A kick-off celebration of storytelling and design for good.
Join us for an evening of eco-conscious food and drink, with art and music produced by cause-oriented creatives.
Ages 18+
$8 online pre-sale
$10 at the door
Includes a FREE drink and delicious treats
Hosted by: Epic Yoga
Food by: Goûter
Drinks by: New Belgium Brewing Co. / Honest Tea / Ocean Vodka
Most nonprofit organizations are making use of video as a communications tool, but not as many consider their long-term objectives with video. In a quickly evolving media landscape, a video communications strategy must include short- and long-term planning, audience identification and segmentation, and distribution strategies in order to get your organization's message to the right audiences. Join our panel as we explore best practices in the planning, creation and distribution of nonprofit video.
Lunch sandwiches will be provided by the organizer for the first 40 attendees who preregister online and bring their Eventbrite confirmation to the event.
Our panel will address the following topics:
Panelists:
This event will be held in the Main Conference Rooms of the World Resources Institute. Seating is limited.
Docs In Progress is happy to welcome Benevolent Media Festival-goers to our Summer Open House at The Docs In Progress Documentary House in downtown Silver Spring. Come anytime to mix and mingle with other documentary filmmakers and documentary film fans who believe documentary film builds community.
Free and open to the public
A welcoming space for in-person projects, pitches and opportunities related to storytelling and design for good.
Special presentations throughout the day.
Free and open to the public
Complimentary snacks and drinks
Hosted by: Affinity Lab
Food by: Honest Tea / KIND / Food Should Taste Good
A panel about cross-platform, multi-media storytelling for non-profits. Panel members include a filmmaker-turned-app developer, a photographer-turned-web-designer and web-designer-turned-storyteller. They have all developed campaigns for nonprofits that are pushing the storytelling boundaries of the web.
After a short presentation on their campaigns and the salient points they've learned, speakers will open the floor for questions.
The Panelists
Patrick White, Creative Director, Arcade Sunshine Media - Filmmaker Patrick White founded Arcade Sunshine Media after producing documentaries for History. The company is a strange new hybrid designed for a bold future of digital storytelling. Part video production house, part publishing house, part app development firm, and part marketing firm – Arcade Sunshine is telling stories in ways never before possible. They are now producing a cross-platform, multi-media campaign designed to raise awareness of Haitian musicians. The campaign is a fascinating marriage of traditional storytelling (films, music, photography, writing) and emerging online outreach (social media, apps, video broadcasting tools, new music distribution).
Joshua Cogan, Founder, Joshua Cogan Photography - Joshua Cogan is a photographer and anthropologist whose skill in environmental portraiture has defined his career. Cogan’s combination of still photography and poetry created, Live Hope Love, a revelatory look at the silenced voices of HIV-positive Jamaicans enduring the stigmas of their society through the words of poet Kwame Dawes. Produced by the Pulitzer Center, it won an Emmy for New Approaches to Documentary Storytelling. Cogan's work has also appears regularly on or in the Travel Channel, Discovery, New Yorker, GQ, Men's Journal, Washington Post, and the New York Times.
Rajneesh Aggarwal, President, PROVOC - Raj has over twenty years of experience as a graphic artist and designer. He specializes in theme development, color, interface design, image composition, and computer illustration. He has overseen major technology, design, and print campaigns from the Save Darfur Coalition to Citibank, Rare Conservation to Verizon, and The Aspen Institute to George Washington University. He is known for developing and implementing marketing initiatives that combine traditional marketing tactics with grassroots outreach campaigns.
“On the Same Page: Free Minds Poetry in the Community,” a violence prevention initiative, brings together youth poets who were incarcerated as teens in the adult system and diverse audiences from the community to promote healing and understanding through the tools of poetry and shared life experiences.
Free Minds poets use poems from the Free Minds literary journal They Call Me 299-359 and first person narratives of childhood experiences and time spent incarcerated in federal prison to engage with community members. Participants respond to the words and experiences of the incarcerated poets and relate them to their own lives. This exchange promotes empathy, understanding, and healing. With everyone on the same page, we can create a stronger, healthier community.
This event is scheduled as part of the Grand Opening of the new Bellevue Neighborhood Library: http://www.dclibrary.org/node/31051
Get sustainable style from head to toe as you shop jewelry, clothing, and accessories. Earth-lovin’ vendors include:
And enjoy a signature "Benevolent Cocktail" from 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. during our Benevolent Hour.
Following our Eco-Chic Pop-Up Shop, stick around for a signature "Benevolent Cocktail" by MOVA Lounge.
Design. Writing. Filmmaking. Journalism. Media. Regardless the medium, your work must be rooted in the story you tell.
Maybe it’s the story of your organization. Maybe it’s the story of those impacted by a specific issue. Maybe it’s your personal story. During this interactive workshop, participants will develop a strategy and improve their new ability to use storytelling to highlight the importance of the issues at the center of whatever their work may be.
