Place-Based Media Arts
"Place-Based Media Arts" is the term I use to describe the integration of Media Arts with Place-Based Education. While place-based education has often had an aversion to technology out of concern for its tendency to distract students from their immediate surroundings and distrust their own senses, I contend that the media arts can do just the opposite when used intentionally as a way of reconnecting students to place. My term, Place-Based Media Arts (PBMA), and the practice of it as described in my thesis is grounded in the pedagogy of Place-Based Education, and looks to the ideals of the Indigenous Youth-led Media Justice and Youth Empowerment Movements.
Place-Based Media Arts is working with students to assist them in creating media arts projects meaningful for themselves and their community. Media arts projects lend themselves easily to a place-based curriculum while utilizing the relatively easily accessible technology tools of media making such as computers, video cameras, still cameras, and even cell phones. Media Arts allows a student to creatively express their ideas and tell the stories they want to tell in a familiar medium that can be shared widely. Media Arts is not limited to filmmaking; it can include animation, digital art, creative power point, performance pieces, and a number of creative expression projects.
The Making of Yellow Woman: A Demonstration Project
Rachel Tso's Thesis Film on Place-Based Media Arts. Chronicles the making of Camille Manybeads Tso's award winning film, "In the Footsteps of Yellow Woman" made as a Demonstration Project of Place-Based Media Arts Education. Submitted to Northern Arizona University in partial fulfillment for the Degree of Master of Arts Sustainable Communities, December 2010.
