Community Media

Projects

CoLab leverages media-based tools and strategies for engaging in urban planning processes that create a more just and creative world. Our goal is to use media within a justice-based framework that focuses on, transforming structural inequality, examining the core roots of power and privilege, and allowing people to participate in determining the future of their communities. We aim to do this through a few mechanisms.

We publish media on our blog, CoLab Radio that lifts up first person experiences with current upheavals and events in communities globally and provides room for thoughtful reflections on identity and social change processes. Here we try to prioritize the unacknowledged genius, experiences and solutions of communities on society’s margins.

We collaborate with community partners to experiment with participatory media-based tools and strategies, such as sound walks and digital storytelling, that have the potential to help stakeholders investigate, understand in new ways, and take action on key challenges in their cities and neighborhoods.

We leverage the power of our online social networks, using strategies like twitter chats, to connect communities across borders and regions. We do this to amplify innovation from the margins and facilitate conversations that allow for new learning and inspire new ways of working and collaboration.

Finally, we teach courses, workshops, and offer fellowships to members of the MIT community and community partners focused on media production around themes critical to transforming structural inequality, such as self-determination.

Contact: 

Lawrence Barriner II
lqb@mit.edu