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This program of two linked semester courses (8 credits total) combines psychology, art, and media studies to help deepen your critical understanding of how mass media and emerging digital technologies both limit and organize struggles for social justice. This interdisciplinary approach will provide the theoretical framework that is necessary for you to explore thoughtful and relevant questions about personal and collective activism in the digital age. Media have been dismissed as sites of mere amusement, critiqued as tools of mass deception and propaganda, and heralded as powerful vehicles for revolutionary communication and social change. You will interrogate these competing perspectives and bring them into conversation with your experiences in communities of practice. HECUA's partnership with the St. Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN) in presenting this program will allow you to leave with video production skills as well as a stronger vision of how you can use these skills to catalyze meaningful change in your community.
More information about HECUA's partnership with SPNN can be found in the video below.
Making Media, Making Change is grounded in the belief that storytelling and art are powerful vehicles through which to change the world. Stories are increasingly transmitted through Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Television producers have control over some of the most powerful narratives of our time. Youth in this country spend more than 53 hours a week on average with entertainment media, more than any other activity but sleeping. The rise of digital technologies is simultaneously consolidating power and exacerbating the hegemony of ideas and unleashing incredible opportunities for creativity, collaboration, and activism.
You will be asked to reflect on how digital technologies impact your sense of self, the communities you live in, and your capacity to create and sustain meaningful change. The program will also equip you with the skills you need to be a competent creator of digital art and digital media for the purposes of creating change.
Program Outcomes:
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You will be able to articulate the power of narrative in social movements, effective and ethical ways to tell someone else’s story, and how you can tell your own story for the purposes of creating change.
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You will grow in your understanding of your own personal relationship with both mass media and new media and how it impacts your daily life, your relationships, and your capacity to tell an authentic, effective story.
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You will strengthen your creative voice and create a collaborative community-based art installation that leverages your technical skill set, theoretical perspective, and artistic vision.
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You will become embedded in a local site of democratic media production (Saint Paul Neighborhood Network) and be able to articulate its role in community building and social change.
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You will gain videography, production, and editing skills and understand how to apply these skills towards change-making media.
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You will know how to work with a community client to deliver a professional quality video that reflects your client’s needs and requests.
Flexible Program Structure
This program consists of two linked courses (8 credits total). The topics we will cover in the program are complex and interrelated, though you will receive separate grades for the following 2 semester classes:
Due to the interrelated nature of the content and field experiences, you are required to take both courses simultaneously (in other words, you cannot only sign up for only one of the courses). You can continue to take classes on your home campus in addition to the 8 HECUA credits. This gives you the flexibility to continue making progress on campus while engaging in an immersive, experiential, community-based program.
Community Partnership
We are very excited to be partnering with the St. Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN). SPNN is a non-profit community media center located in a dynamic center of non-profit organizations on Cretin and Vandalia, at the border of St. Paul and Minneapolis. SPNN serves the residents of St. Paul and the Twin Cities metro area with training, tools, and programs so that people are better equipped to make media that matters. SPNN’s mission is to empower people to use media and communications to better lives, use authentic voice and build common understanding. The purpose of partnering with SPNN is twofold. First, SPNN staff will provide technical training, equipment, and production support for the Digital Laboratory course. Second, SPNN will be your living classroom, allowing you to explore the challenges and opportunities associated with community media and public access television as they relate to core theoretical questions around democracy, political economy, and cultural reproduction. SPNN will serve as the “hub” through which you will meet a diverse set of actors in the Twin Cities committed to using digital media to build community and create change. These actors include SPNN staff, policy makers, community producers, and members of SPNN’s “audience.” To learn more about SPNN visit spnn.org.
Housing
For students in need of housing, space is available at a residential hall at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. The cost is $1,400 per academic term. For information, including student eligibility, deadlines, and the application itself, visit HECUA's Housing Program.
