Learning about digital video cameras with artist Steve Coy

Our digital media program is off to a great start this year. We are already making plans for this summer’s media camp and are going strong in places like River Rouge High School and Hanley International Academy delivering media and video instruction. We’d like to give special thanks to Michelle Martinez and the folks at metromode for their write up of one of our main areas of endeavor. To share with our friends who may have missed the article, here is a snippet of that article with a link to the full piece on metromode’s site. Photographs © Marvin Shaouni Photography.

Y Arts Brings Filmmaking To Metro Detroit Youth

by Michelle Martinez, 1/28/2010

Despite the hyperbole and hand-wringing about a slacker generation growing up on XBox 360, TV, and glowing laptop screens, a program from the YMCA Metro Detroit is betting those obsessions could be used to spark lifelong learning habits, and possibly a new generation of creative types for the region.

The program, started by Gillian Eaton, vice president for arts and humanities at the YMCA Metro Detroit, is just over two years old. But already it has migrated into the River Rouge School District and has caught the attention of the state’s Film Office, which sees potential in teaching middle schoolers and high schoolers high-tech skills they can later turn into careers.

“Kids have an automatic and genetic understanding of media in a way that I don’t,” Eaton says. “They’re way ahead of us. … Career guidance counselors are 20 years behind the times. They’re not telling these kids that things they do naturally are potential job opportunities.”

The program, housed in the Y Arts division of the Boll Family YMCA in downtown Detroit, has ambitious goals. It not only educates kids aged 12 – 16 the ins and outs of filmmaking, graphic design, photography and other art forms; but puts them face-to-face with business clients. The students, like creative groups everywhere, must pitch and win over clients including the U.S. Census Bureau and area environmental nonprofits, and ultimately deliver a commercial-grade short-film or public service announcement.

It’s an early lesson in the pragmatic side of the creative life, Eaton explains. But putting the kids in business situations has other benefits as well.  “We could have just had them make fictional movies on their own, but we didn’t choose to do that because they need to be aware of the judgments that are made on creative work and how to…” [Read the full article here.]