Full disclosure: this is NOT a workshop for the bystander. Be prepared to get to know the fellow members of the workshop and get to know yourself, as Vanguard Communication's Leah Holmes-Bonilla engages participants to elevate awareness, build relationships and trust, and create a lasting impression. Whether you are communicating with your audience, your funders, the media or your organization, the Storytelling Workshop will foster the skills to get your story told effectively.
Space is limited — please RSVP. Can't join us? Follow us on Twitter at @vancomm #plpr #bedmedfest.
A welcoming space for in-person projects, pitches and opportunities related to storytelling and design for good.
Special presentations throughout the day.
Free and open to the public
Complimentary snacks and drinks
Hosted by: Affinity Lab
Food by: Honest Tea / KIND / Food Should Taste Good
Greg Roth of Percy Group Communications will lead a communications workshop on creating high-level strategy and more engaging content for nonprofits, associations, businesses, foundations, and product or issue campaigns.
Join us on a group bicycle ride to different community gardens in D.C., with everyone convening at a community film screening and discussion of a feature-length documentary, "A Community of Gardeners," which promotes urban sustainability and green spaces, with a chance for film-goers to drink, eat and socialize afterwards.
GROUP CYCLE RIDE (1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.) - FREE
Meet up at City Bikes' Adams Morgan location (2501 Champlain St. NW) at 1:00 p.m. Soon aftewards, we will head out for a chance to see Wangari Gardens, a great new city garden in the shadow of the Children's Medical Center. From there we will meander across town to visit the new terraced garden at Brainfood and then to the Fridge Gallery. Following the screening and social hour, head over to City Bikes' Capitol Hill location (709 8th St. SE) for snacks and swag. If you have any questions please email ben@citybikes.com. The group ride is free and open to the public.
To guarantee your seat at the screening, be sure to also purchase tickets for $5.
Scoutmob presents: FILM SCREENING + DISCUSSION (3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.) + SOCIAL HOUR (4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.) - $5
Buy your tix online: https://secure.scoutmob.com/washington-dc/hand-picked/cycle-in
The feature-length documentary, "A Community of Gardeners," explores the vital role of seven community gardens in Washington, D.C. as sources of fresh, nutritious food, outdoor classrooms, places of healing, links to immigrants' homelands, centers of social interaction and oases of beauty and calm in inner-city neighborhoods. The film also traces the history of community gardens in the United States, from the potato patch farms of the late 19th century, to the victory gardens of World War II, to community gardening's current renaissance.
Before the screening, we will premiere, "Planting Community: The Story of Wangari Gardens," a five-minute documentary produced by Still Life Projects that tells the story of Josh Singer and his determination to reclaim an abandoned piece of land in DC's Park View neighborhood. The hurdles he faces along the way cause months of setbacks, but his vision of a community garden grows into something beyond what he even imagined.
The screenings will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with filmmaker Cintia Cabib, Josh Singer of Wangari Gardens, Kate Lee of the Brainfood Youth Garden, and Ryan Hill of Still Life Projects.
Stick around for a social hour, with complimentary drinks and treats.
Tickets for the film screening + discussion + social hour are $5 - on a first-come, first-served basis. Space is limited, so purchase your tix now!
Buy your tix online: https://secure.scoutmob.com/washington-dc/hand-picked/cycle-in
Every person has a story, and every person has experienced a journey—whether it has been an immigration journey across continents, or a story of migrating from one neighborhood to a neighborhood across town.
Join IMPACT Silver Spring, a community development organization, and Gandhi Brigade, a youth media and youth organizing non-profit, in this interactive workshop. Inspired by an event hosted by the Smithsonian, IMPACT Silver Spring, Gandhi Brigade, and community members in Silver Spring have been meeting regularly for the past 6 months to share stories and have conversations about immigration and migration. We would like to bring this experience to you through a workshop where each participant will become a storyteller, while also participating in a dialogue about immigration, migration, and home, and what these ideas mean to us personally and as a larger society.
The second part of storytelling is keeping the story alive. For those that choose to, we will also provide a mobile recording booth where participants can record their stories through video or audio.
$10 suggested donation
Adam Ruben presents "Please Don't Beat Me Up: Stories and Artifacts from Adolescence," a one-hour solo show that features true stories about embarrassment suffered during adolescence, including a fourth-grade class election gone awry, a stuffed animal smuggled into summer camp, and a relay race during Fifth Grade Field Day that was never meant to be. The stories are interspersed with readings from readings from old diaries, video clips, and a manifesto of self-pity written while sitting at home dateless during tenth-grade Homecoming.
The show, which is primarily a comedy, aims to address bullying in a realistic fashion. It concludes with a discussion of the flaws in the anti-bullying advice often given by well-meaning teachers and parents and an exploration of the show's central issue: If "Be yourself" is such good advice for kids, why doesn't it work?
This show debuted at the Capital Fringe Festival in 2011 and has since been performed at the Fringe Wilmington Festival, Fringe Unhinged, Concord High School (Wilmington, DE), and The Potomac School (Mclean, VA), with upcoming performances scheduled at Celebration Barn Theater (South Paris, ME), the Islesboro Community Center (Islesboro, ME), and several DC public schools and after-school programs.
