Behind the Lens: Reimagining Creativity in Schools through Intergenerational Filmmaking

• In Event: Making Space for Youth-Produced Digital Texts as Remedy in a Time of “Crisis”: Inviting in Joy and Artistic Flourishing

Abstract

Amidst the shifting landscapes of educational practices and decline in art programs across cities, this study follows a creative collective composed of four practitioner-researchers. Situated in a local high school during a school-based partnership between a graduate-level education course and an art class, the documentary project focused on expanding multimodal youth storytelling within schools (Authors, 2014). The collective used participatory autoethnography (Chang, 2016; Hernandez et al., 2016) and multimodal inquiry to explore how their perspectives on creativity (Moll et al., 1992) shaped this documentary project. Their reflections on collaborative filmmaking capture their playful camera use (Sefton-Green, 2005) and honor youths’ literacy practices, intersecting identities, and creative approaches with digital texts (Moll et al., 1992).

This project draws from transliteracies theories (Author et al., 2017), multimodal and media literacy scholarship (Cazden, 2001; Leander & Boldt, 2013), and youth participatory action research (YPAR) approaches to understand the impact of intergenerational filmmaking partnerships (Chávez & Soep, 2005) on creative collectives (Garg, 2024) within educational settings. Building on the work of Jenkins et al. (2006), the study explores how documentary storytelling challenges school-based literacy practices. At the intersection of documentary filmmaking and YPAR (Cammarota and Fine, 2008), practitioners and students could (re)present their lived experiences onscreen as well as interrogate who gets to be creative, whose voices matter, in what contexts, and for which purposes (Morrell, 2006).

As a team of four practitioner-researchers, the collective utilizes autoethnography as a research method (Anderson, 2006) to interrogate and theorize their experiences with filmmaking and YPAR. Artifactual data encompasses audio recordings, film b-roll, observations, photographs, and fieldnotes to capture their creative process and playful filmmaking experiences within the school environment over the course of a semester. Finally, their completed documentary serves as an artifact that enables them to collectively reflect on their partnership.

This project highlights several key understandings learned through this process. First, this co-constructed inquiry allowed practitioner-researchers to explore how film-oriented digital literacy practices and playfulness challenge oppressive forms of schooling (Buckingham, 2007; Author & Colleague, 2005). Second, their partnership emphasized transparency and humility in participatory research spaces to avoid extractive approaches to co-creating with youth. Finally, the documentary project showed how multimodality expanded the writing, reading, and creating of digital texts within the classroom (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; New London Group, 1996).

The enduring impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, as well as the recent turmoil over Gaza and schools’ responses to student outcries for justice have shaped learning spaces and youths’ narratives about school (Bernal, 2001). In this context, youth of marginalized backgrounds can (re)story (Author & Colleague, 2016) their realities through filmic storytelling (Bernal, 2001; Mirra & Garcia, 2022). This project carries implications for literacy research, particularly within justice-oriented and multimodal meaning-making practices. Drawing from a collaborative filmmaking inquiry, this project advocates for youth arts-based collaborations in community-university arts partnerships as a way to repair, remedy, and reimagine youths’ creative spaces, literacies, and experiences in schools.

Authors

• Jennifer Freed, University of Pennsylvania

• Diana Lalata, University of Pennsylvania

• Yining Lei, University of Pennsylvania

• Jessica Sass, University of Pennsylvania