TRUST
Here is an abbreviated history of both organizations: the Community Film Workshop of Chicago has a 27-year history of training over 800 emerging and mid-career film makers. CFWC has provided film history and aesthetic instruction, equipment/facility access, exhibition, and media literacy and training in schools. For 23 years, Community TV Network has provided over 3,000 at risk-urban youth the with the opportunity, equipment and skills to make television programs about themselves and their communities, in their own images and spoken in their own voices.
Since Denise Zaccardi , CNTV's Executive Director is a 1974 graduate of Community Film Workshop's film production program, CFWC and CTVN have maintained a long term relationship. Since Denise Zaccardi , CNTV's Executive Drector is a 1974 graduate of Community Film Workshop's film production program. Denise and I have also co-chaired the Chicago Film and Video Network (our local consortium of media-related organizations) for more than six years, but it feels like forever.
When the Marshall Field/Dayton Hudson Foundation started its school reform initiative "Chicago Arts Partnership in Education" (CAPE), a chain of events were triggered that helped us forge a partnership that really works. Both CFWC and CNTV initially were the only media arts groups to become partners from the consortiums funded. The goal was to integrate arts across the school curriculum. While we worked with these two distinctively different consortiums (of arts organizations, schools and community based groups) we became keenly aware of getting burned out from investing a lot of time and organizational resources in creating partnerships that do not work.
CNTV teaches video to high school drop-outs and has residencies in alternative schools. And CFWC teaches 16mm film and works with schools-to-college and school-to-work youths and adults. Both our experiences are firmly rooted in knowing that media literacy, computer literacy and hands-on media production are equally as important as merely creating jobs because they create critical thinkers and empowered youth.
Since both organizations had been involved in both media education and school reform, we received an invitation to the Annenberg Center for School Reform conference on "Media, Education, and School Reform" held at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin. After the gathering, a small group of Chicagoans who had attended the conference met at CFWC to discuss the potential for future collaborations. Although those collaborations did not happen, I still kept encouraging Denise to partner with CFWC to implement teacher development workshops.
We finally got together to collaborate on a project with the Chicago Teachers' Union Quest Center to teach graduate courses in media literacy and video production. The classes we developed and taught together were so successful that we've decided to continue this partnership.
Denise and I have very different ways of managing. However, we trust each other and are both people of integrity. We share a common philosophy about teaching, implementation, esteem- building, mentoring and working in the media arts. In my experience, a lot these factors and values-- not to mention a great deal of hard work--has made ours a successful and continuing partnership.
Margaret Caples is the Executive Director of Community Film Workshop of Chicago.
© 1997 National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. All Rights Reserved.
