Awarded Grants

Via the 2020 Community Voice grant, PhillyCAM will offer a virtual Latinx Multimedia Reporting Fellowship in Fall 2020 to train 12 Latinx producers in multimedia reporting skills and build stronger bridges for content distribution and collaborative production among the expanding network of new initiatives supporting and amplifying local Latinx stories and information. During the Fellowship participants will work in teams to produce stories for distribution on PhillyCAM television, radio, online and on other local Spanish language platforms. The opportunity will be available to emerging journalists and community media producers looking to sharpen their skills or explore a new medium.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the launch of an independent news website of bilingual (English, Spanish, and/or Portuguese) investigative stories in the form of articles and videos. Working in collaboration with Philadelphia Latinx, immigrant, and communities of color, each story will be culturally competent with rigorous journalistic standards to expand the coverage of diverse and timely stories told by and for the community.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a virtual rendition of Theatre in the X's “West Philly Play,” a social justice people's theatre. Via community play sessions on Zoom, stories will be shared by individuals involved in the 52nd Street standoff with police following the uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Community members will share their experiences with the gentrification of their neighborhoods. These videos will be recorded and be available publicly on Theatre in the X's website and will also serve as research for the creation of a 2021 in-person “West Philly Play.”

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the creation of the Coatesville Black Media Renaissance (CBMR) project, which will use storytelling and media-making to heal and reconcile race relations in the city of Coatesville. Specifically, CMBR will provide local artists and storytellers a vehicle to amplify community voices through a variety of media platforms such as film, print media, and mural arts to create a community driven media model that activates change against unjust media narratives, policing, and other racist practices that continue to marginalize Coatesville residents.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support Philly Audio Diaries, a youth public radio training program. The program will provide POC youth with rigorous, one-on-one reporting experience in the city. In addition to connecting youth to public radio stations, the program will compensate students for their work.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a collaboration with Raise the Bar Philly and Mighty Writers to produce a four-week intergenerational storytelling project. West Philadelphia youth journalists will interview community members about topics related to the Black experience with policing in Philadelphia as well as the community's vision of a better future for Black Philadelphians.

PlanPhilly provides in-depth reporting on Philadelphia neighborhoods with a focus on urban design & planning, transportation & development.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a pilot project with PlanPhilly and WHYY Media Labs that will create a model for area newsrooms to integrate anti-racist journalism practices into local public school journalism curriculum and local newsrooms and amplify youth voice while strengthening and diversifying a talent pipeline that for too long been dominated by white students from elite institutions.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support an annual youth program to train black girls and womxn to use VR/AR to create immersive technology storytelling of their experiences. In addition it will provide support for a student-led project for inclusion in their virtual museum, which is set to launch next summer. The program participants will be compensated.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a time capsule book and website of essays, photographs, poems and other creative formats documenting the Uprising (Against White Supremacy, in Defense of Black Lives) in Philadelphia from May-June 2020. The project will collage intergenerational reflections of Black Philadelphians with an intersectional emphasis and attunement to the ongoing labor of “how we get free.”

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support Project Engage, an internet radio programming targeting community violence, mental health, education, and civic engagement in Chester, Pennsylvania and surrounding communities.