The future of digital arts

A merger with an Oakland nonprofit turns San Francisco's Bay Area Video Coalition into a hub for digital storytelling by youth

By Laurie Koh

laurie@sfbg.com

"Why can't we have an auto shop in schools? You have billions of dollars of the budget in the state being spent on prisons, and you mean to tell me you can't give my kids a wood shop or an auto shop? Hey, that could take some kids off the street right there."

The speaker is a frustrated high school teacher named Eric Walker, seen in Burning the Future, a five-minute video piece in which codirectors Anthony Alessandroni, Adel Sheik, and Andre Wilson turn their camera on a money-sucking black hole that's generating huge revenues for corporate contractors and robbing a decrepit San Francisco school of precious funding. The black hole is the California prison system, and five minutes of video is enough to show us dirty high school hallways, overcrowded classrooms, ancient heating systems, and kids who know they're getting shafted. This is no in-depth exposé – but the piece has a gut-level potency stemming in part from the fact that the filmmakers are high school students themselves and the rundown institution is where they spend their days.

Made during the course of an intensive 12-month program called YouthLink that provides video and Web training to underserved teenagers, Burning the Future was produced under the auspices of the Bay Area Video Coalition, a venerable San Francisco media arts nonprofit approaching its 30th anniversary. On Jan. 1, in a match made in digital-storytelling heaven, BAVC merged with the Oakland-based Youth Sounds, an organization whose components include a youth video production company, on-site high school video and music production programs, and a youth-run record label. When the dust from the merger has settled, BAVC's Mission District facilities will be home to the largest youth media-training program in Northern California.

"The main reason for BAVC coming into being was really to provide access," says Wendy Levy, director of media arts and education. "Back in the day – in the '70s – independent filmmakers just didn't have access to the equipment and the facilities at all. So it really was people with analog portapacks on their backs going to videotape antiwar protests and political rallies. And at that point there were no computers at home with Final Cut. BAVC was the center for people to be able to bring their media."

Using a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, BAVC got off the ground in 1976, with a mission of supporting independent videomakers and nonprofits by providing accessible new media technology, such as affordably rentable editing suites. The nonprofit soon became involved in creating media as well – early film projects BAVC executive-produced include writer-director Robert N. Zagone's The Stand-In, a feature film starring a pre-Lethal Weapon Danny Glover, and The Life and Times of Rose Maddox, a documentary on the country and western singer.

BAVC's technological history began like the Johnny Cash song about a man working in an auto factory who builds his own ride after years of smuggling out car parts. One piece at a time – though without actually resorting to larceny – BAVC acquired its video and digital components. The VHS portapacks were eventually upgraded to a Beta SP camera; later acquisitions included digital cameras, Avid editing suites, captioning equipment, and Mac and PC labs. Thanks to leadership that has kept the organization flexible enough to respond to rapidly emerging technology, BAVC is now a candyland of cutting-edge digital media tools – which get used in an array of programs, both educational and professional, that BAVC has developed over the years.

From three-chip cameras to hot-off-the-press versions of Final Cut Pro and Dreamweaver, BAVC offers technical training to novices, professionals looking to beef up their résumés, and even industry folks whose companies (Apple, Adobe) are the very benefactors supplying BAVC with many of its techie treats. The latter symbiotic partnerships are made possible via a contract with California's Employment Training Panel, whereby the state provides funding for BAVC to train people working in similar fields, like print journalism, Web design, and audio engineering. Classes include game design, motions graphics and effects, and video postproduction, and the organization also produces educational CD-ROMs.

In addition to training and postproduction equipment, BAVC now offers independent filmmakers services including tech evaluation (to ensure a production meets the strict standards required for it to air on public television), DVD authoring, executive production, and fiscal sponsorship for noncommercial projects. Movie projects, such as Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer's Sundance- and PBS-screened Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin and Sam Green's Oscar-nominated Weather Underground, have benefited from BAVC's resources, and the organization has developed into a hub for independent filmmakers. BAVC also coproduces KQED's Spark, a television program about the Bay Area arts scene – one example of BAVC's proclivity for collaborating with other community-oriented organizations.

