AMC2010 Sessions!

SEE ALSO: schedule overview | workshop tracks.

Building Blocks of Music Production and Beatmaking (Kid Friendly)

Presenters: Lisa Lust, Bobbie Harris, Tristan Tucker & Christopher Lee, Street Level Youth Media
Are you interested in expressing yourself through music but confused about the different types of production tools available or even how to begin?  Come join Street-Level Youth Media in a workshop that will get you into a music-making frame of mind quickly—whether you’re looking to create music through a beat machine, production software, or your voice.  This session will cover various hardware, software, and writing techniques that are used in music and audio production, as well as concepts that are transferable to other creative platforms.  We will provide hardware and software demonstrations of Ableton Live, GarageBand, and the MPC 2000xl.  By the end of the session, you will see the bigger picture involved in the creative process and no longer be intimidated by the emerging technologies used in music production.  Finish off your projects on Sunday in the Music Production and Beat Making Meet-up!

Cultivating Our Digital Ecology: From a Community Vision to a Broadband Plan

Presenters: Juliet Fink, Ed.M, Philadelphia FIGHT; Danielle Chynoweth, Prometheus Radio Project; Lottie Spady, East Michigan Environmental Action Council; Denise Wellons-Glover, the Family Place
Moderator: Hannah Sassaman, Allied Media Projects
TRACK: Media Policy for Social Justice
Following a strategy session at AMC2009, a number of AMC participants helped form broad coalitions in their communities to apply for federal funding to expand the Internet. Some have already received grants and are beginning to implement their vision. In this session, we will draw on those experiences to examine how we develop community-led visions for large-scale projects and turn those visions into workable plans. From our experience working around Internet policy and infrastructure, we will share the general lessons we've learned about community coalitions. We will discuss how to use grant opportunities as organizing opportunities that have an impact whether or not you are awarded. We will discuss when it make sense to pursue grants, and when you can take direct, immediate action to implement your vision with the resources you already have.

Comics: How to Make 'em (Kids Only)

Presenter: Josh Sanchez
TRACK: Kids!
This session is not just for "artists."  Anyone can make comics! Comic books and comic strips are everywhere theses days and are a perfect way to tell a story, maybe even your own story. What are comics? Why do people like them? How can I make my own? Come learn about some of the different styles of comics and find out the many ways people create them. Then try your ideas out and draw one.  No artistic skills necessary. Even if you can't draw a stick figure, you can draw a comic.

Kids Club Meet-up (Kids Only)

TRACK: Kids!
Do you want to hang out with other kids (ages 9 - 13) during the AMC?  Kids Club will be a space for everyone who is waaay too old for childcare, but not quite a high schooler.  We will go to workshops together, make art, play kick ball and 4-square, and work on Kids newspaper together throughout the weekend.  Meet-up with us in Room A each day to join the club.

Seed Bombs as a Form of Media (Kids Only)

Presenter: Kibibi Blount-Dorn
TRACK: Kids!
Create explosive seed and soil capsules for hassle-free germination in abandoned lots, road mediums, or any hard-to-reach nooks. Reduce blight, heal the earth and transform your natural media landscape with this fun and simple way to cultivate wildflowers in your city.

Let's Draw! With the Beehive (Kids Only)

Presenters: The Beehive Collective
TRACK: Kids!
The session will begin with an informal question and answer period with one of the large-scale banners laid on the floor for children to walk on and investigate. After discussing ways to tell stories with pictures, the children will engage in a collaborative drawing session drawing on one piece of paper together with various mediums. The drawing with attempt to answer the question "What is the USA?". This open ended question will allow children to use their imaginations to investigate what exactly the USA is. Is it a person? Is it a food? It is a kind of music? Is it a place? How many places are there within the USA? What do they look like? Which ones do you call home? The drawing will then go on display during the USSF the following week.

Arabic Drumming (Kid Friendly)

Presenter: Joe Namy
TRACK: Kids!
Learn dumbeck (hour-glass shaped Arabic drum) techniques and rhythms from across the Middle East.  Ages 5-adult. 

Build a Mini Radio Transmitter

Presenter: Maggie Avener, Prometheus Radio Project
TRACK: Radio Active: From the Streets to the Airwaves
Building a radio transmitter is a great way to learn about basic electronics and radio waves. In this session, we'll talk about some of the theory behind radio transmission and build our own circuit boards to turn into transmitters later on. No radio or electronics background is needed! This is an introduction to building a mini radio transmitter , so plan on coming back for 2-3 hours later in the weekend to finish your transmitter.

Game Design Meet-Up (Kid Friendly)

TRACK: Do-It-Yourself Technology
This will be a creative station where participants can work on games they started in earlier sessions or pick-up additional advanced game-design skills.  

Open Internet Meet-Up

Join Mozilla in a media lab meet-up to put the walk in the talk. Help build classes for the Peer 2 Peer University, a Mozilla Drumbeat project. In this meet-up participants will design an open technology class together for the community of AMC participants.

Music Production and Beat Making Meet-up (Kid Friendly)

Finish off the projects you started in earlier sessions so that they can be showcased during the AMC closing ceremony!

Street Art Bumps Your Campaign

Presenter: César Maxit, Ruckus Society
TRACK: Rad Art: 2-D images for 3-D movements
Participants will learn how to use inexpensive technologies to create and install street art that amplifies the message of grassroots campaigns. Using regular cameras, photocopy machines, paint and wheat paste we will explore various techniques to easily design, cheaply print, and quickly deploy street art. These techniques create captivating propaganda, mixing cheap black and white digital reproduction with painting and cutting by hand. Case studies will highlight Empower DC’s Public Property Campaign, Keep Franklin Shelter Open Campaign, CASA de Maryland, School of the America’s Watch, and Rainforest Action Network.

