The Alliance For Media

Alliance Youth Media Network: The Alliance Youth Media Network programs convene, connect, nurture and sustain strategic development in the Youth Media field. We support innovative and emerging models of practice within the fields of youth media, creative youth development, and media literacy. We do this through the collaborative production of a youth media magazine, ongoing Collective Action work, hosting national Video Roundtables and a global Youth Media Summit, mentoring a cohort of Youth Media Fellows each year, and supporting the leaders of a national network of youth media organizations. All of the programs of our Youth Media Network use an intergenerational, co-creative approach as a means to demonstrate the possibilities and impact of a range of youth and elders working collaboratively and (Continued on Schedule O) inclusively, interrogating power and privilege across program areas, with the goal of providing new models and emerging practices for the field. We also offer the Unlocking Creativity Community of Practice, a regular gathering of local and national media organizations that work intentionally with currently and formerly incarcerated individuals and justice-impacted youth. We convene monthly meetings for these organizations and offer opportunities for collaboration, funding, and exhibition throughout the year.

Innovation Studio: The Innovation Studio program supports the development of unique interactive digital media projects, platforms, tools and approaches to storytelling designed to foster strong, resilient creative communities. We think in systems, build replicable models, and take risks with new technology. Our teams are diverse, intergenerational and collaborative. Strategy, design, development, and prototyping in the Alliance Innovation Studio is customized uniquely for each project. We bring together a team of creative and tech experts based on the needs of the project; the central requirement for inclusion in the Innovation Studio is a commitment to sharing out the development process with the field and making the project available for replication in diverse communities and contexts. In every case, we will publish the code, share the data and provide templates or toolkits to enable meaningful and effective adoption. Projects developed in the Innovation Studio include the Open Archive Initiative, Alliance XR Gallery and Futures We Dream, a national creative collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution.