The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture

I am applying for the Elevate Prize because the communities I work with are persistently marginalized from opportunity, underestimated, and excluded from the systems that should be serving them. I haven't won many prizes in my life. Surviving childhood and becoming a mindful, loving, contributing adult is really the only prize. But THIS prize, this opportunity, would enable me to continue to elevate a powerful community of people in this world -- the storytellers, artists, culture bearers and future architects -- who envision, create and build new realities every day in a culture of scarcity and within systems that do not value their contributions. Art shapes culture, and culture has power, offering new visions, language, and stories that create the conditions for material and political change. The Elevate Prize funding would enable me, through the work of The Alliance and our partners, to catalyze new models for transformative global programming in Innovation, Exhibition, Creative Workforce Development, Youth Media and Arts Advocacy. The funding would seed a Creative Impact Trust to strengthen ongoing connections and collaborations between our network of arts and media organizations and civil society, protecting freedom of expression and safety for vulnerable communities here and around the world.

My work, vision, and purpose are all about tikkun olam – healing and repairing the world. I trained as a documentary filmmaker, but one day back in 2007, I had an idea for a Lab that would bring together filmmakers, technologists and activists to develop ideas and co-create projects. It was the first public New Media Lab in the country. I was fighting for a space in a technology revolution to which women and people of color had not been invited. -- so I invited all these people and we set a new table together. I received multi-year funding from the MacArthur Foundation and my organization ended up winning the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Amazing stories of lasting impact emerged from that work. I may be a young elder now, but I’m a late bloomer and The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture is exactly the right organization (40 years old, still breaking new ground) to set the next table. My goal for the future is to establish the infrastructure through the Creative Impact Trust where global artists are emboldened, storytellers and communities are protected and will never be silenced, defunded, marginalized or forgotten.

The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture is a network of networks; our core work is facilitating innovation, collaboration, strategic growth and cultural impact for the media arts field. We are considered the leading national media arts service organization in the US and work frequently with institutions and organizations abroad. We have thousands of members and partners in 25 states and 7 countries, all working on the ground to support their communities with access to arts experiences, technology, workforce training and creative youth development. We provide needed resources to those organizations, capacity building, new program models, advocacy, conferences, and funding. We work on arts policy and internet freedom in the US, international artists exchanges through the State Department and American Arts Incubator, and to address the complete lack of federal workforce investment in the media arts sector, we developed and sponsor Arts2Work, the first federally-registered National Apprenticeship Program in Media Arts + Creative Technologies. We are solving the problems of scarcity and injustice in the media arts ecosystem through replicable programs that center BIPOC voices and leaders, provide equity training to creative organizations, and access funding and jobs never before available in this sector.

In our Innovation Studio, The Alliance researches, develops and co-creates models and pilot programs, apps and projects that can serve the field.  Arts2Work is one of our most innovative ventures to date. When we discovered in 2018 that there were no federally-registered Apprenticeship programs in our sector, and therefore no possibility for creative workers to participate or be validated in the federal workforce system, we took this powerful opportunity to innovate.  From that moment, we took on the role of a National Program Sponsor on behalf of our thousands of members who deserved the same leg up as plumbers and construction workers who can get paid to learn on the job and whose employers can receive subsidies and grants to defray the cost of training. We knew we had to make a  business case for Apprenticeship, showing US media companies how their counterparts have leveraged apprenticeship for a positive return on investment. We were unique and disruptuve: no Registered Apprenticeship program has ever been available for creative Multimedia Producers, Creative Technologists, Editors, Game Designers, or Digital Archivists. No Apprenticeship program has ever required Training Labs in equity/inclusion for employers, while they are supporting a new pipeline of diverse creative workers. 

Our impact model is based on the idea that a vibrant, equitable, diverse arts and creative tech sector is a major contributor to a thriving economy and vital communities. We believe that artists are first responders to crisis and have the power to catalyze revitalization and healing.

Creativity, access, equity and opportunity are the core values that inform the activities of The Alliance. Our impact strategy includes deepening partnerships with high-impact social entrepreneurs, media employers and community organizations and seeding a global network of Creative Studios that offer free training to low-income, unemployed producers traditionally marginalized in the industry. Through our programming, we provide direct access to new resources for our creative community organizations, we build technology partnerships that benefit all, we share curricula, we raise grant funding and distribute it to our member organizations to elevate their communities. We are involved in healing the world and having an impact on humanity by facilitating creativity embedded in the culture; we build the abundance needed for our organizations to elevate the stories of their communities (see our National Day of Storytelling), hire more artists, nurture inter-generational leadership models, and create vibrant, sustainable connections across our growing global network.