Open Source for Open Communities: How Participatory Technology can Empower Everyone

Presenters: Anne Jonas, the Participatory Culture Foundation; Nathaniel James, The Mozilla Foundation - Drumbeat; Kirk Kimmel; Pixelpowrrr
Moderator: Geoff Hing
TRACK: Do-It-Yourself Technology
Do you have a desire to use free, open source software but don't know where to start? Are you an open source expert looking to build community with other people working on awesome open source projects?  Are you a media-maker wondering how open technology relates to open licensing systems, such as Creative Commons? This session is for everyone who loves openness - on the Internet and in our daily lives.   We will hear brief presentations from technologists and organizers working on open source projects.  They will break-down how their projects advance a vision for a more open world.  Then we will solicit anonymous questions from the audience on slips of paper - from "how are racial and gender assumptions built into technology?" to "can we collaborate on an open source artificial intelligence robot?"–no questions will go un-answered!  Then our highly-skilled moderator will sort the questions into over-arching categories.  In small groups around the room, we will model the kind of open source communities of learning we want to see - answering our collective questions about different aspects of open technology.  Participants will walk away ready to apply what they've learned in the open source collaboration station in the AMC Media Lab throughout the weekend.

Collaborative Mapping as Community Media Part 1

Presenters: Jacob Brancasi, Open Sound New Orleans; Christina Jenkins, Dot-to-Dot; Ken Srdjak, Matrix Theatre Company
TRACK: Do-It-Yourself Technology
Digital maps have become a recurring feature of our media landscape. And, as always, community participation in the representations of their own neighborhoods and cities remains critical for collective understanding, interaction and consciousness. As such, collaborative digital mapping has become an increasingly powerful way for communities to reimagine and to reclaim space as they share, dialogue and define community evolution on their own terms. We'll look at two projects – Open Sound New Orleans, a soundmap of the city, and Matrix Theatre Company's Eco-Arts project, "Ghostwaters," using greenmapping in Detroit – to consider some of the strategies and practices for mapping community-generated content online.  Participants will begin to brainstorm ways of applying lessons from these projects to their own community mapping projects.  In Collaborative Mapping Part 2, they will have the chance to start building their own maps! 

Collaborative Mapping as Community Media Part 2

End to End Media Production with Open Source Software

Presenters: Kirk Kimmel; Anne Jonas, the Participatory Culture Foundation
TRACK: Do-It-Yourself Technology
Starting with just a video camera in hand, we will demonstrate a video production tool chain that uses only Open Source software. We will cover topics such as: uploading video to the PC, verifying video files and codecs used, loading video into the non-linear editor (NLE), the editing process, compositing, encoding the final video product and publishing online. We will cover online publishing with Creative Commons and online distribution and aggregation of content via projects like Miro. We will demonstrate online resources such as openmediaforge.org and ccmixter.org.  Questions are encouraged throughout this session!  

Cultural Organizing for Land Rights and Public Space

Presenters: The Esperanza Peace & Justice Center
We are the survivors of cultural genocide. The white men who run San Antonio want us to enact a  “culture” and “landscape” for the white minority and the growing tourist industry. Our resistance must be shaped by the values of our antepasados, the wisdom and creativity of our sabias, and the practice of interdependence reflected in our community traditions. For almost a decade, the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center has collected oral histories and historic photographs that shape a community effort to rediscover and reclaim our history, identity and strength.  By centering our sabias/elders as community historians, archivists, and experts, we learn a history excluded from our textbooks and rediscover the beauty and values of ways of being with and for each other that will help us build a just society. Folks from San Antonio and Detroit will share visions, values and cultural organizing strategies to strengthen our communities in our resistance against displacement and loss of public space.

Getting to Know the Game: How to Turn Participatory Research into Animated Computer Games and More!

Young Women's Empowerment Project released our youth run research study called "Girls do what they have to do to Survive: Illuminating Methods Used by Girls in the Sex Trade to Fight Back and Heal" atAMC2009. Come get an update about our ongoing research and about the amazing media projects we created from our research findings. From our animated computer game, to our zine-style tool kit and our homemade t-shirts and inspired audio tracks–our research is alive and we want you to feel it with us!

Medios Caminantes Forum to Share Experiences and Build Networks / Medios Caminantes: Foro de Intercambio de Experiencias y Construcción de Redes

Facilitator: John Jairo Lugo, Unidad Latina En Acción
TRACK: Medios Caminantes: Medios Creando, Fronteras Derrumbando
This session will bring together 17 organizations who are using radio and other forms of community media to organize within Latino and Carribbean immigrant communities in the U.S.  We will create an open space through which each organization will display their work and reflect on the questions:  How are we integrating media into our organizing? What is the social and economic context in which we work and how does that impact our work? and What are the obstacles we face in creating media and using it for social transformation? From there, we will strategize on how to build a national network of immigrant media organizations in the U.S. that will help us collectively overcome those obstacles.  Our goal is to build a network that has strong links and intersections with community media and social movements in Latin America, as well as with other national networks and movements in the U.S. 

Este foro abierto reunirá a 17 organizaciones que están utilizando la radio y otros medios de comunicación comunitarios para organizarse en comunidades inmigrantes latinas y caribeñas en los EE.UU. Estamos creando un espacio abierto a través del cual cada organización mostrará su trabajo y reflexionará sobre las siguientes preguntas: ¿Cómo usamos nuestros propios medios de comunicación en nuestro trabajo de organización? ¿Cuál es el contexto social y económico en el que trabajamos y cómo influye sobre nuestro trabajo? y ¿Cuáles son los obstáculos que tenemos en la creación de medios de comunicación y su uso para la transformación social? A partir de ahí, vamos a establecer estrategias sobre cómo construir una red nacional de organizaciones de medios de inmigrantes en los EE.UU. que nos ayude a superar los obstáculos colectivamente. Nuestro objetivo es formar una red que tiene fuertes vínculos e intersecciones con los medios comunitarios y movimientos sociales en América Latina, así como con otras redes nacionales y movimientos en los EE.UU.

