Turn It Up! Youth Video Project - Minneapolis, MN, USA

This video project focusses on enabling youth from a challenged neighbourhood to learn the skills needed to talk to and record fellow community members reflecting on local economic challenges. During the summer of 2003, PCTV trained 4 young women and 1 young man to carry out all stages of the production process on their own - from researching the topics to shooting videotape and editing the finished video. For US$5.50 per hour, the inner-city teenagers chose a topic and spent about 6 weeks researching and then telling a story with a social message. With the exception of one of the participants, none had prior experience with camera work or journalism. Their PCTV supervisor provided guidance, but let their ideas shape the documentary.

Andreas Asher (age 15), Zanab Kulmiye (age 15), Najmo Hussein (age 16), Callista Noltee (age 14), and Kaltum Salad (age 15) conducted research and traveled around their neighbourhood, carrying out and videotaping interviews related to 4 aspects of the local economy: the effects of the state budget cuts, the job market, affordable housing, and new business developments. For instance, the group toured 2 new businesses, scheduled interviews with a state representative and a state senator, and walked the main streets of the neighbourhood to talk with citizens about the job situation in the community.

The 30-minute documentary will portray negative and positive aspects of the Phillips economy and explore how state budget cuts have affected life there. "We are sending a message: to speak up and let your voices be heard," one team member said of a video segment in which she and a fellow teen discuss using voting power to change lack of affordable housing and a tight job market. For example, more than half of the 35 or so residents they interviewed had difficulty finding jobs. This segment also portrays positive developments: a new housing development offers hope, as do such businesses as Lake Street Plaza, a new shopping area that features immigrant-owned businesses.

In addition to teaching teens about the local economy and making fellow citizens aware of its challenges, the project is designed to make youth aware of the experiences of peers from different backgrounds. Noltee's personal project, which focusses on the hearing-impaired, involved filming her deaf mother - and the responses of people with whom she tried to interact - when she went out on errands. Salad is from a Somali household. She says that when she first started school in the United States 8 years ago, kids laughed at the hijab she wore on her head and taunted her with hurtful remarks. For her segment, Salad visited both a local mall and a Somali market to interview teens about what they liked to wear and to tape shots of typical American and Somali clothes. "It's our culture and our religion," Salud says. "We are just like other teenagers."

The completed video documentary will air on local cable TV in Minneapolis and St. Paul in autumn 2003.

Youth, Economic Development.

Phillips is a turn-around neighborhood that still has problems but appears to be making substantial progress in combating familiar urban issues: crime and drug dealing, unemployment and poverty, and a climate of fear.

PCTV is a Minneapolis-based grassroots organisation dedicated to empowering youth and communities through media literacy education, media production, and public service. Since PCTV's inception in 1992, PCTV has worked to enable inner-city youth, ages 9-18 of various ethnicities, to create their own television programmes, magazines, photography exhibits, web pages, and personal media projects focussing on youth, family, and community issues. The idea is to help participants develop skills in media literacy, video production and design, photography and magazine layout and design - while strengthening community ties and educating the public about important issues.

Some group members are thinking of journalism or television as a career now that they have made their first documentary.