cool. And yet like just 15, I was a young parent, so like just 15 years ago, it was something that if I had had an opportunity to do, I would have been all over it, but I was in an area that didn't have it at all. So it's one of those things that I really would like to know, there's no secret sauce and I know there's no secret sauce to this, but what is it that we're missing today that you've noticed that is preventing people from feeling either comfortable or even aware that they can just walk in and tell us y'all wanna do stuff? Is there like a barrier there that we're unaware of or is there some kind of disconnect between older crowds and the youth when it comes to using an access center? I have a award-winning youth program but it's very small and it's fed through a summer workforce alliance project in Connecticut. When people come to the door, they either want to do videos of them gaming or make horror films. That's what they knock on the door for and that's trying to transition them into something else doesn't work. So even having our small youth group have incredibly powerful short videos that they've done and even won money for is not incentive enough to bring others and we've got drop-in youth lead, we've got film coaches and story coaches that have been available and still, but the community doesn't want us to do what you do because they will call us socialist, democratic, negative kind of things. You can't do advocacy work very publicly. So how do we get them in the door and be cool and not be scary? Movie makers. Scary movies are great, I see. Wow, those are some really great questions. Those are like the big questions, right? How do we all stay relevant? Well, I think what I have had to do is go into classes. Do you have any connections with schools? So you find ally teachers and then talk to what is their content and then try and spin it, figuring out how the local, how you can make it a local issue and then working with them in that way, like creating those connections. Is that? No, not an option because... What about your public library was an answer? I don't know if flyers often just get one and one of our would speak to, but when you put a flyer up, I feel like a library, I feel like I tried that and it's like, it doesn't go anywhere. You need to get in front of students and show why it's important to be engaged in this way. Oh, go ahead. Perhaps more than just a flyer partnering with the librarians, the Youth Services Librarian can be such a great resource. I know ours is in our community. Our access center is located in the public library in Middlebury and when I first started, my position was shared 50-50 between MCTV and the library and that partnership is really, really strong and the two organizations saw their missions merging, created the position that I came into. I'm now the director, but I said what would make me not accept the director's job is if I couldn't do the kid programs and somebody else came in to do that and I just became an administrator. So I'd say, meet the kids where they are, whether that's school, library, rec center, teen center, scary movies. If that's an intro, that's an intro. They're making stuff and a lot of horror movies have, I'm not a fan, but there's a lot of deeper things or what is it in the community that's really scary here? Is it the monster or is it the PCBs in your high school? So go where the kids are. One more thing to add, since we're throwing out ideas, something we do is we offer a summer camp and we target a much younger group of kids, six to 10 or six to 11. Because parents are just trying to put their kids somewhere in the summer and so some of the kids are not interested at all in video and some of them really are, but we've had success with this when they get older, when they're teenagers, they come back and they intern or they do a show. Yeah. Yeah, so in Bedford, we have kids starting in grade three really and we do that mainly through partnering through our rec, you had mentioned the library. I think that's a great area to do it as well but through our local rec center as well, we have classes for adults as they're signing themselves up for whatever they may be signing up right next to it is the kids classes. So another way to just kind of get the word out there in town, public places where adults are, we don't want to be a babysitting service but they're trying to find something for their kid to do and if maybe the kid isn't into sports and she sees in the rec area, there's also video production classes, just other options for them. Yeah. Yeah, so we actually have a mentor program that once they reach a certain number of hours, they can take the classes for free which is more of an incentive for the parents than for the kid but that keeps them around, they're volunteering, they're helping out more. So yeah, it kind of creates that circle. With meeting kids where they're at, I'm gonna like play kind of devil's advocate but I originally joined CCTV because I have a like five and a half hour rock opera that my friend and I wrote that we wanted to turn into a like waiting for Godot masterpiece of film adaptation and then I got there and they were like, all right, we're just gonna go film people on the street and ask them about these recent amendments and I was like, dang it, but I decided, okay, you know what I'll do? I'll film these and I'll put my friend and I's ambient music underneath it and that'll be our little like fun thing because and I ended up liking it so much the part that I didn't really expect I would like