Digital Justice Coalition Meet-Up

Using Our Cell Phones to Create Our Own Media by Sharing Our Worlds & Documenting Injustices / Usando Nuestros Teléfonos Celulares Para Crear Nuestros Propios Medios Mostrando Nuestro Mundo y Documentando Injusticias

TRACK: Medios Caminantes: Medios Creando, Fronteras Derrumbando
Mobile Voices (vozmob) is a platform for immigrant workers in Los Angeles to create stories about their lives and communities directly from cell phones. Vozmob appropriates technology to create power in our communities and to gain participation in the digital public sphere. In this workshop, we’ll show participants how to post multimedia stories directly to the web from a cell phone, and we’ll talk about how this can be used as part of popular communication and as an organizing tool! We will read our reality to write our own stories!

Voces Moviles (vozmob) es una plataforma para trabajadores inmigrantes en Los Angeles para crear historias acerca de sus vidas y comunidades directamente de sus celulares. Vozmob se apropia de la tecnología para crear poder en nuestras comunidades y tener gran participación en la esfera digital publica.  En este taller les mostraremos a los participantes como enviar historias con multi-medios directamente a la red desde un teléfono celular, y hablaremos de cómo esto puede ser usado como parte de la comunicación popular y como una herramienta organizativa.  Leeremos nuestra realidad para escribir nuestras historias!

Our Hearts are Bigger than their Maps  

TRACK: Pop-Ed Power: Intergalactic Teaching and Learning for Liberation
Youth from Brooklyn will take workshop participants on a journey to Palestine and back, examining the connections between the struggles young people face in both places. From the growing use of prison and military/police brutality as a means of social control to the ongoing colonization and gentrification of indigenous lands and communities of color, student facilitators will use digital media and interactive activities to highlight connections they have made and invite participants to explore connections in their own lives.  Come learn tools to organize and teach about Palestine in your own community.

SHOW SOME SAS: A Know Your Rights Video by and for Queer Youth of Color

Presenters: Tree Alexander, Ileana Gonzalez, Andrea Ritchie, Nadia Qurashi and Sydney Tarzwell, Streetwise & Safe (SAS), New York City 
TRACK: Trans & Queer Youth Media
Streetwise & Safe (SAS) is a multi-pronged youth leadership development and organizing initiative involving LGBTQQ youth of color who have experienced policing and criminalization in the context of "quality of life" policing and policing of sex work in New York City. In this workshop, we will share This is My Truth, our unique "know your rights" video and curriculum which explores the intersection of gender and sexuality, and police misconduct and abuse.  Building on the video and discussion, workshop participants will collectively brainstorm possibilities for nationally coordinated, locally-based advocacy around policing policies and practices which target and adversely impact queer youth of color.

Rights, Access, Power: Broadband for the People

Presenters: Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net)
TRACK: Media Policy for Social Justice
Our nation is undergoing a massive communications restructuring that is exacerbating gaps in jobs and healthcare, education and employment–all of which are moving online.  Yet, one third of US residents do not have access to high speed Internet, an estimated 93 million individuals.  Of these, the vast majority are poor, rural, migrants and people of color.  To close the digital divide, grassroots organizations are working to build transformational policy change from the margins to the center–working for “rights, access, and power” for marginalized communities.  Join us for an interactive panel where you can learn about the laws and policies that will most affect your community--and how they relate to jobs, housing, healthcare, immigration and education--as well as what tools you will need and what campaigns you can join to create social change.  

This Is How We Do It: An Introduction to Disability Justice  

TRACK: The Art & Practice of Disability Justice
Disability justice is an emerging framework around how disability is connected with value, capitalism, and independence. Come to this interactive workshop, led by two disabled queer women of color, to learn about how ableism works and what we can do to combat it in our movements, actions and bodies.

Indigenous Media and Technology Track Talking Circle

Facilitators: Seventh Generation Indigenous Visionaries; Shereena Baker & MC ISAGE
TRACK: Indigenous Media and Technology
This is opening/grounding space for the Indigenous Media and Technology Track.  We will perform a blessing and a song, then facilitate a talking circle around the overarching themes and goals of the track.   

Indigenous Media-Organizing to Address Climate Change

Presenters: Shereena Baker and Seventh Generation Indigenous Visionaries
TRACK: Indigenous Media and Technology
In this workshop, organizers from the American Indian/Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group will share communications lessons from the process of organizing the Mystic Lake Accord and creating the declaration that was taken to Cochabamba, Bolivia. We will screen films created by students from 5 tribal colleges, in partnership with NASA, about how climate change has impacted their communities–from weather patterns to migratory patterns affecting ceremonial traditions. We will explain how these videos will be used for education in the mainstream climate change movement, giving more validity to indigenous theories and practices around environmental sustainability.

Palestine is Turtle Island: Indigenous Organizing to End Occupation    

We Hear You! A Live Video Conference with Youth in Palestine

Presenters: Members of the 2009 Indigenous Youth Delegation to Palestine
TRACK: Indigenous Media and Technology
This live video conference is the next step in an ongoing solidarity project connecting youth, artists, and educators in Brooklyn, Palestine, Kansas, and California. Students from Bushwick Community High School (BCHS) and youth in refugee camps in Palestine have produced multiple media projects about colonization and strategies of resistance (murals, music videos, digital stories, and short films) which have been translated and exchanged. At AMC2009, we hosted a video-conference meeting between SNAG and 7GIV and youth in Palestine in advance of their delegation there in the summer of 2009.  This year, we will reflect on the past year and strategize for joint actions on both lands in honor of Columbus Day. Join us so you can figure out how to plug in!

Performance Arts for Self-determination  

  TRACK: Indigenous Media and Technology
Native Youth in 2010 are a chosen generation. People of prophecy say that this is a generation of healing. The Seventh Generation. The youth of today have a lot of battles stacked up against them, including alcohol, drugs, teen suicide, poverty and negative statistics.  We choose to use the gifts of cultural awareness, spirituality, music and movement to support the empowerment and self-determination of native youth. In this interactive, performance-based workshop, we will share our process for using the arts as a tool for healing from historical trauma, building self-esteem and holding tight to our cultures.  We invite AMC participants to come prepared to share their own processes.  Collectively, we will expand all of our tools for self-determination through the arts. 

