Barefoot Workshops Digital Heritage Project

Learning environments are changing dramatically. Educators in underserved public schools require interactive ways to communicate the importance of civil rights to their students, and to foster a culture of civic involvement from an early age. Digital literacy and communication have become foundational skills for the next generation of leaders and change-makers.

Barefoot Workshops is presently raising support for a long-term project that will engage teachers and students, grades 7–12, to create interactive, media-rich, mobile curricula that can be introduced into public schools, starting in Mississippi.

We are in the process of reaching out to partners at the Paley Center for Media in New York & Los Angeles (formerly The Museum of Television & Radio), the Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, and the historic District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa, to arrange collaborative exhibitions, outreach and exchanges between those communities and schools in the southern United States.

We are currently seeking support for the first phase of the program- a media-training workshop for eight educators from underserved schools in the Mississippi Delta to learn digital video production & new media skills on site in Cape Town, South Africa.

For three weeks, teachers, together with museum curators, and members of the Mississippi Department of Education, will focus on building a media-rich curriculum based on key themes and defining moments that shaped the civil rights movement in America as compared with South Africa.

The workshop will focus on “roots” of ethnic and cultural identity, historical and cultural perspectives on freedom movements and freedom songs, and the question of how to relate civil rights to the experiences of young people today.

Participants will visit heritage sites and meet notable civil rights leaders to deepen their understanding of Apartheid and post-Apartheid eras. Educators will learn both technical and artistic aspects of digital storytelling, and gather powerful “living testimonies” from the community in the form of photos, video, audio and/or mobile media.

The result of the workshops will be a series of video and audio testimonials, produced by educators for inclusion in lesson plans that meet standards for grades 7-12.

In addition, teachers will develop a collaborative framework to continue gathering testimonials, and to create a web site over the course of the year, with online and interactive components contributed by students as part of their studies.

For more information, please contact Alison Fast at alison.fast@barefootworkshops.org.