Community Visions
Community Visions teaches documentary video-making skills to members of community organizations in Philadelphia, Chester and Camden. Community Visions is a part of Scribe's mission to explore, develop and advance the use of video, film, audio and interactive technology as artistic tools and as tools for progressive social change.
Since 1990, Scribe Video Center has guided over 75 community and activist organizations through the production of mini-documentaries and neighborhood portraits that help communities address important social and political issues. The program is a powerful way to document community concerns, celebrate cultural diversity, and comment on the human condition. We work with local non-profit groups whose members have important stories to tell but limited access to the means of making videos. We invite applications from all groups, including people of color, young people, senior citizens, immigrants, the disabled and poor people.
The selected groups — usually four each year — make videos about issues that are important to their constituents. In recent years, groups have made oral histories, documented neighborhood problems, or created neighborhood portraits. The project is free to the group. Scribe provides the instruction, technical assistance, equipment, tape and other expenses necessary to produce a five- to fifteen-minute video. When the documentary is complete, we host a premiere screening and help the groups plan how they will use their videos.
While Scribe provides all the necessary technical assistance to produce your videotape, groups must have a strong idea and committed individuals to see the project to completion. Participating groups will acquire new skills while discovering new ways to reach their constituency — through video.
Watch a scene from Tina Morton's film Philadelphia's Scribe to see Community Visions in action.
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Write, Shoot, Edit & Mobilize!
Apply for Community Visions 2009
Interested groups should visit the Community Visions Application page or contact Corey Chao, the Community Programs Coordinator, for application materials. Please call 215.222.4201 or email corey@scribe.org.
Community Visions 2009 Deadline: Friday, December 19, 2008
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Current Community Visions Projects
The 2008 Community Visions projects are in full swing, preparing for their premiere in early December, 2008.
The Jubilee School is using years of interviews with community elders to demonstrate the value of an older generation's tales of courage and resistance by underscoring the power of these stories to inspire respect, pride and activism in young people. "Walls and Doors" honors elders as both witnesses and creators of under-told parts of history. The film carries on a legacy which has given the Jubilee youth a transformative sense of the power of their voices and their ability to create change.
On the corner of 60th and Vine in West Philadelphia, youth are building bikes and breaking stereotypes at Neighborhood Bike Works, a non-profit where youth recycle old bikes as they acquire technical expertise and improve their bike riding skills. "Bikes Work" shows young people working hard, getting along with each other and taking an interest in the history of their community and NBW's role in the neighborhood. The video follows students as they earn bikes in a summer class led by past graduates of the program.
Shaw Middle School, a city public school, is creating a videotape to emphasize their literacy and arts initiatives. The Resistance through the Arts School, the Sonia Sanchez Literacy Center, the Freedom School and BEACON are among the showcased educational programs.
The 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund aspires to fill the region's lack of nursing and allied health professionals with members of the community who are nontraditional candidates for these positions. The Training Fund assits students at all levels to upgrade their academic skills and become the "New Faces" who answer the challenges of the shortage. The film follows several graduates of the training program, portraying their histories, their current occupations and their reflections of the program.
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Recent Community Visions Projects
Four most recent Community Visions Projects premiered on Thursday, May 10, 2007.
Glance Into the Life
By the COLOURS Youth Group: Acres of Change?
read more
To Invite the World to Come and Learn Art
By the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial
read more
Under the Baobab Tree
By the Pan-African Studies Community Education Program (PASCEP)
read more
West Park: A Community in Transition
By West Park Cultural and Opportunity Center
read more
Community Visions is made possible by support from Bread and Roses Community Fund, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Samuel S. Fels Fund, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Union Benevolent Association and Ann Greene.