It's Our Music the World Lives and Dies To: Creating a Music-Based Economy for Detroit's Future

Detroit artists perform to sold-out stadiums from France to Japan to Brazil.  But too often, shows by those same artists in Detroit will barely reach capacity.  Is that because Detroiters are broke? Or they don't recognize good music?  Or they have so much talent around them they just take their artists for granted?  This round-table aims to explode the myth that that local artists need to escape in order to succeed.  We believe we can nurture a vibrant music-based economy in Detroit that, in turn, nurtures artists and strengthens communities.  In this panel, we will consider: how do we develop audiences for local music? what will nurture a community of support and innovation among Detroit artists–across all genres?  What role will Detroit music play in changing the landscape of what is considered "black music"?  This round-table discussion will include insights from internationally-known Detroit musicians, scholars of black rock, hip-hop journalists, community music venue owners, online strategists, cooperative-economics record labels and many others. It will then break out into small groups to focus on developing transformational actions we can take together.

How Social Media can Amplify Palestinian Voices and Support the Global Movement for BDS   

With growing media consolidation, it is more important than ever to interrupt mainstream media frames about the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Activists are ramping up their capacity to challenge the pro-occupation PR machine, forward the Palestinian narrative to the American public and make visible Jewish opposition to the occupation.  Activists from Bil’in to Los Angeles are using social media to shape highly coordinated, engaging, and innovative campaigns in response to the 1995 Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).  From the Civil Rights movement, the UFW grape boycott, the campaign against South African Apartheid, to the boycott of the State of Arizona: BDS is a powerful strategy that can be made even more powerful with tactical use of media.  This workshop is a space to share and learn tactics for using media in conjunction with BDS campaigns. Come prepared to plan actions and walk away ready to organize around BDS in your community and on your campus!

TOUR: Graffiti and Public Art in Detroit  (Kid Friendly)

TOUR: Another Detroit is Happening–A Look at Detroit's Industrial Past and Visionary Future 

Cut & Copy: Create a 1-minute Radio Story

Radio as a Tool to Transform, Organize and Build Community

What is community radio's role in community transformation?  How are radio stations across the country using innovative programming and distribution models to strengthen community organizing?  In this session, presenters will share lessons from their experiences producing radio that advances social justice.  They will share clips of key radio stories from their communities, telling the 'story of the story' – how it was produced and what impact it had on local organizing efforts.  They will also offer practical tools for anyone interested in starting their own community radio programming.  These will include: production budgets, software and equipment considerations, staff and volunteer structures and key partnerships. Participants will walk away prepared to initiate radio programs in their hometowns that can serve as catalysts for community development and civic transformation.

Media Tools for Creating Safe Communities: A Science Fair 

Did you ever attend or participate in a Science Fair? Modeled after these fun, hands-on and awe-inspiring experiences, we present a media-rich exhibition of resources and tools developed during our experiments to create safety and justice in our communities. The Creating Safe Communities Science Fair is designed to equip you with tools, resources, and connections to inspire, launch and sustain transformative anti-violence initiatives in your own communities. Learn hot-to skills from innovative anti-violence projects that use arts and media in their work, network with artists and mediamakers with performances and screenings that you can bring to your city and experience videos, web sites and other media (available for free or for sale) that you can take home from the AMC! Feel free to drop by at any time during the session and stay for as long as you like.

Safe in Our Skin: A Paradigm Shift

Every day people are changing the meaning of "safety."  We are choosing each other over the state, intervening, standing up, taking care of each other, managing to make love and life out of the most difficult choices ever. Those of us in communities that are most targeted and impacted by the Prison Industrial Complex cannot afford to consent to the state’s strategy of throwing away our lives. Those of us surviving economic, physical, sexual and gendered violence cannot afford the silence of our friends. This session is about acknowledging our everyday practices as a part of a large-scale paradigm shift in the meaning and methods of safety.  We will make the intimate work of learning how to trust and lean on each other more impactful by documenting and articulating it as the paradigm shift that it is. We will do this by quilting a visual representation of the self-determining actions that we know about and participating in a poetic exercise about how we name and communicate about this work that we are doing.

Power of StoryTelling

Storytelling allows individuals and communities to archive experiences, heal and collectively remember. It also can be a powerful tool in transforming communities and challenging power structures. In this workshop, we will explore cutting edge story-gathering practices that utilize a wide range of media, from theater to video to digital storytelling. We will focus-in on examples of storytelling projects that are confronting interpersonal violence.  In small groups, participants will draw lessons from the examples provided and brainstorm ways of applying those lessons in their own work and the broader movement.

Chain Of Change: Online Tools For City-Wide Youth Organizing Against Violence  

Chain of Change, a Beyondmedia Education initiative, organizes youth across community boundaries to create and broadcast media that expose the roots of violence. ChainofChange.com is a forum for youth-led discussion of the many forms of violence youth face including relationship violence, bullying, discrimination against people with disabilities, institutional violence, street harassment, gun violence, Internet predators & media violence. Through story sharing and collaboration, participants in the Chain of Change intergenerational workshop will learn how to create and use alternative media for social justice actions against violence. Participants will learn the basic skills of video, photography, blogging and using their cell phones as a tool for peace campaigns through hands-on activities. They will then produce their own media expressing their thoughts, experiences, and feelings on violence and learn how to use their media as tools for preventative and curative anti-violence activism.

From "My Story" to "Our Story": Collective Narrative Campaigns to End the Prison Industrial Complex

Online Infrastructure for Media-based Organizing Against the Prison Industrial Complex

Poverty Scholarship 101: Redefining Media, Education & Scholarship From Our Lived Experiences

The Strategy of Art: Cultural Production & Popular Education

TRACK: Pop-Ed Power: Intergalactic Teaching and Learning for Liberation
How can we use our art strategically, and our strategies artistically in transforming the landscape of our communities? This cohort of incredible artist-activists will discuss community organizing through the art they produce and distribute, and share specifically how popular education is a part of the their process and projects. They will show examples of their work by screening video clips, kicking rhymes and poetry, and projecting murals. There will also be examples of lessons and workshops that have been created around this art and a chance to help the artists create new learning tools using the art they present in the session! Last year, Invincible brought together a session focused on organizing through community studios and performance spaces. This year, we are continuing to build on that conversation that was started and focus on art as part of popular education-based organizing. Educators, organizers and cultural producers are all welcome to share in this cypher about the ways we can effectively weave together education, organizing, and cultural production in our daily lives and work.