That's a wide range of projects, but the overall goal, Levy says, is to level the digital playing field. "What we're really concerned about is that young creatives, and technologists, and kids from underprivileged backgrounds, and teachers who are teaching those kids have the tools that they need to be able to inspire creativity and art for social change – and can give people skills for real jobs in a creative industry." BAVC has a number of low- and no-cost media training programs for low-income people of all ages. But the organization has also figured out a compelling strategy: Get 'em while they're young.

A new chapter of the organization's mission unfolded with the 1999 launch of YouthLink, which began as a 12-week training program whose goal was to help kids express their stories and opinions – often marginalized – through digital technology and to provide them with media skills that could eventually come in handy professionally. "We live in a media-rich society, and so it's a literacy issue," says Patricia Cogley, who oversees the program. "We're consuming all this media all the time, so it's important for young people to have access to that production and access to the power of media as equal contributors in society." BAVC does extensive outreach, and most classes include a mix of kids from extremely diverse racial and economic backgrounds. A 2004 grant from the National Science Foundation recently allowed BAVC to expand YouthLink to a 12-month program with two distinct areas of instruction, video production and digital arts (Web design), and a trajectory that corresponds to the school year.

Throughout the fall, YouthLinkers get instruction in the basics and work on a personal video piece or Web site; in spring they begin collaborating with a community organization or internally in small groups on a more complex work, often with a global or community focus. During phase three, students embark on summer internships at real-world companies, secured for them by BAVC.

. . .

On a Tuesday evening toward the beginning of December, YouthLink's basic video production class met for one of its final sessions before a screening of the students' work that would be attended by friends and family. For the most part, the 10 kids remained focused on the computer screens in front of them, but a rambunctious stream of energy ran beneath the surface, provoking occasional bursts of gossip and teasing. Instructor Kirthi Nath walked around the room doing one-on-one check-ins and fielding questions from kids stuck on technical problems.

Kelly Ware, 16, was the first to declare she'd finished her film, which featured text she'd written about the war alongside protest photos, intercut with text and images depicting her two years in military school. Nath asked her to compose answers to likely questions she might receive during a postscreening audience Q&A.

Next Nath checked in with 16-year-old Matthew Salanoa, whose film contrasted images of city trash with the sounds of nature, a simple yet lyrical rumination on the natural world's disappearance amid the filth of San Francisco. The audio cut sharply back and forth alongside the disparate images, distracting from the intentionally jarring visual impact, and Nath talked with Salanoa about ways in which audio and video can function separately in a narrative.

The most complex editing on display was in a piece about street violence by a student named Michael Kinard, 17, who sat in the front of the classroom, slouched low and intently editing behind a pair of black sunglasses. Rather than feeling weighed down by the gravity of the subject matter, his film bursts to life, with hip-hop beats and images of teens dancing cut to an intricate, flowing rhythm. Onscreen, Final Cut Pro shows the layers of sound and image clips used to create a movie, and in comparison to the Lego look of most of the other projects, Kinard's layerings resembled the end stages of a Tetris game. The piece was a commentary on the violence in his community that had taken two of his friends' lives, and telling that story, he said, helped him deal with the loss.

Also cruising the room, keeping a close eye on the kids, was Nath's 17-year-old assistant, Anita Law, who'd been a YouthLinker herself a year earlier. Initially impatient with the icebreaker games her class had played, and anxious to move on to the techie meat of the class, Law came to appreciate the chances she got to observe her fellow students individually over the course of the term. She'd begun to think about how kids stereotype each other, and became curious about the words we use to describe ourselves. The end result was a film called Finding Your Adjective.

When Nath, Law's instructor, asked if she'd be willing to TA the next round of video classes, Law was shocked and somewhat hesitant. "I was really the quiet one in our class," she says. But eventually she decided, "OK, I need to have enough confidence. This is what I need to do in order to go up to the next level." For her part, Nath says she picked Law – who has since learned to deliver class lectures herself – not only for her enthusiasm and technical proficiency, but because she could see that Law loves a challenge. The two compiled a list of teaching skills Law wanted to develop, and they check in regularly to see how it's going.

"I get to see what they do now, behind the stage," Law says of transitioning from student to TA. And, she adds, "I've learned that teaching's not as easy as it looks, because you have to think about 'Oh my god, the students. Are they on track? Do they even know what I'm talking about?'<\!q>"

. . .

