20,000 Dialogues

20,000 Dialogues is a nationwide campaign to bring people of different faiths together using films about Muslims to stimulate discussion and promote understanding. It brings the concept of interfaith dialogue into the hands of ordinary people who want to make a positive difference. 20,000 Dialogues is a Unity Production Foundation (UPF) project in cooperation with Connecting Cultures, LLC.

Resource Link: http://www.20000dialogues.org

Abundance Project

Abundance is a community arts performance project about money as told through the stories of people in the United States. Culminating in an Off-Broadway production in the Spring of 2003, Abundance is written and directed by Marty Pottenger and produced by The Working Theatre. After a month-run in NYC, Abundance will tour the United States. A film about money will include excerpts from the project and the theater production, as well as cartoon and documentary footage.

Resource Link: http://abundanceproject.net

Active Voice

Active Voice is a nonprofit, fee-based service provider whose work is an outgrowth of promising practices developed by the Television Race Initiative (TRI). Active Voice creates campaigns based on powerful issue-driven films. AV campaigns encourage individuals and community groups to probe, discuss and take action on timely and relevant social justice issues. In collaboration with a wide range of partners, Active Voice creates companion materials and trains facilitators in how to use the films as catalysts for civic engagement, volunteerism and coalition building.

Resource Link: http://www.activevoice.net

American Documentary, Inc.

American Documentary, Inc. builds new audiences, educates viewers, and fosters sustained public discourse and activity around the contemporary social issues raised by P.O.V. (Point of View) documentary programming. Their film Girls Like Us, for example, used broadcast media to encourage adults to become aware of the issues affecting the young women in their lives.

Resource Link: http://amdoc.org

Animating Democracy Initiative

Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, fosters arts and cultural activity that encourages and enhances civic engagement and dialogue. It is based on the premise that democracy is animated when an informed public is engaged in the issues affecting people's daily lives. Launched in fall 1999, ADI is a four-year programmatic initiative of Americans for the Arts which fosters artistic activity that encourages civic dialogue on important contemporary issues.

Resource Link: http://www.artsusa.org/animatingdemocracy

Animating Democracy: The Artistic Imagination as a Force in Civic Dialogue

Barbara Schaffer Bacon, Cheryl Yuen and Pam Korza, Animating Democracy Initiative of Americans for the Arts. Americans for the Arts, 1999.

This report reveals pivotal and innovating roles that the arts can play in the renewal of civic dialogue as well as challenges faced by arts and cultural organizations as they engage in this work.

Resource Link: http://www.artsusa.org/animatingdemocracy

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company is a multicultural company committed to performing innovative, collaborative works of dance-theater. The Company has distinguished itself through its teaching and performing in various universities, festivals and under the aegis of government agencies such as the US Information Agency (in Eastern Europe, Asia and South East Asia). Audiences of approximately 50,000 to 100,000 annually see the Company across the country and around the world.

Resource Link: http://www.billtjones.org

Center for Digital Storytelling

The Center for Digital Storytelling is a California-based non-profit arts organization rooted in the art of personal storytelling. We assist young people and adults in using the tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value the stories of individuals and communities, in ways that improve all our lives. Digital stories serve as touchstones to dialogue.

Resource Link: http://storycenter.org

City Lore

City Lore is a nonprofit membership organization, founded in 1986 to produce programs and publications that convey the richness of New York City's cultural heritage. City Lore?’s staff includes folklorists, historians, anthropologists, and ethnomusicologists, all of whom specialize in the creation of programs and materials for public education and enjoyment. In addition to staff projects, affiliated individuals and organizations work through City Lore to produce independent films, exhibits, and other media projects.

Resource Link: http://www.citylore.org

COAL

COAL was a two-year project (1992-94) conceived by former faculty member Mary Kathleen Ernst that included a commissioned musical piece and residency by the composer, Judith Shatin, at West Virginia's Shepherd College. The purpose of COAL was to deepen the community's knowledge of and relationship to the arts and 20th century music through a project that had resonance in the region. Shatin's statewide research and interviews with citizens of West Virginia focused her residency on mining history and related contemporary issues.

Resource Link: http://www.americansforthearts.org/animatingdemocracy/labs/lab_040.asp

Immigrant Body

Immigrant Body was a year-long project of filmmaker Maritza Mosquera that focused on individual and group dialogues between immigrants from all over the world. The installation included video, text and portrait prints. Mosquera uses listening and dialogue to gather text and images for the projects.

