Encounters with Difference: Community-Based New Media Programs and Practices

Abstract

Community-based new media programs offer a distinct place of arts learning in the larger learning and media ecologies that teens and young adults navigate. As part of a 3-year case study of new media programs, the Gulf Islands Film and Television School (GIFTS) presents pedagogical and curricular insights that are relevant to both out-of- and in-school art programs. We suggest that the roles of the teacher and the learner are rapidly shifting as the curricular potential of new media emerges across educational landscapes. Community-based new media programs provide an occasion to create encounters for both producers and viewers to experience differing ways of knowing. At GIFTS, an emphasis on creativity, critical analysis, identity development, and voice are achieved through an intense immersion into film production. Community-based new media programs prompt encounters with difference, and in this case, we highlight the learning possibilities of time, place, new media, identity development, and teaching and learning. This inquiry suggests that through new media production, agency and empowerment become significant outcomes for both students and teachers.