
Symposium
September 20 - 22, 2018
Collective Wisdom is a three-day multi-disciplinary symposium, organized by the Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, in partnership with the Ford Foundation’s Just Films, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Phi Centre.
Image credit: Folk Memory Project

Event Info
The symposium will consist of panels, presentations, screenings, performances, installations and break-out sessions with visionary, field-shaping documentarians, community leaders, journalists, artists, designers, planners, scientists, scholars, funders, and movement-builders from across the US and around the world to discuss the pressing issue of co-creation.
This invite-only gathering will take place on September 21-22, 2018 at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with an optional keynote on the evening of September 20th at 5pm.
Friday’s program will be be live-streamed and archived online.
Still from: Iyapo Films: Artifact 012, Courtesy of Iyapo Repository
Our Speakers

Her city-building values are informed by her childhood experience of growing up in social housing. She has also been influenced by the long-term mentorship of her second grade Irish Canadian teacher who modelled the power of reaching across racial, class, and gender differences. In addition to housing, Jay also focuses on democratizing urban design, social urbanism, and story-based public engagement. She regularly sparks important conversations on these topics through media platforms such as the Agenda with Steve Paikin, CBC Radio, Maclean’s, and Canadian Architect; and through educational institutions like Ryerson University where she has taught an urban planning course.
Moreover, Jay co-edited Subdivided, a Coach House anthology exploring inclusive city-building. She is now working on several placemaking projects in the U.S., and writing Where We Live, which will be published by McClelland & Stewart at Penguin Random House.
Jay Pitter

William Uricchio

Kamal Sinclair

She is one of the co-founders of the UnBox Festival, leading on networks and collaborations bringing together efforts around social change, art & culture, thoughtful design and open research. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Victor Papanek Foundation and was featured in the British Council's 'Blurring the Lines' exhibition in London, as one of sixteen people from around the world who are reinventing creative exploration and participation in their respective communities. She is a member of the Mozilla Foundation's first cohort of "Network50”, for outstanding work in Internet health.
Babitha George

Fred Dust

Currently Jonathan is an arts programmer for British Council, where he has been creating projects exploring digital culture, cross-disciplinary practice and social engagement. With a regional focus on South Asia and the Americas, Jonathan works with artists, producers, designers and thinkers to explore how digital culture influences and inspires artistic, cross-disciplinary practice and transforms social and participatory engagement. His focus in the UK has been to forge a network of some of the most radical and forward thinking producers, makers and doers in the cultural sector, exploring arts practice in non-arts context.
Jonathan is a Trustee of the Live Art Development Agency and Strike A Light Festival, sits on the Digital Board of LIFT and co-founded refugee arts network Parallel Crossings. In his spare time he curates and presents the radio show ‘International Airspace’ with the community-run London Fields Radio, and runs workshops for young men and boys on gender equality with The Great Man Initiative.
Jonathan May

Cizek‘s earlier independent films include the Hampton-Prize winner Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News (co-directed with Peter Wintonick). Her work has been seen by millions around the globe, through TV broadcasts and publishing on the web. She has travelled the world with her projects, teaching and lecturing about her innovative approaches to the documentary genre and digital media.
Katerina Cizek

Zhang Mengqi

Jason Edward Lewis

After his PhD, Kristian founded the Department of Psychological and Social Research at the Elsass Institute, where he today functions as head of department, as part of his Post.Doc position at the University of Copenhagen. At the department he works on developing meaningful healthcare solutions for people living with CP in collaboration with citizens, healthcare professionals and scientist.
In the start of 2016, Kristian also co-founded two not-for-profit knowledge institutions, Collaboratorium S/I and Stages of Science S/I. Kristian uses Stages of Science as a platform to combine science and art (primarily theater), with the aim of increasing social awareness and hereby changing the societal attitudes towards persons with physical and mental disability. In the Collaboratorium Kristian works as a advisor to help knowledge organizations open up their processes and create relevant societal impact, either by developing collaborative media and web platforms or by facilitating collaborative processes.
Kristian Moller Moltke Martiny

