3rd dml2010 session -- state of the field for youth media

Kathlenn Tyner of University of Texas at Austin, Dept of Radio, Television, Film http://rtf.utexas.edu/ – talked about her work in mapping the work of nonprofit orgs and the support work they do in youth media – talked about fragility of such orgs. Tyner worked with namac http://www.namac.org in 2005, 2007, 2008 on a piece of research called ‘face of the field’ and is currently about to publish her findings in Youth Media Reporter http://www.youthmediareporter.org/

Issues that came out of her research:

- Media organizations present little evidence of best practice/impact of their programs/poor distribution of their media/often no data collection re impact progression

- Diverse concepts of what constitutes youth media/aims/purposes – big gaps e.g. no gaming in 82% of organizations

- Low organizational capacity

- High staff turnover within organizations

- Few professional pathways

Talks about history of media making in US:

Dominant model is PEG (public access, educational, government channels) PEG offered training/professional development/community voice/narrative/community – many youth media programs are hangover of this model—hence reliance on documentary, lack of data collection re impact etc. also talks about over-reliance of such orgs on private foundational funding. If orgs could develop capacity to apply for federal funding could build in sustainability/ robustness/ better workforce development/ aggregating data and fill those gaps.

JoEllen Fisherkeller professor at NYU http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/ focused on 4 case studies from her forthcoming book mapping youth media projects from around the world.

Sophia Mansori director Learning and Teaching of Education Development Center http://www.edc.org/ talked about her work with Adobe Youth Voices program. Talked about the robustness of its staff development/network model. Talked about common outcomes even in a varied and diverse set of programs– commonalities:

· Youth voice

· Youth engaging in civic and social issues

Ethan Van Thilo, director of Media Arts Center, San Diego http://www.mediaartscenter.org/ talked about the evolution of his organization and the development of the ‘teen producers program’ – unlike other orgs that allow students to explore their own interests Van Thilo talks about his own organization’s model on having students bid for contracts with other organizations to make docs / digital stories/PSAs for that organization but also talked about the pitfalls of such an approach – especially servicing the needs of a client and their expectations.

Lisa Tripp of Florida State University http://www.fsu.edu/ discussed a professional development project that she has been evaluating – a media literacy and media arts for LA middle school teachers and administrators. Teachers administrators received training and then led youth media production classes in their schools

What emerged:

- the school curriculum ended up driving the youth media content produced

- middle school students themselves didn’t show greater engagement in their larger school curriculum following on from their youth media project work