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Changemedia

Integrating media-making into change-making practice

Transcending boundaries, through alliance forged between media-making and change-making within current and emerging issues that affect our lives as communities, as a society

Changemedia’s reason to be…

Changemaking media creates opportunity for changemaking and mediamaking to knit collaborations together to transform lives… through deepened insight

• Strategy level …Reimagining issue-based change through media-making

• Approach …Establish spaces for impact collaboration in social, environmental issues with media making

• Framework …Involve communities to engage with their issues through mediamaking

•Action …Communities identified; production & mentoring capacity in place; community convergence and interaction space identified; a ‘collab’ community built – a changemedia platform built

Insight

seeing, understanding, acknowledging the unrecognized truth towards re-examining and challenging thestatus quo …changing the status quo

Changemedia evolves that insight among individuals, communities, organisations through making media-making an integrated and significant part of change-making

To trigger

…stepped up public inquiry, reflection and mobilised action …make collective choices based on stories, information, data for collective progress and transformation …defining of the ‘new citizenry’

Changemedia offers through its 'Collabs'...

• Mentor campaigners and develop a strategy.

• Work with filmmakers and / or technicians to ensure that effective and low cost films are produced to support the campaigns.

• Connect to other collaborators and funders and help to develop a proposal that is likely to get the requisite resources and funding.

• Connect to various other people and organizations who may be useful and necessary to make a success of their campaigns.

Some of the initial projects

1. Clean Toilets In Schools | Adolescent girls

Activist - Archana K.R.

The only thing that stands in the way of lakhs of adolescent girls across Karnataka from completing their school education is a toilet! After the girls begin having their periods their parents stop sending them to school because of inadequate toilet facilities.

Bangalore-based Independent campaigner Archana KR is on a mission to change that by persuading the Government and other stakeholders to provide clean and safe toilet facilities so that girls fulfil their dreams of becoming school graduates.

She is looking to create a strategy that integrates media to bring about policy changes towards toilets in educational institutions while providing qualitative and quantitative information towards this urgently required change.

2. End Manual Scavenging | Casteism/ Manual Scavenging

Organisation - The News Minute - www.thenewsminute.com

Manual Scavengingis one of the most dehumanizing practise plaguing Indian Society. A stubborn remnant of archaic casteist thinking, manual scavenging is carried out despite being banned by the government of India.

Two journalists are looking to spread information to curb the practise, through a multimedia campaign with feature stories, photo essays, videos, and events, to end the life-threatening, inhumane and casteist practice of manual cleaning of sewers in a targeted manner in Bengaluru.

The campaign aims to eradicate the practice by having one robotic cleaner in each of the 198 civic governance wards, while making every Bengalurean aware of the illegality, insensitivity of the practice.

3. Transform-uru | Sustainable City

Activist - Kaustubh Rau

In a city of 12 million, the citizens of Bengaluru have 2sq meters of green space per person, when the WHO prescribed standard is 9sq mete

Transform-uruis a citizen’s initiative aimed at re-imagining public spaces to make them green, sustainable and inclusive while providing a new paradigm for use of derelict urban lands in India.

As a first project, Kaustubh Rau proposes metamorphosing the old factory site of Mysore Lamp Works into an urban commons accessible to all of Bengaluru. He aims to convert derelict spaces into public spaces while the citizen benefits from the environment and cultural elements that the space can bring. Shifting the approach to overall urban development, architecture and policy change are essential elements of the project’s impact.

4. Vegan Karnataka! | Animal Compassion, Climate Change, Health

Activist- Manisha Singh

Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude all forms of exploitation and cruelty to animals for food, clothing and any other purpose.

Activist Manisha Singh leads a multifaceted campaign to promote veganism as a solution to many issues plaguing modern society in Karnataka.

The campaign is looking to increase awareness about the vegan way of life and influence an increasing demand for vegan products and produce, creating supply and demand dynamics which in turn would also impact the long term goal of agricultural policy formulation for a 'Vegan Karnataka’.

5. Reimagining Handloom in Karnataka | Heritage & Livelihoods

Organisation - Vimor Handloom Foundation - vimor.in

Karnataka has a rich history in weaving and silk production. Vimor has played a significant role in keeping the enduring traditions of indigenous weaves relevant for the masses. The project is a part of the Vimor Handloom Foundation’s effort at poverty alleviation through weaving.

Through the memory mapping of senior citizens, the expansion of the repository of oral textile design stories is used to skill youth and weavers in sustainable employment, and arrest distressed rural-urban migration. As a part of the project, locally produced silk waste or up-cycled yarn is used in recreating textiles rooted in Karnataka’s heritage.

The Reimagining Handlooms in Karnataka wants to reach out to the villages to inspire the youth to take up the old traditions of weaving. The repository of oral stories collected from the older generation of weavers acts as an archive of knowledge influencing the future of traditional weaves and designs, while diversifying livelihoods in Karnataka.

6. Equity on Streets | Sustainable Urban Mobility

Organisation- Citizens For Sustainability (CiFos) - www.cifos.weebly.com

The streets of a city are its lifeline. All form of travel and commerce flow through them. Right of the way therefore becomes the very spine of how the culture of a city evolves. However, the mobility within the city functions far beyond the parameters of civility, where streets increasingly are experienced as inhospitable places, especially for pedestrians and cyclists.

The distorted usage of a commonly held good i.e. roads, as a conduit for vehicles with bias towards the motor vehicle as having the right of the way on the city streets is rampant. The need to instil a new mobility culture is crucial for the ever growing city. Equity on Streets is an initiative by CiFoS to bring about a behaviour change in drivers of motor vehicles, while creating new approaches to address the inequity in street life.