Wolozin has long had an interest in exploring new platforms for storytelling and social change. Before arriving at MIT, she produced award-winning documentaries and educational media for a wide variety of media outlets including PBS, Learning Channel, History Channel, NPR, websites and museums. She received her training from Blackside, Inc. makers of the Emmy award-winning, Eyes on The Prize, a PBS series about the civil rights movement. She went on to work on the Peabody award-winning series, I’ll Make Me A World: The History of African-American Arts. She started experimenting with the web back in the early stages of its public use and in 1996 created and produced an award-winning 8-week interactive web series based on a comic book character. She has sat on numerous committees and juries including Sundance New Frontier Story Lab, Tribeca New Media Fund, the IFP Media Center, Puma Impact Award, Tribeca Storyscapes and World Press Photo. She has presented at Sundance, SXSW, International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), Storycode, MIT, DocMontevideo and many other venues
Sarah Wolozin

Drapkin currently serves on the board of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and is a consultant for the think tank Resources for the Future and NASA. She is one of the founding members of the Science to Action working group at AGU. Prior to journalism, Julia did research anthropology and archaeology for over 7 years in Latin America, where she geeked out on Mayan farmer’s almanacs.
Julia Kumari Drapkin

Cizek‘s earlier independent films include the Hampton-Prize winner Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News (co-directed with Peter Wintonick). Her work has been seen by millions around the globe, through TV broadcasts and publishing on the web. She has travelled the world with her projects, teaching and lecturing about her innovative approaches to the documentary genre and digital media.
Adrian Richardson

Amelia was a professor of time-based media art and performance art at Vanderbilt University for five years before returning to her roots in NYC creative technology, graduating from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program in 2015. In 2016 she went on to found and direct the DBRS Innovation Labs, an applied ai research lab that specialized in developing creative uses of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.
Amelia is the founder of the Stupid Hackathon, which now holds events around the world. She is a fellow of the Sundance New Frontiers Lab 2017 , a 2017 Sundance Institute Time Warner Fellow, in 2017 she was awarded the Engadget Alternative Realities Prize for her VR directorial debut. In 2016 she was an Oculus Launch Pad Fellow and an Artist in Residence at Pioneer Works 2016, Her art is part of the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum and the McCord Museum. Amelia is Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan.
Amelia Winger-Bearskin

Alicia M. Díaz

A focus of much of her work has been on finding ways to make space within the Canadian legal system for the recognition of Indigenous laws, and this has included in the areas of child and family wellness (finding ways to reassert and reclaim Indigenous laws in this area) and also exploring laws about land and resource use.
Ardith has a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University (Major Political Science, Minor Women’s Studies); Bachelor of Laws from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Law’s from the University of British Columbia. She is a two-spirited woman, and mom to two fierce daughters. She has published both academically and in poetry anthologies.
Ardith (Walpetko We’dalx) Walkem

Assia Boundaoui

Blake Fitzpatrick

Bree Gant

Brett Story

Cheryl Gall

Chi-hui Yang

Ethan Zuckerman

Willie Orlando Ford

She started her career making animated film and video in the 1980s that focused philosophical questions through the visceral, psychological, biological body in contemporary culture. Since the mid 1990’s this combined with her fascination with convergent developments in life sciences and technologies, their possible applications and how this shapes and informs identity. These elements are more prominent in later works mainly ‘Heirloom’ (2016), ‘I” (2014) & ‘The Wasted Works’ 2010-15
In ‘The Wasted Works’, described loosely as participatory sculptures, she transformed body-matter from living donors into objects that combine a sense of threat with a sense of irony and draw people in on various levels; emotive, ethical and intellectual & using contemporary cultural artefacts to resonate historic references to ethics and the changing landscape of the biomedical economy. Through the Wasted Works she developed The Art and Ethics Advisory Panel.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at, for example, Brisbane International Arts Festival, Ars Electronica Lumiere, Sundance & Solo exhibitions include ‘Humancraft ‘ moving image Centre, New Zealand, (2005) retrospective show at the Bluecoat (2010).
Gina Czarnecki