We are currently serving 6,000 people directly through our Membership Network, Partnerships and Programs.  Next year we anticipate tripling that number, serving at least 18,000. We have recently launched a web-based Learning Hub that will support thousands more low-income remote learners and employer partners, as well as creative mentor/mentee pairs and educators seeking media curriculum and learning tools. We are also planning to go live with our new virtual museum, The Brown Girls Mythic + True Story Gallery – and anticipate that we will serve thousands of new visitors, learners, creative artists and audiences around the world.

The goals of the Alliance are to catalyze equitable, inclusive and sustainable new models to strengthen the media arts field and deepen the impact of artists and storytellers as changemakers in the culture. We prioritize Equity and focus on Creative Innovation, Exhibition, Community Empowerment, Revolutionizing Workforce Development, and Youth Media. Our goals align with the UN SDG of Reducing Inequality, empowering and promoting the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status. This signals a new and powerful mandate for arts networks and organizations, establishing accountability for transformative creative organizations as conduits for equity. Our impact goals focus on systems change through innovative program models. We will strengthen key partnerships and align strategic collaborators across multiple sectors to deepen program and policy impacts across our networks. We will focus on sustainability, adding necessary infrastructure and cash reserves. We will expand equitable access to emerging creative technology, innovation and workforce programs for underserved communi­ties through the Creative Impact Trust and build brand awareness by convening our members in meaningful ways and showcasing creative impact models that advance the media arts field, guide strategic growth and deepen cultural impact.

To accomplish our goals in the next year, The Alliance must continue to build its profile and power and overcome the barriers and boundaries that exist between for-profit and non-profit media sectors and amplify what must be practiced in order to achieve equity across the field. We are now connected with a range of stakeholders and industry leaders who are eager to engage with the ideas the Alliance has been sharing and winning the Elevate Prize would be a huge signal that this vision has traction and that transformation is achievable with the right pipeline and programs. We are ecosystem builders; we serve hundreds of member organizations who are in turn serving thousands of people across the country and around the world who have been struggling since COVID hit, but who are also extraordinarily resilient and visionary leaders in their communities.  Despite some wins in BIPOC representation, the default position of the media industry still includes white-dominated companies, unpaid interns, entrenched inequality and lack of access to crucial technology. The Elevate Prize will open new doors, shine new light, bring new partners to the table -- and to the movement for creative change.

Stories need platforms to take hold in the culture. The Elevate prize is an ideal platform to support a set of ideas we feel can be a conduit for systemic change in an industry that has profound impact on how we all see and define ourselves. We would take the idea of “elevation” and embed it in our strategies, activities and communications across the board. Elevating the voices of traditionally marginalized communities is already part of the DNA of The Alliance; with the Elevate Prize, we could leverage this profound acknowledgment of the work thus far and call on an even broader group of global stakeholders to elevate with us. I’m excited to think about the kind of outreach and next-level engagement we can do with folks we are working with at companies like Netflix and Array, institutions like the Smithsonian, Kennedy Center and Sundance, affinity groups like the National Producers Alliance and the Governor’s Association, and community-based organizations across the country. The expanded brand recognition is so important in elevating partner conversations and building the kind of trust needed to actually implement new ideas.

Our approach to building a diverse, equitable and inclusive leadership team is three-fold and pretty simple: do it with conviction, engage partners, and share the learnings every step of the way. Because we collaborate across multiple sectors of multiple industries, we are witness to leadership teams making aspirational commitments to diversity without experience in actually achieving a diverse workforce. The Alliance President, N’Jeri Eaton is a Black woman; 60% of the Board and 95% of our industry mentors are from BIPOC communities; 90% of the program staff are Black; over 50% of the leaders of our training centers are also BIPOC. Our partner in this work, Beautiful Ventures, is a creative social enterprise based in Atlanta, led by Melinda Weekes Laidlow, former Director of Race Forward in NYC. Beautiful Ventures offers programs that collectively serve to accelerate the entrepreneurial success of Black creatives. Our aims align and complement each other: to strengthen and expand infrastructure for the delivery of Black-humanity-affirming stories unfettered from dependence on Hollywood gatekeepers. Our approach to building a diverse/inclusive leadership team at The Alliance includes this unique and responsive partnership designed to support and elevate an equitable creative leadership model across the industry.