For Us, By Us: Using Media as a Tool for LGBTQ Youth Organizing

From Your Mind to the Mic to the World: Basics of Transmission from Old-Fashioned Radio to High Tech Streaming

PUPPET UPRISING: A Two-Part Workshop on the Power of Puppetry as Media for Social Change (Kid Friendly)

Philadelphia’s Shoddy Puppet Company brings the ancient art of using images to tell stories into the forum of 21st century media via this two-part performance workshop. First we perform, “Fables of Flight & Falling,” a beautiful and humorous series of parables about a girl with a stone tied round her belly, a scarecrow who’s afraid of birds, and a mule often mistaken for a lady. The show highlights the use of art and theater to tackle complex issues like gender, war, racism, poverty and privilege, while offering space for viewers to insert their own ideas and hopes for possible solutions. “Fables of Flight & Falling” also models centuries-old techniques of using art to tell stories that resonate with people of any age.

In part two of this workshop, participants will have a go at making short shows using one of four different puppet techniques: cantastoria (storytelling with painted banners), toy theater (storytelling with collages of flat moving images), shadow puppetry (storytelling with articulated silhouettes), and object theater (telling stories by animating objects from everyday life). We will give attention to both visual and performative artistry, as well as what makes a good story and how to tell it in a compelling way. By the end of the workshop, everyone will have made and performed a little show using ordinary household materials.

How to Create a Gender Inclusive Online Game (Kid Friendly)

Presenters: Mindy Faber, Open Youth Networks, Interactive Arts and Media Department, Columbia College; Emily Kuehn, School of Art Institute of Chicago
TRACK: Do-It-Yourself Technology
This hands-on workshop emphasizes new open source technologies such as Scratch and Alice that allow students to design online games and 3D virtual worlds that have direct relevance to everyday experiences, character roles and relationships. Using simple to use drag and drop programming tools, participants will create an animated story and game environment centered on gender justice and social change. You will also learn how social values can be embedded, not only into the content of the story but into the mechanics of the game itself. Participants will be able to continue working on their online games in the Media Lab throughout the AMC and finished games will be showcased on AMC website.

Intro to Electronics and Noise Music (Kid Friendly)

This workshop will give you an introduction to basic electronics, electricity, components, sound, oscillators, microphones and synthesizers.  Participants will choose their own adventure: learn how to build a basic synthesizer that will allow you to create all kinds of tweakable noise - or learn how to build your own contact microphone, that will allow you to amplify and distort any sound you desire...You'll leave with your own noise machine, a fatter brain, and happy ears!
 

The Build-Your-Own-Website Workshop: A Two-Part Open Source Adventure

In the first half of this adventurous workshop, we'll make our own Wordpress-powered websites from scratch. Wordpress is a feature-rich, user-friendly platform for websites and blogs. In the second half of this workshop, we'll make our own Drupal-powered websites from scratch. Drupal is a powerful, flexible platform for websites that require more advanced features (such as multiple blogs, or customized fields for content). No experience needed - this workshop is beginner-friendly! Together we'll install the software, style it with CSS code, manage users and content, make it more accessible, and add custom features using plugins. Each participant will leave with a freshly made website (hosted by pixelpowrrr), instructional zines, and access to long-term support. This workshop is ideal for DIY-lovers who have never made a website before, who want a more modern & usable platform for their site, or who want to develop their Wordpress skills. Bring your imagination and your laptop! (Extra laptops will be available.)

Super Computer Build

Learn how to build a computer from recycled parts! Back by popular demand, this workshop will take you through all the steps you need to equip your home or community center with affordable, open source computers, demystifying technology and saving the environment in the process! In this workshop you will learn how to identify what parts of an old computer are worth salvaging, how to re-build a PC, how to install free, open source software and how to use and train others on the Linux operating system. After the workshop we will continue building computers downstairs in the Media Lab throughout the whole AMC weekend. The computers we build  will go towards building an Open Source Linux computer lab at Urban Network Bookstore in Detroit's Northwest Goldberg neighborhood.

HOT MESH! Wireless Mesh Network Build

Participants in the HOT MESH! will hack wireless routers, build wireless antaneas, and configure networks that will create a wireless mesh network. This mesh network will offer free Internet to a 100-300 foot radius. Once these wireless routers are built and ready to stream Internet, participants will install them in Detroit's NorthWest Goldberg neighborhood and other city sites. The mesh network will compliment the Super Computer Build media lab and offer Wifi to tent cities during the U.S. Social Forum.

"Let’s Talk About Sex….Disability Perspective" Empowered Fe Fes

Presenters: The Empowered Fe Fes
TRACK: The Art & Practice of Disability Justice
The Empowered Fe Fes of Chicago, Illinois are using an interactive talk show setting to stomp out myths and stereo-types about girls with disabilities and sexuality.   We want to send a strong message to the non-disabled community or audience that girls with disabilities are sexual beings. We have sexual desires, enjoy dating and have dreams to get married and have children.  We hope that our workshop gives others a closer look into our world and change any limited or oppressive perspectives about girls with disabilities and sexuality.  In our workshop you will also learn how you can use our interactive talk show format in workshop settings to address issues that are important to you. 

The Azolla Story: Queer/trans people of color with disabilities meetup and zine making session!

Do you dream of a political community by and for queer/trans POC disabled folks? Let’s make it happen! Are you scared to call yourself disabled or chronically ill because you feel like you’ve got enough on your plate as a QTPOC? Is disability at the center of your identity, work and life? Are you somewhere in between, figuring it out? Come hang with our queer/trans of color fierce crips and talk story, share dreams and visions, and move beyond survival to fighting for a disability justice movement that places our queer brown disabled stories at the center of our work. This is a caucus space to build with each other and also a space to make a queer/trans of color disabled zine about our experiences to use as an organizing, healing and resiliency tool at the AMC, the U.S. Social Forum and all our communities.