Halie attended Simon Fraser University before attaining a Bachelor of Laws degree from UBC. She has 25 years of experience working with Indigenous communities, and Indigenous, provincial and federal governments, and businesses. She has extensive training in mediation and alternative dispute resolution through courses taken at the Continuing Legal Education Society of BC, Justice Institute of BC, and the Social Justice Mediation Institute. Prior to attending law school, Halie was an Administrator for a Province-wide aboriginal organization, where she had extensive experience in management and staff and employment issues. She has worked with members of different aboriginal communities from across B.C., Canada and internationally, to explore traditional mechanisms for resolving various land, resource, social policy and internal community disputes.
Halie Bruce

Henry Navarro

Throughout her career as a non-profit executive, producer/director and funder, Cara has championed artists as leaders, and worked to harness the power of the moving image arts to strengthen civil society, create transformative narratives and accelerate progressive change. At Ford Foundation, she and her team have funded over 300 films, worked to build a more inclusive independent media field and launched the JustFilms Global Network, a major five-year initiative supporting a network of global north and global south organizations to create an international independent film network. Prior, Cara served for eight years as director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Fund. While there, she greatly expanded lab offerings and granting funds and partnered to co-found catalytic initiatives including Good Pitch, an event and training model produced by DocSociety, and the 'Stories of Change' initiative with the Skoll Foundation.
Prior to that, Cara was executive producer of the PBS documentary series POV, and Executive Director of American Documentary, Inc. She led a major expansion of POV/American Documentary, producing an annual prime time series and PBS specials that brought dozens of award-winning films to public television viewers. She received multiple Emmy Awards, George Foster Peabody Awards, and duPont-Columbia Awards and was awarded a Webby Award for creating and producing PBS' inaugural web series, POV’s Borders. She was executive producer of several Academy Award-nominated films, including Street Fight, Nerakhoon: Betrayal, and My Country, My Country.
Cara is member of WGA East, AMPAS and NATAS, and has been recognized with an IDA Award for her leadership at Sundance Institute, DocNYC's Leading Light Award and HotDocs Doc Mogul Award.
Cara Mertes

Jayne Engle

Jessica Clark

He has worked on and produced many of Isuma’s recent projects, including Digital Indigenous Democracy (2012), Attatama Nunanga - My Father’s Land (2014),) Maliglutit (Searchers) (2015) – where he was producer and director of photography, and a new 7-part TV series Hunting with My Ancestors. Jonathan is also producer of Edge of the Knife, an Isuma-style feature made in collaboration with the Haida Nation, which will have its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. This project was part of an initiative to reproduce the “Isuma” model in other indigenous communities.
Jon Frantz

Julie Taylor

Kathryn McKenzie

Lauren Pabst

Her best known urban writings include Property, Politics and Planning: a history of Australian city planning 1890-1990 (1992); Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural History of Planning (1998); and Where Strangers Become Neighbours: the integration of immigrants in Vancouver, Canada (2009). In collaboration with Giovanni Attili, she has produced the documentaries Where Strangers Become Neighbours, (2007); and Finding Our Way: beyond Canada’s apartheid, (2010).
Since 2010, Leonie has been working on a new Masters degree curriculum, Indigenous Community Planning (ICP), which has been designed and is now being delivered in partnership with the Musqueam First Nation. In 2015 Leonie received the Distinguished Planning Educator award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, for her contribution to planning scholarship, education, and practice.
Leonie Sandercock

