Letter from the Listen Up! Team
Essentially, we aim to create a site that is bursting with such useful information, that you will return to it over and over again as a most reliable and practical resource. Our loftier aim is to cull and present a collective body of evidence that over time increasingly testifies to the important role of youth voices in changing lives, communities and societies. In doing this, we believe that YMiP can become an online forum for educational collegiality and exchange throughout the global youth media landscape — one, in fact, that not only supports but inspires users from within and beyond the field.
In seeking to represent and understand the vast diversity of frameworks in which effective youth media is created, this site eschews any attempts to be prescriptive or formulaic. We offer no textbook strategies, cookbook recipes or foolproof methods. This is because we believe that even as youth media practitioners share many commonalities and philosophies — they also operate in milieus that are unique to the youth and communities they serve. As such, to understand the methods and modes of practice, we must also gain understanding of the specific contexts in which learning and media making are constructed.
Youth Media in Practice is generously supported by Adobe Youth Voices, the Adobe Foundation's global philanthropic initiative, which provides breakthrough learning experiences using multimedia tools that enable youth to explore and comment on their world. We are truly grateful to the contributing partner organizations for their visionary leadership, dedication to groundbreaking work with young people, and sharing their methodology with the field. Thanks to a truly collaborative effort, educators can grow capacity within the 21st century classroom through the interactive resources curated at YMiP with Projects of Change.
In that spirit, YMiP seeks to document, describe and detail as vast a constellation of educational approaches, social change strategies, pedagogies and production strategies as we can. We hope that you will join us in this effort by offering your feedback, sharing curricula, participating in the Commons (when up and running) and informing your colleagues about the site. We invite you to help us nurture the field of youth media by becoming an active participant of Youth Media in Practice!