Radicalizing the Message: Performance, Disability & the Revolutionary Body

Presenters: Patty Berne, Leroy Franklin Moore Jr. & Truc Nguyen, Sins Invalid
TRACK: The Art & Practice of Disability Justice
In this session Sins Invalid, a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, will share how to utilize cultural work such as performance art and other media to forward Disability Justice work on a local, national and international level.   The goal of the session is to begin to develop a shared framework of Disability Justice and create a space for creative thinking using cultural work to promote Disability Justice. We will differentiate the medical versus social model of disability anchors in the mainstream media and social justice organizing. Through small group work and video presentation we will critically look at how to use cultural work to reshape the mainstream popular image of people with disability from a charity model where others define us to us controlling the spotlight, microphone, camera and the pen.

Culture Jamming & Action Planning For Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaigns to End Israeli Apartheid

Presenters: Dunya ‘Alwan, Birthright Unplugged, Don’t Buy Into Apartheid, The Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid, & the U.S. Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel; Sharon Lungo, The Ruckus Society
Culture jamming is a tactic in which tries to disrupt and/or subvert mainstream culture and dominant and deceptive messaging.  We will share images, video, and stories from recent projects designed to spark public interest and action, to educate, and to garner and create media coverage. Projects include de-shelving Israeli consumer goods, remaking and reinstalling bus shelter graphics, subway graphics installation, outdoor projections, appropriating Zionist outreach materials, and stealth actions at pro-Israel events. The goal of this work is to shift policies and practices related to mainstream portrayals of, support for, and collusion with, deadly and oppressive Israeli actions against Palestinians and to support Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Participants will be able to discuss methods and tactics. In the second half of the workshop, we will break into action groups around specific action strategies developed by the group, pick locations and audiences we want to reach in our own communities, and set dates and scenarios and go through action planning process.  Each group will then report back to the larger group with a calendar of planned BDS actions.  Yalla, let’s end Israeli Apartheid!!

Intro to Investigative Reporting  

There's no question that most grassroots media makers have their fingers on the pulse of their communities. But they often don't have stats and numbers to back up their reports, and powerful stories get dismissed as anecdotes.  This session will show how to develop a hypothesis and research your story using investigative techniques. Learn what kinds of numbers and data are available, where to find this information, and how to use it in reporting.  We will end with a brainstorm of story ideas.  Participants will come away with new skills and strategies for putting them into practice. 

Media Interventions in the Future of Our Cities 

Presenter: Luisa Dantas, Director/Producer, Land of Opportunity
This session will include a sneak preview clips of the film and multi-platform documentary project Land of Opportunity, followed by a dialogue and strategy session with Director/Producer Luisa Dantas. Land of Opportunity interweaves the stories of a diverse group of people as they struggle to rebuild post-catastrophe New Orleans, from the urban planner to the immigrant worker to the public housing resident.  Through their eyes, we experience New Orleans as a microcosm of an urban America increasingly divided by race, class and economic opportunity. After screening clips of the film, we will facilitate a dialogue that draws connections between the ongoing reconstruction process in New Orleans and other movements for urban justice around the country. We will ask ask what effective "solidarity messaging" can be created around the 5th anniversary of Katrina and promote awareness of our “Summer of the City” campaign.

Media Strategies for Surviving Poverty-Related Violence and Creating Self-Determined Communities: Lessons from NYC

This interactive workshop will demonstrate how media can be a tool of resistance and resilience for low income queer, trans and gender non-conforming people.  The Shelter Project, which trains current shelter residents in studio television production, while highlighting political issues of concern to low-income queers, will share how this model of community engagement with public media resources leads to personal skill-development and collective empowerment.  The Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative will demonstrate Participatory Action Research as a mechanism for raising critical consciousness around structural violence against queers of color.  They will also explain how Queers For Economic Justice incorporates this essential research into our ongoing campaigns. We will screen our collectively-produced half-hour documentary to illustrate how self-expression, art creation, new media strategies and video production became integrated into our strategy for fighting back against injustice, creating liberating communities and surviving poverty related violence in New York City.

Drawing Solidarity: Public Art and Transitional Justice in Northern Ireland 

The north of Ireland has a rich history of using community-based murals and other creative projects to make political statements, share stories and celebrate history.  The Irish organization, Relatives For Justice (RFJ), has been pursuing a fully open and accountable investigation into State-sponsored violence and human rights abuses over the past 40 years of political conflict. At AMC2010, an emerging U.S.-based arm of RFJ will launch their first major project—a community mural exchange  between  marginalized communities in the U.S. and Northern Ireland.  The goals of this project are to advance post-conflict truth and reconciliation processes, build international solidarity across movements, heal old wounds and bring people together to build a future that is inclusive and just.  After in-depth discussion about the role of murals in resistance movements, workshop participants will engage in small-group planning that will lay a foundation for future mural exchanges. 

There's Something About Your Sound: Explorations in Music Composition (Kid Friendly)

"Land of the Free:” Performing the World We Want to See

This workshop will be getting down and dirty: experiencing, looking at, talking about and doing a lil merging of the performing art and politics! Come join me as I share some of my own work, my friend’s work, and work that inspires me (and hopefully you too) of embodied performing arts and politics. This workshop will be a fun mix of live performance (solo and burlesque), video of innovative street theater, and creating our own forms of resistance through our art. We will be exploring together different ways artists are using their art not just as entertainment for traditional rallies but as a means of organizing, creating dialogue and change with possibly unexpected audiences. Fun and thought provoking time to be had by all- or your movement money back! ;)  

M/others, Mamaz and Community Care-Givers Unite Through Truth-Telling!

TRACK: INCITE! / To Tell You the Truth
M/others (self-identified single, teen and welfare mamaz), mamaz and community caregivers around the country are telling their truths through zines, blogs, printed media, performance work etc, and using this process of truth-telling to create stronger selves, families and communities. In this 3-part, interactive workshop, we will share practical skills and organizing models, then strategize on how we can support each other year-round through a national network of mamaz and community caregivers. Come share your questions and your knowledge with us!