Having started out in the London independent film scene In the 1980s, Mandy went on to lead ground-breaking participatory media projects at the BBC including the “Mass Observation” camcorder project Video Nation and the Capture Wales digital storytelling project.
She is co-editor of i-docs: the evolving practices of interactive documentary – Wallflower Press 2017 and edited the section on co-creation. She is co-investigator of the EPSRC research project – Virtual Realities: Immersive Documentary Encounters exploring the uses of VR for nonfiction.
Her recent writing includes Not media about, but media with: Co-creation for activism. (i-docs 2017), Technologies of seeing and technologies of corporeality: currents in nonfiction virtual reality (World Records 2018) and The immersive turn: Hype and hope in the emergence of virtual reality as a nonfiction platform (Studies in Documentary Film 2018).
Mandy Rose

Marc Ruppel

Mariel Belanger

Nicholas Pilarski

Odette Scott

Throughout her career as an esteemed interactive producer, funder and public programmer, Opeyemi has created spaces and pipelines for interdisciplinary artists, communities, and content teams to experiment with and create meaningful innovative content. She is a fierce advocate of technological equity, eliminating bias from social innovation and is deeply invested in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Before joining POV, Opeyemi was the Senior Director of Interactive Programs for Tribeca Film Institute, produced for ScrollMotion and has served as an assistant professor of Integrated Media at Brooklyn College’s Barry R. Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. Opeyemi has served on numerous festival juries and has mentored through the IDFA’s Doc Academy, New Museum’s NEW INC and Oculus’ VR for Good. She is a proud Rockwood (Ford Foundation) JustFilms Fellow.
Opeyemi Olukemi

A Father’s Lullaby, her research/creation project at MIT Open Documentary Lab, considers the absence of fathers in communities of color as a direct result of mass incarceration, its life-long impact on children who are left behind and its weight on women and lower-income families, explored through the space of love and intimacy. The project is being developed with community members as creative collaborators, and many local institutions including Boston Center for the Arts, Federal Probation Office, Office of Returning Citizens, and Community Music Center of Boston. A Father’s Lullaby public art installation can be experienced at Boston Center for the Art’s Plaza through Oct 26, 2018 and at HUBweek Boston 2018.
Rashin Fahandej

Ray Graham

Richard Lachman

In addition to his work at Sundance Institute, Mr. Perez executive produced and directed the feature documentary, Cesar’s Last Fast, a film about the spiritual commitment of American civil rights and labor leader Cesar E. Chavez that premiered in competition at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Prior to joining the Sundance staff, Mr. Perez was an executive producer at Brave New Films where he produced two documentary series, and directed a third. Richard Ray Perez is a native of Los Angeles and holds a bachelor of arts degree in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University.
Richard Ray Perez

Salome Asega

Sandy Herz

Sarah M. Bassett

Carlos Martinez de la Serna

Her films have screened at film festivals internationally, including Sundance, TIFF, Rotterdam, ImagineNATIVE, Aspen Shorts, Oberhausen and Cannes, and her work has been acquired by National Gallery of Canada. Selected films include Choke (Sundance Festival Jury Prize Honourable Mention in International Short Filmmaking, Tiff Canada’s Top Ten, nominated for Canadian Screen Award), The Underground (Tiff, Best Short Film ImagineNATIVE), Nimmikaage (Oberhausen, Pan Am Games, National Gallery of Canada) and the feature doc ALIAS (nominated for a Canadian Screen Award, premiered in competition at Hot Docs). She is currently developing The Freedom Project (Sienna) - a dramatic feature film examination of women within the prison system, and adapting Thomas King’s novel Inconvenient Indian (Bell/NFB). Michelle has written for Frontier Season 3, directed two episodes of the new CBC comedy “Little Dog”, and is currently attached as a showrunner and co-creator for Sienna Films series “Red Nation Rising”. Michelle’s latest move into scripted television includes purchasing the rights to bestselling author, Eden Robinson’s award-winning “Son of a Trickster” trilogy, which she will be co-producing with Sienna Films, acting as showrunner and creator for the series.
In 2018, Michelle was the only Canadian awarded the 2018 Field of Vision Filmmaker Fellowship where she will be working closely with producer, Laura Poitras, to develop and incubate groundbreaking, social-justice films. As a curator, Michelle has programmed for ImagineNATIVE, Hot Docs Film Festival, Victoria Intl Film Festival and the Dawson City International Short Film Festival. She is an alumna of the Toronto Film Festival’s Talent Lab, the inaugural Tiff STUDIO Producers Program and holds a BFA in Theatre Performance and Film Studies from Concordia University, Montreal. In 2013, Michelle was selected by Playback Magazine as one of Canada’s Top Ten Filmmakers to Watch, and the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) recently named her among the “Great Canadian Filmmakers of the Future”. Michelle is of Métis/Algonquin descent and much of her work is dedicated to the pursuit of Indigenous rights and sovereignty.
Michelle Latimer

