Detroit Narrative Agency (DNA) grows out of and embodies Allied Media Projects’ definition of media-based organizing: any collaborative process of using media, art, or technology to address the roots of problems and advance holistic solutions. This framework itself grows out of the Detroit Summer Live Arts Media Project, a participatory storytelling and organizing project that took place between 2006 and 2010. It is inspired by the long legacy of Detroit movement media projects such as Ruth Ellis’s printshop, Ron Scott’s work on radio and public television, Broadside Press, and so much more. These projects have been generating counter-narratives about Detroit for decades with a deep knowledge of how the media we produce and consume shapes our reality.
This talk was part of the Collective Wisdom Symposium, a three-day multi-disciplinary symposium organized by the Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, in partnership with the Ford Foundation’s Just Films, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Phi Centre. September 20-22, 2018.