This session will take place in three one hour parts. Part one is a knowledge fair, showcasing the many incredible projects in the room. Part two is a skill share, giving you a chance to learn some specific truth-telling and organizing techniques, including: zine-making, social media, on-the-go-video-how-to, blogging 101, and building a radical childcare collective. Part three is a strategy session for all us m/other, mamaz & community cargegivers in the room to think, dream, strategize, and envision specific ways we can work together over the next year. We will explore questions like; What do we bring to the tables as mamaz? What support do we need? How can we fortify our national community and our families? How can alternative media-making further our movements and transformations?

Representations of Women of Color in Neo-Burlesque

This popular education workshop will be led by performance artist and ecdysiast, Xandra Ibarra, founder of Kaleidoscope–An Annual National People of Color Cabaret. The first half of the workshop will discuss historical/colonial ties to current images of women of color in neo-burlesque. This workshop will view historical and contemporary video, photography, and magazine literature to understand how certain representations have reinforced colonial imagery and narratives about women of color. Neo-burlesque should not be seen solely in terms of victimization for women of color, so the second part of this workshop will be fun and sexy; learn to take off your gloves like the pros! Queer, trans, and women of color encouraged to attend. For more info: www.lachicaboom.com and www.kaleidoscopecabaret.com.

INCITE! Builds a Drupal Website  

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence invites Drupal web developers from within the AMC community to assist them in the development of a participatory, open source website that will strengthen the communications infrastructure of our network of chapters, affiliates and individuals. Just as Audre Lorde knew that “the masters tools will never dismantle the master’s house” we know that we cannot rely on proprietary technology to liberate our communities. Nor should we look to an elite thechnorati to build our communications infrastructure for us without our participation. We need to do it ourselves! We invite any technologists, experienced in Drupal code, and committed to supporting women, trans and gender non-conforming people of color leadership in technology, to attend this caucus. Together, we will map out a year of skill-sharing and co-creating, that will result in the baddest, interactive online community of people working to end violence against our communities. Because we want this to be a very intentional and productive conversation, we ask that you RSVP to: jennylx@gmail.com if you are interested in attending

make/shift recLAmation: Performing New Feminisms

Traditional Techniques for Community Dialogue: Learning from the Southwest Indigenous Listening Forum

Game On! Game Design for Kids (Kids Only)

TRACK: Kids!
Game On! is a hands-on workshop aimed at teaching kids the fundamentals of game design, while encouraging them to imagine alternative narratives for video games.  Working as a group we will identify something we want to improve in our lives, our communities, and the world.  Collaboratively mapping our ideas, we will select one concept to develop into a working browser-based videogame.  Workshop participants will learn about storyboarding, pseudo code, game mechanics and object oriented programming.  Everyone will have the opportunity to write code in Scratch, a free software developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab.

Power in Narratives: Content Creation for Community Radio / El Poder en Narrativas: La Creación de Contendios para la Radio Comunitaria

This skill-sharing exchange will bring together Spanish-speaking media makers to have conversations about how they can use narrative to build community and power. Focused on the basics of storytelling, this workshop will be good for those who are looking to bring narrative to their community radio station or community organizing. While this workshops focuses on content creation for Spanish-language radio, all media makers are welcomed to contribute to the discussion. Please be ready to tell stories.

From Page to Stage: Turning Prison Writings into Dynamic Performance & Organizing Tools

Presenter: Bruce Reilly, Direct Action for Rights and Equality/1000 lbs Guerilla
TRACK: Communication Strategies for Ending the Prison Industrial Complex
This session will present a blueprint for generating maximum impact from the literary talents that live behind the walls.  Bruce Reilly has produced three prison-themed plays since 2006 including Voice of the Voiceless, a collection of writings edited into a reading, then retooled into a full play for multiple venues.  As a formerly incarcerated writer, Reilly learned how to produce with no budget and no connections, and how the promo and talkback are as important as the performance.  AMC2010 participants will see the debut of a new production, Voiceless 2.0., and learn about the preparation, concepts, and goals for this new piece.  All advocates, performers, student groups, and arts organizations are encouraged to attend.

TOUR: Guerilla Publishing and Media-based Economics for Ex-Offenders

Presenter: Urban Network Bookstore
TRACK: Communication Strategies for Ending the Prison Industrial Complex
This workshop will illustrate the breakdown of 21st century urban communities in general and within the particular context of Detroit, and we will explore how ex-offenders can play a crucial role in rebuilding our communities. We want to address the question of when ex-offenders return home, how do they get back involved in a society with few marketable skills? Members from Urban Network, H.O.P.E. (Helping Our Prisoners Elevate), and a newly founded ex-offender support group will first conduct a tour through the Zone 8 neighborhood in Detroit's west side, and then facilitate a discussion around how ex-offenders can create new communities, especially through a framework of guerrilla publishing, marketing, and economics.  The goal of this workshop is to equip community members, especially ex-offenders, with the skills to re-build 21st century communities with new technology and existing skills.

Communication Strategies and Movement-Building: A Case Study of the Dignity Not Detention Campaign

Open Lens: Youth Eco-Media Jam (Kid Friendly)

In the tradition of the “open-mic,” share your eco-justice themed media (10 minutes or less) for a dynamic view and voice session where youth grassroots media makers will present perspectives from an environmental lens. From powerful stories on community food justice and self-determination; to global warming and climate change; to Indigenous life ways and local knowledge systems; to media justice and direct action; to green-washing and false solutions, to any topic that highlights your passion for safeguarding our air, soil, and water in support of animal, human, and plant life for many generations to come! Grab your documentary, PSA, infomercial, narrative story, performance piece, bio-pic, experimental art, slideshow, or any other eco-media contribution to this unique forum of show and tell. Join us, and speak truth to power by shedding light on issues that get little airplay now that "green" is the new corporate mainstream!