She is co-author of a number of lectures and papers on the transformation of journalism, including co-editor of the book Journalism After Snowden (2017), ‘The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley Re-engineered Journalism’ with Taylor Owen (2017) and most recently, ‘Friend and Foe: The Platform Press at the Heart of Journalism’. Emily is a trustee on the board of the Scott Trust, the owners of The Guardian, and an adviser to Tamedia Group in Switzerland. She delivered the Reuters Memorial Lecture in 2014, the Hugh Cudlipp Lecture in 2015, and was the 2016 Humanitas Visiting Professor in Media at the University of Cambridge. She also gave the AN Smith Annual Lecture in Australia in 2017. Emily continues to write a regular column for the Guardian and Columbia Journalism Review, and is a contributor to the New York Times, CNN, the BBC and numerous other outlets.
Emily Bell

In 2009, Harris created Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, LLC (DDFR), a socially engaged transmedia project that incorporates photo sharing, community organizing, performance, virtual gathering spaces, workshops and exhibitions into over 60 unique audio-visual events in over 50 cities. Working in partnership with museums, senior and youth centers, educational institutions, libraries, housing authorities and cultural arts spaces, DDFR creates linkages affirming our common humanity while privileging the voices of people whose stories have often been absented, marginalized or overlooked. The DDFR archive has grown to include more than 3,500 interviews and 30K+ photographs.
A graduate of Harvard College, the Whitney Independent Study Program, and the CPB/PBS Producers Academy, a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and a published photographer, curator, and writer, Harris lectures widely on the use of media as a Tool for Social Change. He is on faculty at Yale University in African American and Film & Media Studies, where he is teaching courses titled “Family Narratives/Cultural Shifts” and “Archive Aesthetics and Community Storytelling”.
Thomas Allen Harris

Sasha Costanza-Chock

Shirin Anlen

Today, Sandra Rodriguez heads the Creative Reality Lab at EyeSteelFilm, an Emmy awarded company based in Montreal, where she explores virtual and extended reality experiences (Deprogrammed, Big Picture, MANIC VR, Chomsky vs Chomsky). Sandra has been honored to talk and offer Master Classes on Storytelling in Digital Media in high visibility events including: Cannes Film Festival, SXSW, Sundance New Frontier, IDFA, RIDM, Mutek, Sheffield Doc Fest, Singapore Film Festival, VR Anti-Manifesto (Montreal and Berlin), New Storytellers and more. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where she teaches MIT’s first course in VR and immersive media production, with the support of MIT CAST and Oculus NextGen (www.hackingvr.mit.edu).
Sandra Rodriguez

paige is involved in other narrative-shifting work in Detroit as the co-creator of Black Bottom Archives (BBA). BBA is a community-driven media platform dedicated to centering and amplifying voices, experiences, and perspectives of Black Detroiters through journalism, art, and cultural organizing. The vision of BBA is to preserve local Black history & archive present realities in connection with others across the diaspora. paige manages outreach, content and development, along with coordinating BBA’s Advisory Board.
paige is completing the Master of Community Development program at University of Detroit Mercy, and is a member of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100)’s Detroit chapter. They also sit on the Board of the James & Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership.
When they’re not out trying to change the world, paige is most likely binge-watching corny sitcoms, loving up on Black people, or traveling with their family
paige watkins

