Empowering economically diverse African-American youth from public schools to make media and social change

Youth Media Workshop partners with public schools in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to teach African-American youth how to make radio and television documentaries that link their generation, the hip-hop generation, to the civil rights and black power generations.

Students are taught by a multi-racial team of media professionals from the public broadcasting station WILL AM-FM-TV, scholars and journalism students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and local teachers and community leaders.

Youth Media Workshop is co-directed by William Patterson, Ph.D., from the U of I African American Cultural Center and Kimberlie Kranich of WILL AM-FM-TV.

What Students Learn
 
Students in the Youth Media Workshop learn to:

• conduct library research;
• interview their families, peers and community members;
• professionally edit audio and video into radio and TV programs;
• present their findings at public events and conferences;
• think analytically, problem solve and lead group discussions with their peers;
• contribute research to the field of youth media and community-based archiving.

The long-term goal of the workshop is for young people to understand the significance of their history in order to pass it on to future generations to build better communities, to build stronger points of self-esteem and stronger identities and to be agents for change in society and mass media.

Partners
Champaign Unit 4 School District
Urbana Unit 116 School District
Franklin Middle School
Edison Middle School
Urbana High School
University of Illinois African American Cultural Center
University of Illinois College of Communications
University of Illinois College of Education
 

What are the students learning that complements what they learn in school?

Hip-Hop Documentary: A Local Response (May 2007)

Hip Hop Town Hall
(March 2007)

YMW 2005-2006

YMW Documentaries

And the Beat Goes On: The Spirit in the Legacy of the Douglass Center Drum Corps (2006)

More Than a Bus Ride (2005)

Our Journey: Stories of School Desegregation and Community in Champaign-Urbana (2004)