The Allied Media Conference is coming up, June 22-24 in Detroit (it moved from Bowling Green a few years ago). It’s a conference for anyone involved in independent media, zines, Youtube movies creation, comic strips not appropriate for the Sunday paper, podcasts and blogs, publications like Ann Arbor’s Critical Moment, etc. It’s also just a chance to hear viewpoints not being expressed in the mainstream media.
Here’s a sample of the workshops and there are many more on their web site:
- All About Copyright
Building a Continental Empire in the late 1800s: Picturing Expansionism from East to West
Community-Based Literacy Campaings: Strategies from the South
DIY Animation
Our World, Our Mic: Radio for Social Change
People’s Statistics: Information Gathering for Organizing
Popular Education for Radical Teaching and Activism
Sell Without Selling Out
Slingshot Hip Hop: Culture and Resistance from Brooklyn to Palestine
Technology as a Learning Tool: Possibilities and Challenges
Content + Intent = Change: Using Documentary Film To Build And Support Movements
Detroit Unleaded
Why is the conference in Detroit? There’s a long history of active participation in media by the people of Detroit and a list many examples which include:
- The Fifth Estate, the longest running English language anarchist publication in North America;
- Labor Notes, the national voice of the union democracy movement;
- The many newspapers serving and mobilizing Detroit’s Latino community;
- The newspapers of the area’s Arab community (the largest outside of the Middle East), including The Arab American News, the oldest and most respected Arab American newspaper in the U.S.;
- The Michigan Citizen, a weekly newspaper with a large circulation, serving the local African American and progressive community;
- Strong social justice programming on the city’s NPR station during the 70s and 80s;
- Microcinemas and independent film theaters;
- The tradition of muralism, from Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” mural at the Detroit Institute of Art, to Mexican public art traditions expressed in Southwest Detroit, to Detroit Summer’s youth-painted murals found throughout the city;
- The Heildelberg Project, a found-art installation that takes up multiple city blocks and reflects on both the decay of the city and the hope for transformation;
- Strong community theater institutions such as the Detroit Repertoire Theater, Matrix Theater Company and Mosaic Youth Theater;
- Publishers like Broadside Press who for four decades have promoted the power of the written word in the struggle for self-determination;
A long list of past sessions can be found here.
