Homework 1: New Media Institution/Gallery/Museum

The Educational Video Center (EVC)

I learned about the Educational Video Center (EVC) from last year's Cross Cultural Conversations conference. Having the workshop with EVC not only taught me how to make a documentary with my iPhone and iMovie but also helped me to think about how I might incorporate digital technologies into my classroom in the future. Among many strategies suggested by EVC, rotating roles would be a great way for students to learn how to collaborate with others while developing different filming skills. Here is the short history of EVC and descriptions of its programs.

The EVC is a non-profit youth media organization whose mission is to teach documentary video as a means to develop the artistic, critical literacy, and career skills of young people while nurturing their idealism and commitment to social change. Founded in 1984, EVC has evolved from a single video workshop for adolescents in Manhattan's Lower East Side to become an internationally acclaimed leader in youth media education. EVC's teaching methodology brings together the powerful traditions of student-centered progressive education and independent community documentary. 

EVC began 24 years ago with a simple idea: put video cameras in the hands of young people from underserved communities and teach them to go out into the city, ask hard questions and tell stories about the world as they see it – with all its problems and possibilities. The result was immediate and successful. Students with histories of truancy were so engaged that they came to their video class early, stayed into evenings, and even came in during the weekends and vacations to finish their documentaries and meet the deadline of their premiere screening. Their documentaries were honest and gritty portraits of life at home, in school and in the streets of their neighborhoods: families living in East Harlem tenements without heat or hot water, South Bronx youth organizers for environmental justice, youth caught in the juvenile justice system, and teenage survivors of domestic and sexual violence. This was a life changing experience for the youth making these documentaries and for the parents, teachers and community audiences who watched them. These students who had never succeeded in school before began winning awards and scholarships and were hired to work in the media industry. 

Basic Youth Doc Workshop students get a hands-on tech workshop
from A&E Network's Parking Wars Segment Producer, Rick Lombardo

From this small video class in a Lower East Side alternative school, EVC grew into an award winning organization with four core programs: Documentary Workshop, YO-TV (Youth Organizers TV), External Education Programs (EEP), and Community Engagement. EVC was featured in the New York Times, on the Today Show and was twice honored at the White House with the prestigious President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities Coming Up Taller Award, presented annually to only ten cultural organizations in the country. EVC youth-produced documentaries have been broadcast on the NBC, ABC and PBS television networks. In addition, their tapes have won more than 100 awards nationally and internationally, including an Emmy.