In 2001 a Stanford grad student named Ken Ikeda was working with students at West Oakland's McClymonds High School through a Stanford School of Education program called Youth Engaged in Leadership and Learning. YELL's focus is working with youth on issues related to critical thinking and decision making. But rather than following a more traditional youth leadership program with these particular high schoolers, Ikeda decided to make a video with them.

McClymonds was full of underperforming students, but the kids were sick of being categorized as such, and the project's end result, Life behind the Walls, featured six female students' firsthand views of a school culture often denigrated by outsiders. Making the film, Ikeda says, "motivated [the students] to devote countless hours to editing, creating production timelines, crafting interview questions, and collaborating as a team. Without having planned it, we were seeing the most desired elements of youth development being practiced and learned.... We also learned immediately that youth in this challenged environment were amazing storytellers and desperate for a voice."

And thus began Youth Sounds.

Ikeda – who took an indefinite leave from his doctorate program to launch the project – and his small staff felt they were on to something, a new learning model that could benefit other schools that had begun approaching Ikeda. The program expanded, and by the time of the merger with BAVC, Youth Sounds had grown to four full-time staffers and five part-timers and was serving 150 to 200 East Bay high school kids daily. Music was a large component, and in addition to the Factory – the organization's video production company – Youth Sounds launched a youth-run label, called BUMP Records.

Like BAVC, Youth Sounds grew up with the real world firmly in mind. "We operate and develop our programs on a pathway model," Ikeda says. "Within programs this means that youth can 'get in where they fit in' by contributing ideas, performing in front of the lens, or as a crew member behind the scenes.... As a set of related programs, we move youth from introductory programs into advanced, to internships and professional productions for paying clients, to higher-education courses and industry certificates, into employment."

BAVC and Youth Sounds have worked together before, but the official merger came about, Ikeda says, because "we increasingly found ourselves in the same space and in agreement around how we saw the field of youth media developing." He considers BAVC to be the country's leading media and technology nonprofit and, having collaborated with YouthLink staffers, was impressed by the clarity of their mission.

"Judy Holme Agnew [BAVC's executive director] is unusual in that she was willing to share how her organization operated and welcome a competing organization into her house," he says, adding that even as Youth Sounds grew, "I always talked about us as an emerging organization. We were always two to three years from sustainability, two to three years from developing the infrastructure we needed to flourish. The merger with BAVC was an opportunity to jump ahead two to three years and do so with like-minded folks within a larger, established organization with a focus that perfectly complemented Youth Sounds. BAVC is both a center for teaching and continued education and the host space to a community of producers, and that's what Youth Sounds aspired to be for youth."

If all goes well, the merger will be beneficial on both sides: While Ikeda needs a more supportive infrastructure for his growing program and staff, BAVC's directors feel that YouthLink is ready to expand. One plan in the works is satellite YouthLink programs in schools, an area where the expertise of the Youth Sounds staff will be invaluable.

The shape the merger ultimately takes has not been finalized, but Ikeda, now BAVC's director of youth programs, enumerates the possibilities: "Offering BAVC's industry relationships and certified training programs to East Bay youth, bringing Youth Sounds' expertise and studio capabilities in audio and music production to San Francisco youth ... increasing social entrepreneurship opportunities for youth in both programs ... Expanding the capacity for engaging Bay Area youth in continued learning opportunities via advanced levels of training in video, audio, and music production, as well as mentorship and teaching assistant positions. Working in partnership with the California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University, and UC Berkeley to expose youth to higher education and demystify the college application process ..." Given each organization's track record, the list is likely to continue to lengthen.

. . .

"I think I'll go into business, and with my business, I can make my own Web design and design my own Web page, so I don't have to pay anyone else," Law says, riffing on the possibilities for using her newfound skills out in careerland. "If I start a business, I could make my own commercials, and when I hire people, I could start teaching them. I would know how to teach. So it actually all connects together." Her attitude is emblematic of the sense of scope BAVC wants to instill in its young charges, when they think about the future.

