Digital Underground Story Telling For Youth (DUSTY)
Posted in Digital Divide, Media Activism, Youth on May 26th, 2007International Communication Association conference is under way in San Francisco. I attended several sessions; like any other conference, some are interesting and some are dull like hell. One session that was worth noting was the presentation by “Digital Underground Story Telling For Youth (DUSTY). DUSTY is a collaborative program between the UC Berkeley’s UC Links Program, UCB Graduate School of Education, and the Joseph-Prescott Center for Community Enhancement. The program teaches multimedia production to allow youth to be empowered by self-expression.
In the presentation, members of DUSTY showed their works - films, music, video etc. The topics of their works ranged from neighborhood violence, Iraq war, etc. One audience member asked them how they picked their topics and their common answer was their everyday life.
It’s wonderful to see the youth, who are often demonized by mainstream media, express their understanding of world and educate us. At the same time, I was a little afraid that they would become the object of researchers. The room was full of scholars. I hope this is just my paranoia. At any rate, here’s my flickr set of photos of their presentation.