Commentary

I now see myself as a “budding advocate” and “future lobbyist” speaking more clearly about the need for public programming, positive media, investment in arts, technology and media, support of youth and diversity.

Blogs, wikis, and networks like Facebook and Twitter have certainly opened up a space for rapid exchange of ideas—for some people. But when forty percent of people in the United States don’t have Internet access (a number that can be compounded by the even greater global digital divide), we find that the “commons” is hardly a commons at all—but actually a very small, elite minority.

One of my main goals in attending CommonWealth was to challenge my thinking about the future of media arts, especially in the context of film festivals and engaging audiences with moving image arts. With this same spirit I intend to offer here a creative and highly drinkable brew (with more than a few analogies on tap!). By expanding our thinking, even in seemingly inebriated directions, I believe we can get closer to the next great ideas for better serving our missions.

Distinctions between media users and makers have blurred, as have distinctions between individuals and outlets. Large swaths of the population use social media platforms to relate their daily activities, to communicate with friends and allies far and near, to express, amuse, position and assert themselves. Online, the dynamics of community formation are now more mediated, more visible, and more actionable than ever before.

It’s not a transformation of the media ecology. It’s a total inversion. In Baroque music, an inversion turns the melody upside down, flips chords, exchanges vocal registers, reorganizes intervals. At this year’s NAMAC conference, the outside jumped inside, and the inside hopped outside.

We are entering a new era for media, one that is rife with challenge and opportunity. For many organizations, higher stakes means it's time to batten down the hatches and wait out the storm. But there's a great deal of opportunity out there, and media (of all genres) simply won't survive if we don't reach out, adapt, and move forward.

The Leadership Institute has played a crucial role in NAMAC's multi-faceted approach to impacting the media arts field and the people that work in it. The people I met and the lessons learned fundamentally impacted my working practices—even if I sometimes have to refer back to my notes in order to remind myself why I'm doing what I do!

The 2009 Youth Media Summit and Official Report-out is timely because the youth media field is at a critical juncture where funding is a source of anxiety as foundations re-assess their financial focus, and the economic climate creates more and more necessity for the kind of work that youth media creates for young people, communities, and society at large.

True confession: I don’t have a facebook profile, or a twitter account, or an iphone. I’ve never blogged, I rarely watch youtube and Rupert Murdoch, you sure ain’t gettin’ in my space. So what does that make me? A misanthropic luddite pushing 40? Am I just a stubborn “late adopter” of a super charged new media platform with my head buried in the sand? Oh gawd, what will happen?

Commonwealth. It is a term I thought about throughout the three days of the recent NAMAC conference in Boston. I think about it as the Thursday morning plenary session orients us to the shifting funding, policy, demographic, and technological landscapes of our current media and culture environment. I wonder, “What is our common-ness as our society fragments and what does wealth look like in a struggling economy?”