Media Shift: From Storytelling to Activism
September 11, 2026 – January 8, 2027 | Fridays, 6:00–8:00 P.M.
Every neighborhood has stories that never make the evening news: the corner bakery that’s been feeding three generations, the after-school program keeping kids on track, the small business owner betting everything on a dream. These stories shape our community just as much as the headlines do. They just need someone to tell them.
That’s where you come in.
What Is Media Shift?
Media Shift: Economic Opportunity & Neighborhood Life is a hands-on community media program that puts a camera in your hands and a mission in your heart. Over the course of four months, you’ll learn the craft of visual storytelling while exploring the real issues shaping our neighborhoods like local business, jobs, entrepreneurship, housing, education, and the everyday change happening right outside our doors.
This isn’t a lecture-hall course. It’s a working newsroom, a film crew, and a community of storytellers rolled into one.
What You’ll Learn
No experience required, just curiosity and a willingness to show up. Throughout the program, you’ll build real, practical skills including:
- Story development — finding the human angle in any topic
- Interviewing — asking the questions that get real answers
- Camera operation — framing, movement, and visual storytelling
- Audio & lighting — the technical craft that makes a story watchable
- Scriptwriting — shaping raw footage into a story with structure
- Video editing — bringing it all together in post-production
You won’t just learn these skills in theory. You’ll use them immediately, working directly with community members, local organizations, and businesses to capture stories that matter.
What You’ll Make
By the end of the program, you and your fellow participants will have produced a portfolio of real work: short documentaries, video stories, and magazine-style TV segments under the topics of Economic Opportunity and Neighborhood Life that inform, connect, and amplify the voices of the people who make our community what it is.
Your name on real, published work. Your voice behind stories that matter. Your neighborhood, seen a little more clearly because you were the one holding the camera.
Why It Matters
Storytelling is a form of civic action. When you choose whose story to tell and how to tell it, you’re shaping how your community sees itself and how the world sees your community. Media Shift is about building that bridge: from storytelling to activism, from observation to participation.
Details
- Program: Media Shift: From Storytelling to Activism
- Dates: September 11, 2026 – January 8, 2027
- When: Fridays, 6:00–8:00 P.M.
- Who: Anyone with a story to tell and curiosity to learn
Ready to Pick Up the Camera?
Your neighborhood has stories worth telling about opportunity, resilience, challenge, and change. Media Shift will give you the tools to tell them well.
Spots are limited. Register today and join us starting September 11.
Have questions before you sign up? Reach out to the program team at hello@publicmedianet.org or 269.343.2211— we’d love to tell you more about what’s ahead.
