CAMRA Fellows Program Multimedia Showcase

By Melissa B. Skolnick

Across universities, it can be difficult to feel empowered to tell stories in a creative way when the focus is on conducting quantitative research, publishing texts, and presenting at conferences. How can we share our stories in a way that pushes against these notions, while also sharing our work with broader audiences? What does it mean to conduct multimodal and ethnographic research, while also staying true to the communities we are representing, as well as ourselves? How can we tell timely stories about our own communities, offering authentic narratives that add to popular discourse?

These are some of the questions that the CAMRA Fellows Program has been grappling with over the past four months.

The CAMRA Fellows Program provides undergraduate students from the University of Pennsylvania with the opportunity to explore and engage multiple media forms for their own research projects with the support and guidance of CAMRA scholars and mentors. The program has been in existence for four years, but is officially hosted by the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice for the first time. Due to a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation this past year, the program also expanded to include students from other universities in the region, specifically geared toward students traditionally underrepresented in higher education.
 
Each of the fellows is creating a short film that focuses on timely issues near and dear to each of them: urban farming as a tool of resistance, empowerment within the foster care system, and black women sharing their perspectives on street harassment, to name a few. We always needed the platform to tell our stories, but now, it has become more important than ever.
 
Join us on Friday, April 7, from 4:30-6:30pm at the Slought Foundaton, for the CAMRA Fellows Program Multimedia Showcase
 
The fellows and the projects they will be sharing include:

• Walking Wounded by Tshay Williams, University of Pennsylvania
• Public Heart by Claudia Romano, Swarthmore College
• They Tried to Bury Us by Farrah Rahaman, Drexel University
• (R)evolution by Amy Chen, University of Pennsylvania
• Marketing the Black Minority by Isaiah Barlow, Hampton University
• notebook 2016 by Yuqi Zhang, University of Pennsylvania
• The A.R.T. of a Voice by Nadisha Downs, University of Delaware
• A City Divided: Philadelphia’s Enerby Hub by Chris Kao, former CAMRA Fellow, University of Pennsylvania

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