Technical Support for Community Radio Stations / Soporte Técnico para Radios Comunitarias

This workshop will share knowledge related to the use, construction, maintenance and repair of radio equipment (audio mixers, microphones, cables, transmitters, antennas, measuring instruments, electricity, etc). This workshop is aimed at people who participate in radio projects or are interested in sharing knowledge and skills related to technical aspects of radio. Prior to the workshop, the facilitators will conduct a survey to determine the ten most frequently asked questions that free/community radio projects encounter. We will help answer these questions and will sharing supporting instructional materials. We will use a low-power radio transmitter (10 Watts) and an antenna to explore the basics of installing a radio and broadcast studio. The workshop will be bilingual (English-Spanish).

Taller enfocado a compartir conocimiento relacionado al uso, construcción, mantenimiento y reparación de equipos de radio (mezcladoras de audio, micrófonos, cables, transmisores, antenas, instrumentos de medición, electricidad,etc). Este taller esta dirigido a personas que participan de un proyecto de radio o que estan interesadas en compartir conocimiento y capacidades relacionadas a aspectos técnicos de radio. NO necesitan conocimientos previos en cuestiones técnicas de radio. Previamente al taller, las personas facilitadoras realizaran un sondeo de las 10 preguntas técnicas más frecuentes en un proyecto de radio comunitaria o libre con el objetivo de diseñar el contenido del taller enfocado a encontrar respuestas a estas preguntas y compartir materiales de apoyo (documentos, imágenes, audios, video, etc.). Usaremos un transmisor de radio de baja potencia y una antena para explorar los conocimientos básicos para la instalación de una radio y el estudio de transmisión.

CAUCUS: Print Media

Is print dead? Can alternative print media survive? Are there areas where producers of print media can collaborate more? This caucus will be a gathering for any and all makers of print media at AMC.

CAUCUS: Education for Community: Resisting the Corporate Takeover of Our Schools & Creating Viable Alternatives

Electronic Books: Understanding & Participating in the Coming (Almost) Paperless Society

Health is Dignity and Dignity is Resistance: Online and Offline Organizing for Healing Justice

Collaborative Editing

Media Mad Libs (Kid Friendly)

Street Thesis: Models of Cooperative Economics, Popular Education and Cultural Interdependence

Steppin Up Student Voice to Take Back Our Schools!

CAUCUS: Media Justice and PEG Access

Bless Their Hearts: Media for Queer Organizing in the American South

CAUCUS: TeleSur in the U.S.

Social Media for Social Change 101

Prison Poster Project: Understanding the Big Picture (Kid Friendly)

Film Screening: The DIVAS (Disabled, Independent, Victorious, Advocating Sisters)

Green Grease Guzzlers: How Green Guerrillas Created a Multimedia, Renewable Energy Demonstration Vehicle.

CAUCUS: Youth Speak Out on Avatar (Kid Friendly)

Hurricane Season: Unearthing Solutions in an Era of Unnatural Disaster

Phone Justice: Exploring Access for Prisoners, Detainees, and Calling Card Users

Media Strategies to Expand Access for Disabled People

TOUR: Eco-Media in Motion: Messages from Detroit (Kid Friendly)

How To Make Radical Comics ... and Why? (Kid Friendly)

What's Your Internet Story: Learning Lab

Tell Stories With Pictures: Collaborative Mural Design (multi-part workshop)(Kid Friendly)

CAUCUS: Trans & Queer Youth Media

Indymedia Innovations: Tools, Technology, and Tips for Protest Coverage

Community Radio Against Rural Poverty and Prison Expansion

Common Ground: How community media and community businesses can work together to foster transformative public discourse

Your Phone is Your Microphone (Kid Friendly)

Telling A Story That's Still Being Written: Community Accountability In Real Life

RED DUST: A film about the unexamined side of China's economic development

This workshop will screen, RED DUST, a short documentary film about the unexamined side of China’s economic development: the resistance, courage, and hope of Chinese factory workers fighting for justice. Red cadmium dust drifted freely in China’s nickel-cadmium battery factories owned and operated by GP Batteries (GP), one of the world’s top battery manufacturers. RED DUST tells the story of workers battling occupational disease, and demanding justice from the local government and global capital. Chinese migrant workers are deemed disposable by factory owners and are stereotypically viewed as quiet and passive victims. However, Ren and other comrades (Min, Fu, and Wu) fight back. Labor issues are very sensitive in China, and workers who publicly discuss their struggles do so at great risk. A Q&A with the filmmaker will follow the screening.

The Way We Move: Embodying Resistance Dance Workshop (Kid Friendly)

Re-Thinking Communication / Repensando La Comunicacíon

Building an Intergenerational Filmmaking Community

Octavia Butler Strategy Symposium

Open Source Internet Radio with Flujos-Vivos Live CD

The Flujos-Vivos Live CD is an operating system completely comprised of free open source software that lets you stream audio over the Internet. It includes diverse applications, from Web navigation to instant messaging, sound editing, audio format conversion, extracting audio from a CD and Internet radio streaming. In this workshop, we will introduce the Flujos-Vivos tool to community radio groups in the United States (and anyone interested in starting a community radio station!). Our objective is to support radio enthusiasts in using free open source software to produce their programs.

Este Live-CD flujos-vivos es un sistema operativo integrado completamente por Software Libre en base a la distribución Debian y está orientado a la publicación y transmisión de audio en el Internet. Dispone de diversas aplicaciones que lo hacen adecuado a cualquier tipo de tareas relacionadas con el audio y el Internet, desde navegar por Internet o usar mensajería instantánea, editar audio, convertir formatos de audio, extraer audio de un disco compacto y, por supuesto, hacer streaming. Una de las principales características de un live-cd es que el sistema está preparado para ser utilizado directamente desde el CD, sin necesidad de realizar ninguna instalación o modificar los datos del disco duro de tu computadora. En este taller, daramos a conocer la herramienta Flujos-Vivos a las comunidades de radios comunitarias radicadas en los Estados Unidos. A través del taller explicaremos en que consiste esta herramienta y su uso. Nuestro objetivo principal es facilitar el acercamiento de los radioastas al uso de los softwares libres y de fuente abierta para la realización de sus programas. 

Mud Stencils for Tactical Media Campaigns (Kid Friendly)

The Next Generation of a Queer/Trans Youth Narrative