Internews Interactive (InterAct)

The widespread use of digital communication devices has created a nation not only clamoring for 15 minutes of fame on national television, but capable of connecting to it. InterAct's mission is to help Americans gain a place among the pundits and politicians who create public policy, using the most powerful medium on earth, broadcast television. The Public Conversations Project partnered with InterAct on RedBlue - an Internet project that gives Americans, whether ?“red,?” ?“blue?” or ?“purple,?” a way to connect, explore differences, and find out what we have in common.

Resource Link: http://www.citizenschannel.org/

Invisible Children: Rough Cut

The United Nations estimates that 300,000 children are currently fighting in conflicts around the world and hundreds of thousands more are members of armed forces - either being trained for combat or used as laborers. Physical, sexual and emotional abuse is commonplace. Most of these children were forcible conscripted or abducted by fighting forces to become instruments of war, to kill or be killed. Without exception, the experience has devastating effects on their physical, psychological and intellectual development. What started out as a film-making adventure in Africa transformed into much more when three young Americans' travels took a divine turn, and they found themselves stranded in Northern Uganda. They discovered children being kidnapped nightly from their homes and subsequently forced to become fight as child soldiers. This film is dedicated to exposing this tragic, and amazingly untold story.

Resource Link: http://www.invisiblechildren.com

Judith Helfand Productions

Helfand is a filmmaker/organizer who has worked as a documentary producer and educator for the past ten years. Her autobiographical documentary called "A Healthy Baby Girl" chronicled the filmmaker's experience with cervical cancer. Shot over five years, this one-hour video-diary explores what happens when science, marketing, and corporate power intervene in the deepest family relationships.

Resource Link: http://www.artsusa.org/AnimatingDemocracy/labs/lab_028.asp

Police and Kids of Color: Building Community Bridges Through Theater

Race Talks.

Race Talk's video documentary titled "RACETALK: Collaboration Through Conversation" (1996), chronicles how a law school seminar builds trust, deals with controversy, fosters constructive conflict, and transforms participants into effective problem solvers. The video "Police and Kids of Color: Building Community Bridges Through Theater" explores these ideas in the context of a police academy.

Resource Link: http://www.racetalks.org/about/index.html

Preview Forum

Preview Forum is a nationwide dialogue project that uses national media from broadcasters such as PBS, HBO, Discovery Channel, Comedy Central and CNN, as well as theatrically released documentaries to catalyze community dialogue between active citizens, formal and informal leaders, educators and journalists on social issues. Twice each year the project holds screenings and discussions in over 300 communities. The screenings are built around a selected theme that has relevance both locally and nationally. To date over 1500 organizations and institutions and their members, along with over 1000 newsrooms have participated.

Resource Link: http://www.previewforum.com

Roundtable, Inc.

Roundtable, Inc. is a production company that focuses on building social capital. Roundtable produces public engagement projects in several media (television, radio, web, print, books) and partners with other production companies to help increase the impact of their work. They form regional coalitions for each project and provide online training for facilitators.

Resource Link: http://www.roundtablemedia.com

Sculpture Chicago - The Tele-Vecindario Project

Tele-Vecindario (1992-93) was a project commissioned as part of Sculpture Chicago's Culture in Action public art program. Artist Inigo Manglano-Ovalle aimed to transform and reclaim a neighborhood street that was territorialized by gangs. A Street Level Video Block Party was the major component of S-LV's multiyear work. The project included multiple video dialogues among neighbors, using 75 monitors, involving four rival gangs and S-LV members, with an audience of more than 1,000 people. The artist used video to engage the neighborhood, enlist students, meet additional people, and learn the terrain.

Resource Link: http://www.artsusa.org/AnimatingDemocracy/labs/lab_025.asp

Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North

Ebb Pod Productions, 2007.

Traces of the Trade is a feature documentary in which Producer/Director Katrina Browne tells the story of her New England ancestors, the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. Cameras follow as Browne and nine fellow descendants undertake a journey of discovery to Rhode Island, Ghana, and Cuba. Retracing the steps of the notorious Triangle Trade, we uncover a family's, a region's, and a nation's hidden past. Simultaneously, viewers will follow descendants of the DeWolf family as they grapple with the contemporary legacy of slavery, not only for black Americans, but for themselves as white Americans. The film is intended as a catalyst for dialogue and education through screenings in communities and classrooms, and discussion guides and other materials are being developed.

Resource Link: http://www.tracesofthetrade.org