AMP Year-End Reflections
Image by Joe Namy
This was the most epic year-to-date in the life of Allied Media Projects.
We invite you to make a donation to support the coming year of AMP’s work towards a more just, creative and collaborative world.
Allied Media Projects kicked-off 2011 with a meeting of the AMC2011 Track Coordinators in Detroit. At that snowy, January meeting we laid the groundwork of grassroots fundraising, popular education, accessibility and cross-track collaboration that resulted in the hottest AMC ever. With 19 tracks, spanning a vast array of issues, identities and skills, AMC2011 reached a bursting point of participatory media awesomeness.
Image by Joe Namy
During that same weekend in late January 2011, AMP moved from our cozy (but too small and inaccessible) office in an old Elementary School to a 3,000 square foot ground-level space in the Furniture Factory Theater building, only a few blocks away, in the Cass Corridor. Our new office includes a media lab/classroom which we designed to host the first round of Detroit Future Media workshops. We have spacious work areas for our staff, which has grown from three at the beginning of the year to a crew of eight full-time and a dozen part-time staff.
AMP launched Detroit Future Media (DFM) in February, 2011 as part of the Detroit Future initiative of the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition (DDJC). Detroit Future is cultivating a community media economy in Detroit and is supported by the federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.
Image by DMEC Communicator
Through DFM we trained an inaugural class of Detroiters in audio, video, graphic design, web design skills and the application of these skills in education, social justice organizing, and community-based entrepreneurship. We selected DFM students through an application process which asked, "What is your vision for the future of Detroit?" and "How will you use digital media to transform your community?"
We received nearly 300 applications and selected a group of 45 students. Their ages ranged from 16 to 65 and they showed up with a range of experience levels, but all had brilliant visions for Detroit’s emerging community media economy. In addition to our evening classes, we held a series of public "Saturday Sessions" to highlight inspiring examples of projects that were fostering a community media economy. We ended this 22-week program with an powerful graduation ceremony in late July, with students showcasing incredible media projects, and an equally incredible community of mutual support that has continued to grow.
Days after graduation, AMP hired eight of the DFM graduates to spend a school year as artists-in-residence for our Detroit Future Schools program. We partnered them with teachers and are being supported to use digital media arts to foster more effective instruction, greater youth leadership in the classroom, and connectedness between classroom and community.
Image by Joe NamyIn August, we launched Detroit Future Schools by hosting 12 teachers and eight DFM artists-in-residence to "AMP Camp" – a five-day professional development retreat at a YMCA camp in West Michigan. AMP Camp was a time for collaborative curricula-building,plus a healthy dose of kayaking, karaoke, and jumping off trampolines into a lake. At the retreat, we looked long and hard at the education crisis facing Detroit. We realized that the goals of our program were nothing less than to reinvent the purpose and practice of education in Detroit. Our purpose is to prepare the future-builders of a more just, creative and collaborative world. Our practice is digital media arts integration, project-based learning, democratic classrooms, and school-community connectedness.
Photo by Leona McElveneAmidst the highs of the 2011 Allied Media Conference, the graduation of the first class of Detroit Future Media, and the AMP Camp week of Detroit Future Schools, the Summer of 2011 hit a profound low with the passing of Detroit poet-activist-educator, D. Blair. Blair had been an important part of the AMC community, most recently as co-coordinator of the "Poetry and Music as Transformative Media" track at AMC2011. AMP staff mourned alongside our vast network of people locally and nationally who loved Blair. We celebrated and honored his life, while committing to do better at taking care of each other as we work towards a more just and creative world.
Since the cold has set in, we are in reflection and re-design mode, gearing up for AMC2012 and the next round of Detroit Future Media. We have outgrown the "track" structure of previous AMCs, and are setting in place new formations of conference content to meet the changing needs of the networks that convene through the AMC. In early October we issued the call for proposals for Tracks, Network Gatherings and Practice Spaces at AMC2012. We now have an incredible line-up of 11 Network Gatherings, 8 Practice Spaces and 6 Tracks, that will make up the content for AMC2012. More details about these 24 "program nodes" will be announced in early 2012.
Our reflection process on the first semester of Detroit Future Media included one-on-one interviews, community surveys, and focus groups. We took the information gathered through the reflection process into a curriculum redesign aimed at making the next DFM semester even more effective in supporting students' development of practical media skills, and powerful visions for community transformation. We just closed the application process for the upcoming round of Detroit Future Media and are gearing up to start classes on January 21!
Meanwhile, Detroit Future Schools teachers and artists-in-residence have been hard at work in 12 classrooms throughout Detroit and Hamtramck. They are implementing incredible curricula amidst the challenges of our hemorrhaging education infrastructure and the daily reality of social and economic crisis.
AMP continues to be an active member in the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, providing facilitation for monthly meetings and technical support for the network of the coalition's thirteen Public Computer Centers. At the first DDJC retreat, held in November of this year, we laid strategic plans for the coming year of Discovering Technology Fairs (or "DiscoTechs") community wireless networks and communications work, including the publication of the zine, Communication is a Fundamental Human Right.
In these final months of 2012, AMP has turned some focused attention towards the sustainability of our organization and of our expansive network of allies that has grown through the Allied Media Conference and continues to grow through our local programs. We have watched with fascination the emergence of the 99% movement, it’s challenges and triumphs, seeing so many long-time AMC participants make vital contributions that help make this moment reach its full potential. We compiled many of those contributions into a list of helpful resources for engaging with the 99% movement.
All of this work is supported by an incredible staff who design and implement programs, ensure smooth logistics for every event, manage the intake and outflow of a fleet of electronics, manage increasingly complex financial systems, and keep the fundraising gears in motion. We are striving towards constant innovation in our approach to resource generation, design and development of our web platforms, and communications internally and externally. We are committed to supporting the personal transformation of all staff and program participants, and keeping the work of AMP in strong alignment with the principles that are at the heart of our organization.
As AMP's work evolves into greater complexity, it is more important than ever that we are supported by a network of individual contributors.
Please consider making a donation here.
You can also support us by circulating the job description for an AMC Content Coordinator. We are searching for a visionary, experienced organizer who will be a pleasure to work and learn with. We know that they exist within our network, so please help us find them!