In its current incarnation, aside from giving kids a taste of the digital realm they live in, YouthLink is designed to provide them with soft skills for jobs, a proposition that gets tested during the third phase of the program – which each term comes as a shock to at least a few amnesiac participants, who perhaps can't quite conceive of being dropped so quickly into a professional situation. "They'll be like, 'What? Internship? Me? Nooo,'<\!q>" digital arts instructor Jen Gilomen says, laughing. Often, though, this is the experience that proves most valuable. It looks nice on the résumé (YouthLinkers have been placed at companies like WB20, Design Media, Zeum, and Global Exchange), and many participants stay in contact with folks they meet on the job. As another incentive, BAVC pays internship participants $10 an hour – an arrangement that makes it easier for companies to open their doors.

After that, participants can retain ties to BAVC through the YouthLink Advisory Board, a youth-led steering committee and another place where former YouthLinkers such as Law have the chance to become leaders. Throughout their one-year positions on the board, YLAB members evaluate YouthLink, interview its instructors and give feedback, and go to training conferences. At the end they'll interview new program graduates who wish to become board members.

Gilomen is realistic about the fact that YouthLink can't prepare most kids to step right in to the competitive digital workforce. More likely immediate scenarios for YouthLink graduates are school assignments filming proms and plays. Some might use their new skills to help organizations they're involved with update Web sites. Law and some other former YouthLinkers, for example, have been working feverishly to update BAVC's own www.youthzine.org.

The program's real value, Gilomen feels, is in the skills its participants pick up and can take to college or any job. "It's hard to find a job these days that doesn't require you to be comfortable with technology or comfortable picking up a new application or figuring out on your own how to solve problems with computers," she points out.

And showing low-income kids all the options out there is especially important in the face of rampant military recruitment, video instructor Nath says, adding that a tension often shows up in participants' work in this regard. "I've noticed in my classes that the kids are at once making pieces about the war and about our political system, but that doesn't always mean they're not exploring the military as an option."

And other opportunities do arise. Both YouthLink and Youth Sounds have partnered with UPN Bay Area Youth Productions for the TV series Elements, which focuses on kids and music, and Speak on It, in which teens conduct on-the-street interviews with other youth. Another program administered at BAVC, Youth Productions, organizes all-youth crews other companies can hire to make videos.

And then there's the chance that your work might score you a full ride to college, like the one 18-year-old star student Jose Luis Mejia – another YLAB board member – received from the San Francisco Art Institute. BAVC staffers work with kids interested in applying to schools, helping them fill out applications for scholarships as well as writing tons of recommendations.

Meanwhile, BAVC continues to develop curricula that will best serve the digital learning needs of Bay Area communities, managing to duck a lot of the red tape that keeps many larger, less flexible institutions from moving forward. Taking its clues from the digital marketplace, BAVC is, for example, adding webcasting to its growing list of technology projects. The nonprofit has plans to partner with institutions like San Francisco State and Stanford, and by 2007 students taking classes at BAVC will be able to accrue college credits – the hope being to help bridge the chasm between no college plans and a higher-learning degree on the horizon.

As for the partnership between BAVC and Youth Sounds, it remains to be seen what they'll accomplish together by pooling their considerable resources. Cogley envisions a youth media campus where kids will have opportunities to engage with the art, politics, and/or technical nitty-gritty of media, depending on their interests. Whatever the case, a lot more media-producing kids and instructors will be working together, and BAVC will be the region's largest hub for youth voices in the digital realm.

And kids won't be the only beneficiaries – education is a two-way street. Says Gilomen, "The kids are so dynamic and so cool. I learn stuff from them all the time. Not just about youth culture, but about how to do certain types of rollovers, or I'll be walking by and someone will have figured out how to do some special scroll bar in the middle of the page. They laugh at me when I'm like, 'How'd you do that?'<\!q>"

The Bay Area is inarguably a digital world. And these programs are leveling the playing field so youth can learn to fit into that landscape. "Maybe 7 out of 10 students do not have broadband access at home," Nath says. "So in terms of the population, they might be in the lower percentage – but 10 out of 10 kids know how to make a Web site, so all of a sudden they're on the top of the population."

www.bavc.org www.youthsounds.org www.youthzine.org gardnercenter.stanford.edu Laurie Koh is the Bay Guardian's listings assistant and the copy chief at Girlfriends magazine.