One of our aims for this framework is to lead the creation of a community of practice that moves the creation and distribution of media, art and cultural assets from awareness to action.  So we have created a space for you to discuss ideas and best practices related to transmedia and social change.  Please visit the Idea Exchange link on this page to explore each other’s projects, content and social change solutions.

Lina Srivastava will be speaking on a panel entitled “The People Formerly Known as the Audience,” at NAMAC’s 2009 Conference, “Commonwealth,” on August 27, 2009.

The panel explores: Social media and other democratic technologies have shifted our thinking about the relationships between producers, consumers, and distributors of media and art. Join us for some leading-edge thinking and examples of participatory projects — and discuss what the future of art and media looks like when it’s built in collaboration with the public.

We will be at DIY DAYS in Philadelphia this week, Saturday, August 1, to run the transmedia activism workshop.
DIY DAYS – fund :: create :: distribute :: sustain
How do we sustain ourselves as storytellers in this day of shifting distribution systems? How do we monetize our work and get the word? Presented by the WorkBook Project – DIY DAYS aims to answer these questions with a day of panels, roundtable discussions and workshops: A look at how to fund, create, and distribute and sustain.

For more info: http://diydays.com/

Here’s the presentation from our workshop at the Open Video Conference on Transmedia Activism: Creating a cross-media platform for social issue campaigns. Our workshop examined opportunities to create social change using online tools and cross-media strategies by presenting the basic structure of a transmedia activism campaign and an illustrative case study, Boomtown Babylon, a 30-minute interactive multi-authored web documentary that encompasses a wide range of places, people, and stories to present a participatory journey through the most acute extremes of the global urbanization phenomenon. In addition to mapping out the framework for a campaign, we also featured a “hands on” segment whereby all workshop participants starting to build a transmedia platform campaign with a focus on: issue and goal identification, story universe construction and content distribution.

OVC Workshop facilitators: Lina Srivastava, Lina Srivastava Consulting, LLC; Lotje Sodderland, director, Boomtown Babylon; Vicki Callahan, Associate Professor, UW-Milwaukee

Sleepers of Sao Paulo. The homeless © Carlos Cazalis http://www.cazalis.org

BOOMTOWN BABYLON

As the global urban population expands at a rate of 3 million people per week, the gulf between the haves and have-nots is ever widening in cities around the world. While the wealthy retreat to safe, gated communities, the poor are forced into marginal slums, where the destruction of social capital through poverty, civil strife and displacement, cast a grim future.

Boomtown Babylon is a 30-minute interactive web documentary that offers a participatory journey through the most acute extremes of the global urbanization phenomenon, inviting the viewer to embark on a compelling ride from the slums and pavements of the poorest neighbourhoods, to the private mansions of the very wealthy, in six of the world’s most divided cities, meeting local characters as they navigate through each location.

A non-linear format will lead the user from the documentary’s opening sequence to its conclusion, via a series of multiple, inter-changeable paths and optional, additional interactive features.

The Boomtown Babylon film-making process is based on a pioneering online platform which allows local film-makers living in such cities as Lagos, Paris, and Phnom Penh to collaborate remotely on the project.

Produced by Honkytonk Films (Paris), Boomtown Babylon will offer a seminal, globally-accessible public platform to address the big issues facing city-dwellers around the world, using innovative online technologies and high calibre filmmaking to draw a broad spectrum of viewers.

For more information download the documentary proposal (Pdf) or visit http://www.minilot.tv

Shanghai China © Greg Girard http://www.greggirard.com