Community Visions

Community Visions teaches documentary video-making skills to members of community organizations in Philadelphia, Chester and Camden. Community Visions is a part of Scribe's mission to explore, develop and advance the use of video, film, audio and interactive technology as artistic tools and as tools for progressive social change.

Current Community Visions Projects

The following projects will begin production in Spring 2013:

Philadelphia Performing Arts - Dance - Ione Nash, Her Life, Her Art
By the Arthur Hall Afro-American Dance Ensemble Alumni
Told through the life and work of longtime community member and dancer Ione Nash, Arthur Hall Afro-American Dance Esemble Alumni hope to explore the role of the performing art of dance in society. Through observational and instructional footage of dance classes, biographical material of Ione Nash, and interviews with experienced dancers, this project hopes to advance, sustain, and provide education about the performing arts in Philadelphia.

Living Inside, Living Outside & the TITO Experience
By TEACH Inside, TEACH Outside (TITO)
The Institute for Community Justice (ICJ) and its Teach Inside, Teach Outside (TITO) reentry program, part of Philadelphia FIGHT, an HIV/AIDS service and research organization, guide recently incarcerated and recently released individuals to act as political activists and community leaders against mass incarceration. As a pedagogical and activist tool, this film will not only highlight the personal stories of incarcerated individuals, but will showcase the TITO program's unique model of prison reentry as way to empower community members and activists.

Brandywine Workshop: A Diverse Legacy
By the Brandywine Workshop
Brandywine Workshop is dedicated to the creation, documentation, and preservation of a legacy of culturally diverse American art and the participation of multi-ethnic artists in the field of fine arts printmaking and related media. This video project will highlight the history, achievements and impact of the Workshop's programming over four decades, conveying the importance of building arts institutions that serve ethnically diverse communities and diverse needs at the local, national, and international level.

Stolen Dreams II
By the Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project
The Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project (YASP) is a youth led organization that works with young people who are locked up and charged as adults and held in adult jails or prisons. As a follow-up to the group's first documentary, which has served as a vital educational and organizing tool, this project will address the impact of violence on young people growing up in Philadelphia, particularly those who have participated in YASP workshops in the prison system, breaking down the myth that trying young people as adults is a real solution to violence.

About Community Visions

Since 1990, Scribe Video Center has guided over 75 community and activist organizations through the production of mini-documentaries and neighborhood portraits that help communities address important social and political issues. The program is a powerful way to document community concerns, celebrate cultural diversity, and comment on the human condition. We work with local non-profit groups whose members have important stories to tell but limited access to the means of making videos. We invite applications from all groups, including people of color, young people, senior citizens, immigrants, the disabled and poor people.

The selected groups — usually four each year — make videos about issues that are important to their constituents. In recent years, groups have made oral histories, documented neighborhood problems, or created neighborhood portraits. The project is free to the group. Scribe provides the instruction, technical assistance, equipment, tape and other expenses necessary to produce a five- to fifteen-minute video. When the documentary is complete, we host a premiere screening and help the groups plan how they will use their videos.

While Scribe provides all the necessary technical assistance to produce your videotape, groups must have a strong idea and committed individuals to see the project to completion. Participating groups will acquire new skills while discovering new ways to reach their constituency — through video.

Watch a scene from Tina Morton's film Philadelphia's Scribe to see Community Visions in action.

click to play

Past Community Visions Projects

2009-2010 Community Visions Projects

Bridgeway, Inc, a community center in Tioga, produced a documentary highlighting the daily work of the organization through the life-stories of its current resident staff members. Through this narrative, the video illustrates how a community’s people are its most basic and necessary resource.

Members of Chester’s Co-op produced a video addressing health and food access issues in Chester—a city with no supermarket and limited access to fresh food—with the ultimate goal of inviting new residents to become actively involved in their health and community by joining the Co-op. The video demystifies the co-op concept by demonstrating the benefits of membership.

Every Mother is a Working Mother produced a short documentary telling the stories of mothers and grandmothers who are fighting to get their kids out of foster care. Through these testimonies, the video explains how poverty, lack of housing, poor legal representation, racism, sexism, and a system with little accountability are responsible for the frequently unjust separation of mothers from their children.

In 1996, the Pennsylvania legislature passed an amendment that would automatically transfer young people accused of “violent” or repeat offenses to the adult court system. Members of the Youth Art & Self-empowerment Project are creating a video, Breaking the Cradle to Prison Pipeline, that calls attention to the issues of young people who are tried and incarcerated as adults and the impact of this practice on youth, their families and their communities.

2008-2009 Community Visions Projects

For more information about purchasing the 2008-2009 series of Community Visions, please call (215) 222-4201.

New Faces
By the 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund
The Training and Upgrading Fund aspires to fill the region's lack of nursing and allied health professionals with members of the community who are nontraditional candidates for these positions. The Training Fund assits students at all levels to upgrade their academic skills and become the "New Faces" who answer the challenges of the shortage. The film follows several graduates of the training program, portraying their histories, their current occupations and their reflections of the program.

Bikes Work
By Neighborhood Bike Works
On the corner of 60th and Vine in West Philadelphia, youth are building bikes and breaking stereotypes at Neighborhood Bike Works, a non-profit where youth recycle old bikes as they acquire technical expertise and improve their bike riding skills. Their video shows young people working hard, getting along with each other and taking an interest in the history of their community and NBW's role in the neighborhood. The video follows students as they earn bikes in a summer class led by past graduates of the program.

Walls and Doors
By the Jubilee School
The Jubilee School is using years of interviews with community elders to demonstrate the value of an older generation's tales of courage and resistance by underscoring the power of these stories to inspire respect, pride and activism in young people. "Walls and Doors" honors elders as both witnesses and creators of under-told parts of history. The film carries on a legacy which has given the Jubilee youth a transformative sense of the power of their voices and their ability to create change.

Renaissance on Sacred Ground
By the Arthur Hall Afro-American Dance Ensemble Alumnae and the Village of Arts and Humanities
“Renaissance on Sacred Ground” is a 15 minute documentary about the healing power of African cultural arts to transform the lives of everyday people. Through the doors of Ile Ife (house of love) came the spirit that builds community and connects generations to the rich history and traditions from Africa.

Community Visions is made possible by support from The Lincoln Financial Foundation, Dolfinger McMahon Foundation, and The Union Benevolent Association