The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture was created to address these challenges and do this work. Years before the pandemic, we re-organized The Alliance as a “distributed consultancy” led by strategic Board of Directors with a visionary Executive Director, supported by a team of high-performing creative and consulting producers who are activated to develop models for, lead and evaluate an evolutionary and interconnected set of Alliance programs. This has enabled us to transcend traditional barriers to programmatic success for nonprofit organizations, guided by a brain trust of diverse and cutting-edge experts, and freeing us up to partner with award-winning creative and strategic leaders on behalf of diverse artists, creative organizations and communities working for change. Across the board, our program leaders look like and come from the communities our programs serve. Our Executive Director is former filmmaker who spent 15 years waiting tables (even after success at Sundance) because of the barriers to employment in the media industry. One of our program mentors is formerly incarcerated, and now an award-winning independent producer. Our Arts2Work managers are young, BIPOC creatives who helped us build the program from nothing, starting as Apprentices. We walk the walk.

At the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, The Alliance was on the brink of a national expansion of Arts2Work, fueled by a promised $750,000 dollar grant from a media corporation that shall remain nameless. At the start of the pandemic, we received word that they could not move forward with the grant. We had goals and dreams hooked into that money, communities waiting for training and job placement for low-income young people, Innovation labs for Afro-Futurist projects that would change the face of cultural storytelling, etc. It was a profound setback. After recovering from the shock, we regrouped, shared news internally, and rallied staff to double down on network building and human services. We pivoted almost overnight to all-virtual program offerings including Media Training for emerging artists, Executive Director coaching, Video Roundtables for educators and librarians, international Creative Labs and a National Day of Storytelling, focusing on the voices and experiences of BIPOC filmmakers and performing artists. We worked together to build back the abundance and by mid-year we had received a new corporate investment of $200,000 for our Innovation Studio project and $900,000 in general operating funding and COVID relief from a new private foundation.

Arts2Work: https://vimeo.com/563459820

Alliance 2016/Media.Art. Culture.Community: http://www.thealliance.media/screening-room/?ultibox=49

Alliance Youth Media Summit: http://www.thealliance.media/screening-room/?ultibox=39

Alliance HatchLab: http://www.thealliance.media/screening-room/?ultibox=48

Ambitious Storytelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7CYXwiiguA

Media That Matters Keynote: The Meaning of Metrics in Storytelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msIln5kH-oU

Photography, Expanded: Art + Media on the Brink of Change: https://vimeo.com/105683703 

You Have These Stories: https://whyy.org/articles/you-have-these-stories-philly-first-to-launch-new-program-to-diversify-media-industry/

As an Elevate Prize winner, the funding will help us bring experts into the Alliance network who carry the wisdom, knowledge and experience that we need to achieve our goals. We are looking to break out of traditional nonprofit mindsets, to reimagine what profit and abundance look like, discover business and social models with form and function that can amplify our vision for change, help us get out of dependency on grants, and create a sustainable, equitable and iterative business framework we can use as to model the future fo our entire sector. We must, now, elevate those persistently marginalized from creative opportunity. We must change the paradigm that appropriates and persistently exploits BIPOC creativity. This funding can help us invest in our communities, gathering up smart, successful, ethical, activist BIPOC “tycoons” and their mentees and networks to trade ideas with us and collaborate with us to develop a cultural radius, business plan and social contract that will make this movement unstoppable.

We have many partners. These four represent diverse organizations that reflect the scope and breadth of the type of partnerships we hold.

THE RABEN GROUP: We partnered with the visionary Raben Group to help us lead the planning and implementation of our Congressional briefing on Arts2Work in Washington, DC in November. 

BEAUTIFUL VENTURES: Beautiful Ventures, and CEO Melinda Weekes Laidlow is our lead DEI partner. Together, we are building new equity models for the creative industries and doing the deep visioning, strategy and implementation work needed to redefine the role of transformative arts organizations in the future.

THE SMITHSONIAN: The new Smithsonian Futures Museum engaged The Alliance as a lead partner on the opening film exhibition entitled “The Futures We Dream.” We have brought together a team of award-winning storytellers and community organizations to create short films that tell stories of hope, freedom and the future. Premiere November 2021.

NEW GROWTH GROUP: The New Growth team develops community and organizational strategic plans, designs and rolls out workforce development initiatives, and provides project management support. We partner with them on securing federal grant opportunities and developing new strategies for non-traditional career pathways.