$5 online pre-sale
$8 at the door
Learn more: http://adamruben.net/please-dont-beat-me-up/
Becky Lee, executive director and founder of Becky's Fund, will join the discussion to share her organization's efforts to prevent domestic violence and bullying through the creative arts.
A film screening and a discussion of how storytelling in films about mental health and addiction can lead to change.
The media just can't get enough stories of celebrity, addiction, and mental health. But do these stories help or hinder the recovery of people with behavioral health struggles?
Actress and singer Demi Lovato's documentary is a boldly candid look at the Disney-turn-pop star's journey of recovery and her first tour after rehab. Perez Hilton (yes, we are quoting him) says "Demi Lovato has gone above and beyond to very honestly - and very bravely - share her struggles with the public and her fan base, as to raise awareness on the issues plaguing many young people."
Time will be allotted following the screening for a brief discussion about the film itself, the role of storytelling in educating and empowering people, and how productions like this one impact the national conversation about behavioral health. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Can't join us? Follow us on Twitter at @vancomm #plpr #benmedfest.
Presenters:
Joe Kelly - Executive Vice President
Brenda Foster - Vice President of Account Services
Ryan Parks - Account Manager
Whether you are an NGO with an important cause, an advocacy group with an urgent message, or a think tank that produces sharp analysis, you no longer have to rely on The New York Times or Washington Post to be heard. The internet and democratization of technology has upended the old media gatekeepers, allowing the best content (rather than the biggest megaphone) to reach the largest audiences. Organizations driven by missions rather than profits are using this flexibility as a competitive advantage to do more innovative, creative, and engaging work than traditional media outlets. This space is also creating new opportunities and platforms for journalists, photographers, and other media professionals to tell powerful stories.
Come learn from the experiences of innovators from the design, policy, advocacy, and journalism worlds who have created effective multimedia projects powered by challenging content, memorable design, and compelling stories that audiences are eager to share. Hear the genesis of the projects, lessons learned, and best practices for creating effective multimedia campaigns with stories that resonate.
Panelists:
User Experience Design (UX) is far from being the new kid on the block. We see and experience various aspects of usability in the everyday environment and products we use, from consumer products, to airport wayfinders, to store checkout areas. But, in recent years, UX has developed into a recognized industry buzzword, so it’s no wonder that organizations talk of it, know of it or want to learn about it. We want to help people understand why its important and the best ways to still incorporate it even when you run into everyday challenges such as budget constraints, users interests vs. client goals.
User experience design doesn’t just project a heroic voice for users. It keeps organizations relevant, alert, and responsive to make products and services users need and want to use. Thus, the more an organization knows about its users, the more competitive edge they have over the competition.
Presenters:
Jeff Doan - Developer, BrowserMedia
Kizaan Knapp - Marketing, BrowserMedia
Scars and Smiles is a photo gallery exhibit and accompanying lecture that tells the in depth stories of the people effected by but the worst famine to hit the Horn of Africa in 60 years.
With an up close and personal account by Ridwan Adhami, creative director and photographer with Islamic Relief USA and founder of Ridzdesign, this series aims to humanize a major catastrophe by bringing the people who where hit hardest by this tragedy to the forefront. Bringing not just the faces but the names and stories of these people, true human stories that any person can relate to, to help connect all of us to pain most of the world will never feel. Ultimately it is about hope and a positive outlook for a future we can all be proud of.
Lecture and Q&A session will be held at Yola on Monday, June 25 at 6pm
Interested in photography? Stop by the Benevolent Media Festival STRUCTURE Closing Party at from 6-9pm at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams,1526 14th Street NW, featuring a photo sale to benefit Architecture for Humanity.
A celebration to conclude the Benevolent Media Festival.
Join us for “Structure,” a party set against a backdrop of stunning images taken by photojournalists dedicated to using their craft for social change. Whether shot in the field or displayed in your home, these compelling visual stories inspire viewers to celebrate human dignity and support sustainable development in communities worldwide.
Prints will be available for purchase at the event. Sizes range from 8” x 10” to 30” x 40” and print prices range from $50 - $1,000. 25% of proceeds from prints sales benefit participating photojournalists and 50% benefit Architecture for Humanity and Architecture for Humanity - Washington DC chapter, a non-profit design services firm committed to building a more sustainable future through the power of professional design.
Architecture for Humanity's DC Chapter will also be featuring a small-scale 3D model of [IIII] Box, a fresh initiative that promotes community development by repurposing recycled cargo containers to activate vacant lots and bring positive change to neighborhoods throughout Washington, DC. The [IIII] Box aims to be self-sustainable, green and flexible enough to adapt to different communities and their respective needs. Learn more: http://www.boxcollective.org/.
Raffle items by Photoshelter and Zipcar!
Doors open at 6pm
$10 online
$15 at the door
Includes complimentary drinks and appetizers
All proceeds to benefit Architecture for Humanity
Enter our raffle: PhotoShelter, the leader in portfolio websites for photographers, gives away a FREE Standard Account, a $329 value with 60 GB of space to archive and market thousands of your high quality photographs.
Hosted by: Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
Curated by: Nuru Project
To benefit: Architecture for Humanity