This past August I volunteered at the ZeroOne San Jose / ISEA 2006 electronic arts festival and symposium in San Jose, California. Near the end of festival I took a look at the program and noticed a presentation titled "UNESCO Scenes and Sounds of My City – Screening and Reception". Looking further, I learned that the UNESCO program was about youth using media to share their views of their home cities. I was immediately curious! (By the way, UNESCO now has another call for international student and educator participation. Read below for more on this.)
I soon discovered "UNESCO Scenes and Sounds of My City" to be a celebration of work by students from 61 schools and organizations across the globe. The project is part of UNESCO DigiArts program, an initiative "aiming at the development of interdisciplinary activities in research, creativity and communication in the field of media arts". Representing all participating students were twenty teen "Global Youth Ambassadors". These intrepid worldchangers were representing the nations of Burkina Faso, Australia, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, the Republic of Moldova, Cameroon, Zambia, Egypt, and the state of Hawaii. Joining the international youth were ten local San Jose youth. I was literally blown away as I watched their presentation.
The UNESCO program was introduced by Cynthia Taylor, Education Director of ZeroOne, and Doyun Lee, UNESCO DigiArts project coordinator. Doyun Lee also highlighted the new "Young Digital Creators (YDC) Educator's Kit" designed to help "generate and manage project-based learning activities with young people" using online media. Each youth then spoke about their experience at the electronic arts festival, shared brilliant insights learned from each other, and then began to talk about the "Scenes and Sounds" project they had completed back home. I was amazed by their maturity, humanity, and depth of spirit. I had been having an amazing time at the festival, but this was a real capstone.
The "Scenes and Sounds" project, as part of UNESCO DigiArts, was designed as a way for youth to use digital tools to express their "ideas and reflections on [their] urban environment or experience within urban surroundings". From late spring to early summer 2006, participating youth began to document their environment in digital photographs, audio recordings, and new media remixes of what they collected. The creative process used in the projects is documented on the DigiArts website:
"...young students with their teachers and mentors are to build a collaborative project making creative digital expressions on urban realities and dynamics. They are working in groups, going on field trips trying to discover unique places in their cities, taking pictures and recording sounds they would like to share with young peers and, furthermore making expressive digital productions to exchange visions on sustainable urban environment... The reflection is on urban zones and experiences, the form of creative expression is digital."
The ZeroOne website explains that along with the 61 schools and organizations who submitted work, twenty of the international groups and twenty San Francisco bay area groups collaborated in a project that was displayed in the Education Lounge at the ZeroOne electronic arts festival. The overall finalists then joined the festival for a week of arts, education, and technology.
If I could share only one thing from the ZeroOne festival that affected me greatly, this would be it. Listening to the youth and watching slideshows of their photographs with recorded ambient street sounds was an awakening experience. "Scenes and Sounds" is a fantastic example of how youth, using media to capture experiences of their home environment, can teach the world so much with their unbiased capturing of reality. UNESCO should also be applauded for putting the project together; it gives us a rich international view onto local youth perspectives.
The Global Youth Ambassadors' photo/audio slideshows I watched during the presentation can be viewed online (for slideshows, scroll to bottom of page), along with a fascinating digital icon project created in San Jose which explores questions of personal identity. As the project's website notes, the youth who participated must have returned home with a fresh perspective on their home environment. And the youth from San Jose must have also gained a great deal of wisom from their international peers.
As it turns out (students and educators take note!), UNESCO DigiArts is now initiating another project, asking teachers and educators to build "your own Creative Teaching Practise based on the Young Digital Creators (YDC) online learning platforms on the theme of Water and HIV/AIDS." The deadline for registration is December 6th 2006. For San Francisco bay area students and educators, I think this looks like a fun opportunity.
