Congratulations to the five new grantees who rose to the top of a competitive pool of applicants to the new California Documentary Project NextGen grant program. Overall, the five awardees will receive a total of $73,348 in funds from California Humanities. Projects in this round of awards range from social justice-focused free media training for young people of color in the Bay Area to hands-on experience for youth producing an award-winning web series featuring a famed Los Angeles-based poet. CDP NextGen grants support media projects by emerging media makers age 18 and under that shed light on current issues, solutions, and futures as envisioned by young people.
Grants Awarded in June 2019
BAYCAT’s Zoom In Series: Your New Storytellers Are Here!
Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology, San Francisco, CA
Project Director: Nisa Sanders
BAYCAT (Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts & Technology (BAYCAT)’s Youth Academy will provide free hands-on digital media training to young storytellers from low-income Bay Area communities of color, empowering them to discover and activate their own creative voices and narratives. Youth work in cohorts to produce themed episodes of their award-winning media series Zoom In, which explores critical social justice issues and responds to local current events from the perspective of youth themselves. The project serves as an opportunity to not only celebrate diverse youth storytellers and build social justice awareness around the issues they face, but also to shine light on the solutions that youth propose. $15,000
Get Lit Globe
Get Lit Words Ignite, Inc., Los Angeles, CA
Project Director: Samuel Curtis
Literary Riot Media, Get Lit’s youth media program for students ages 13 to 18, will produce Get Lit Globe, a documentary and interview web series hosted by acclaimed Los Angeles poet, Maia Mayor. Maia will speak with well-known poets, authors, and thinkers covering issues that connect all writers around the globe, explore the diverse neighborhoods of LA seen through the lens of a poet, and create an intimate, real-world portrait of the city and its youth culture. $15,000
Kayamanan Ng Lahi’s (KNL’s) Media PAMANA Project
Visual Communications, Los Angeles, CA
Project Director: Giselle Tongi
KNL’s Media PAMANA Project will train youth participants (called Pamana/ Jr. Sayawit) of Kayamanan ng Lahi Philippine Folk Arts group in media production skills to create short videos that explore their immigrant identity through the cultural traditions and customs of Philippine folk arts. Through documenting the stories of their immigrant families, culture, and community, media becomes the vehicle for self-expression and self-identification. $15,000
Radio Pulso
USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism/Boyle Heights Beat, Los Angeles, CA
Project Director: Michelle Levander
Radio Pulso is a community radio program and podcast hosted and reported by youth reporters that covers topics relevant to the low-income, largely immigrant Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. With community input, youth reporters choose the subject matter for each podcast and research and write and produce the shows with mentoring from professional journalists. Radio Pulso is a project of Boyle Heights Beat, a youth development program and bilingual news source that has been providing “noticias por y para la comunidad” or “news for and by the community” since 2010. $14,298
#TimesUp, Now What?
Reel Stories – A Film Program for Girls, Oakland, CA
Project Director: Esther Pearl
Through found footage, interviews, and conversations, Reel Stories teen-aged female and gender non-binary filmmakers will develop and produce a short film on their perspectives in the age of #MeToo and #TimesUp. The film will create a platform for these young filmmakers to develop their voices and documentary storytelling skills, as well to become leaders and advocates for a more equitable future. $14,050
Click here to see the list of CDP NextGen projects funded to date. Visit the California Documentary Project funding webpage for more information.