ill Weaver

Atieno Nyar Kasagam

Ahya Simone

Sarah Schwettmann

Dana’s expertise includes a diverse range of planning experience including comprehensive, land use, and project-based planning. Her passion for planning began while running Swan Bay Rediscovery Program, a cultural youth camp, where she observed the need for programs that connected youth, elders and language. This is a value that she brings forward into everyday work. Dana continues to support community programs working with elders and youth honoring tradition, language and protocol.
Dana was raised in Ladner and attended Kwantlen University College where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology). Recently, she completed the Northwest Canadian Aboriginal Management Program with the Peter B. Gustvason School of Business at UVIC.
After traveling extensively for several years, she returned to Haida Gwaii where she met her husband, and began a family. Through her travel experience Dana gained a love for languages and food and enjoys entertaining. She now resides in Skidegate, Haida Gwaii, with her husband and four children. They spend their free time with their extensive family food gathering, hunting and fishing.
Dana Moraes

In 2015 she did a commission for the façade of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 2013-2014, she presented a major solo exhibition at the Sculpture Center, New York. Her work has been also exhibited at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013), Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011), Moderna Museet (2014), MUMOK, Vienna (2009), Tate Modern, London (2006), The Kitchen, New York (2016), Grazer Kunstverein (2015), Bonner Kunstverein, Stroom Den Haag (2014) and Performa Biennial, New York (2013). In 2010 she co-represented Poland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (with Aleksandra Wasilkowska). Her most recent exhibitions include commissions for Guggenheim Bilbao (2017), La Panacee, Montpelier and SFMOMA (2018) as well as solo shows at SCAD MoA and at the CCA in Tel Aviv (2017).
Kurant is currently an artist in residence at MIT CAST and holds a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute.
Agnieszka Kurant

Michael Premo

Cindy Sherman Bishop

Sheila Leddy

Yasmin directed the Emmy-nominated, award-winning original Scatter production Zero Days VR a documentary about cyber warfare and the Stuxnet virus, which made its World Premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was called “revolutionary” (VRScout) and “one of the most powerful VR documentaries” (Voices of VR). Yasmin co-directed Blackout: an immersive documentary inviting New Yorkers to share their stories in their own voice which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2017. She is the co-creator of 18DaysInEgypt, an interactive documentary about the Egyptian Revolution that was lauded as one the Moments of Innovation in Participatory Documentary. Upcoming projects include Changing Same a co-production with RADA Film group and is a magical-realist, afro-futurist time travel VR exploration into the cyclical history of racial injustice in America.
Yasmin’s body of work spans new media documentaries, immersive experiences, site-specific and large-scale installations. Yasmin’s work has won multiple awards and exhibited at various festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SIGGRAPH, Festival de Cannes, and the World Economic Forum.
Yasmin Elayat

Who We Are
The Co-Creation Studio is a new initiative at MIT Open Documentary Lab. The studio researches and incubates alternatives to a singular authorial vision, through a constellation of media methods. For our studio, co-creation can occur within communities, across disciplines and with non-human systems such as Artificial Intelligence. We work within the context of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, which brings storytellers, technologists, and scholars together to explore new documentary forms with a particular focus on collaborative and immersive storytelling. A center for documentary research, the lab offers courses, workshops, a fellows program, public lectures, and conferences; it incubates experimental projects; and it develops resources and critical discourse. In the spirit of MIT’s open courseware and open source software movements, the Open Documentary Lab is inclusive, collaborative and committed to sharing knowledge, networks, and tools.
Image credits: Mirror Mask, Folk Memory Project, Priya’s Shakti
Collective Wisdom Field Study
COLLECTIVE WISDOM is also a field study that will be launched later in 2018.
For this report, we drew on our interviews and group discussions with over one hundred people, our collected databases of relevant literature and media projects, along with twenty years of our own personal fieldwork and production using co-creative documentary and journalism practices.