of interviewing people and getting to meet these random kids that I would never have met before and so it actually won me over the approach. So I think with the scary movie things just tell your kids, unfortunately, there has to be an aspect of public involvement within the creation of these scary movies and so the kids will be like, all right, fine, we'll go to like a public space and ask them if we can film here and like add in like a little jokey thing about like, oh, the evil mayor is trying to take over the library. Which for whatever reason is an issue in this state or in this community and bizarrely enough that I'll actually get them interested. It's manipulative, but as we were saying before, all narrative is, all media is and so meet them where they're at but also understand the goals that you have in mind for these kids and make it so that they kind of understand what you want to do and make it so that they feel they have the ability to compromise with you. The other day, Travis understandably criticized me for this one video where we were talking with a British man and I zoomed in on this teeth which was a good gag but very mean spirited and I was like, yeah, you're right, like when we're doing these kind of media things we're speaking to people in public areas, I have to make it so that it's more about them than about like my silly ideas while also understanding that there are other videos like this one video where we walked around the street where there's definitely an ability to do that to add a little bit of silliness and goofiness and fun to it. Yeah, definitely one of my largest challenges is keeping that focus especially cause, you know, everyone just wants to see what they do on YouTube and I think since they see so many talking heads on YouTube they don't understand that how collaborative media making actually is. So I think like one of my successes is definitely keeping them in a group with each other and focus and I was like, you can do whatever you want as long as it's community focused. And I know that doesn't always work but for me when finding more people to come in is building these community connections. At Town Meeting TV we're lucky that we've been around for, our CCTV's been around for like 40 years so like many of my bosses have gone to college maybe with some of these other professors that are and other teachers around town and I think now for me as someone who isn't from Vermont and is much younger, building these connections are really important so I've been spending time going to the Richard Kemp Center which is a large thing for students. It's a cultural empowerment center so that they have a lot of students in after school programs and actually spending my time going to those kids and saying hello, this is what I do, showing them some of those media skills and then just leaving and then maybe I'll run into them on the street and be like, hey, are you at all interested in this thing? And then they'll be like, you know what? Actually, yeah. And seeing those actual really effective things or we also have this thing called the King Street Center which is for new Americans for an after school program and recently I've been spending more time just talking to the director there and getting to know them and seeing like in what ways and in what capacity can I be of assistance and so if he sees a potential child that is really interested in these things he'll just send them my way. So really building these community connections maybe not necessarily with the institution itself but the actual people that are there on the ground making the difference I think is really vital and I honestly think it's more powerful in a lot of different ways. Not only for youth media making but also explaining what we do as a public access center because now we have that person who knows what we do as a public access center every time they ask me to come speak to their kids they're understanding, hey, this is what a public access center does this is what it's here for me and what we can do and how we can help them so I think there's a lot of different avenues to that and I love running into all of the people I talk to and educate on the street because I will stop and have 50 minute conversations with literally every single one of them and I don't know, I think those are really powerful community connections. All right, we got about two minutes left is there any other burning questions? People chose to come to this forum and they don't know about it, I would like them to. The other day I went to the youth opportunity forum in Springfield just to cover it but I wanted to share their website because they have a survey right now and they're looking for people's ideas on how to foster more opportunity for youth in Vermont and it's futureofvermont.org futureofvermont.org and it's Vermont, like the full, not VT. Okay, I just wanted to double check before I trip on myself here. Well. The one thing I'm thinking is it's not always just teaching students media skills and how to write, it's just the communication vehicle so engaging them in what they want to communicate might be another entranceway into what we do, if that makes sense. I think that's also a great point, yeah, because yeah, I think that's a great point and I think that's a beautiful way to end it. Thank you all so much for coming today. And thank you Mary, Maceo, Navarro for stepping up to the plate and answering these questions. I hope you enjoy closing remarks and we will also be here for a little bit to answer any other questions.