“Inclusive Media Futures” Online Course Available

Elizabeth Strickler at Georgia State University has developed a college course, Inclusive Media Futures, centered on Making a New Reality. Video lectures from Kamal Sinclair, Jessica Clark, and a number of creators featured in the Making a New Reality toolkit are available on the Inclusive Media Futures web page.

If you’d like to incorporate Making a New Reality into your college program, contact Jessica Clark for more information.

ADDITIONAL LECTURES

Robert Hatcher, Decentralization of the Music Industry

Salome Asga, Public Interest Technology and Media

Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Ethics and AI

Erik Gordon, Build your own Channel

Sarah Wolozin, Co-creation in Emerging Media

Gwenn Smith-Robson, Netflix Post-Production

Ari Melenciano, Omni-Specialized and Imaginative Design

Yasmin Elayat, Accessibility and Innovation

“Inclusive Media Futures” Course Now Available Online was originally published in Making a New Reality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2019, Jessica Clark and Carrie McLaren updated Sinclair’s original research to create Making a New Reality: A Toolkit for Inclusive Media Future. The book, which is also available as a free digital download, includes recommendations and resources to help readers further diversity, equity, and inclusion in emerging media.

Elizabeth Strickler at George State University has developed a college course, Inclusive Media Futures, centered on Making a New Reality. Video lectures from Jessica Clark, Kamal Sinclair, and a number of creators featured in the project are available on the Inclusive Media Futures web page.

If you’d like to incorporate Making a New Reality into your college and business program, contact Jessica Clark for information:

About Us was originally published in Making a New Reality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Inclusive Media Futures is a new course at George State University based on making a New Reality. Every week, the course will feature different speakers on topics connected to the project. For direct links to archives and future lectures, check out the schedule here.

This publication was produced with support from Ford Foundation JustFilms and supplemental support from Sundance Institute.

Upcoming Events was originally published in Making a New Reality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Kamal Sinclair conducted more than 100 interviews for Making a New Reality, a series Immerse published in 2017–2018. Now, two years later, we are thrilled to launch a new toolkit based on her important work.

With Making a New Reality: A Toolkit for Inclusive Media Futures, Jessica Clark and Carrie McLaren have updated and supplemented Sinclair’s original research with recommendations and resources to help readers further diversity, equity, and inclusion in emerging media.

The project is available as a free PDF download or a beautiful, print-on-demand book. The Making a New Reality website also offers a few excerpts, as well as direct links to resources featured in the book’s solutions.

As Clark writes in her foreword, quite a bit has changed in this short time: The pandemic. Protests over police violence. New, rising concern over social media, algorithmic oppression, and mental health. So, correspondingly, we made quite a few changes:

We took the insights Kamal gleaned from her interviewees and research, and reorganized them around three key targets for action: things that each of us can do to increase equity in emerging media, ways that institutions can pitch in, and systemic interventions — which require collaboration across institutions, sectors, and governments. For each of these sections, we did original research to add resources designed to help readers get a better grasp on each recommendation, and find ways to move forward.

We also stepped back and took a deeper look at what we meant by “equity” — not just in terms of race, but gender, class, religion, ability, and ideology.

We hope all of our readers share this work and its long list of resources with your networks and contacts. And, as always, we welcome your feedback.

Immerse is an initiative of the MIT Open DocLab and The Fledgling Fund, and it receives funding from Just Films | Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. IFP is our fiscal sponsor. Learn more here. We are committed to exploring and showcasing media projects that push the boundaries of media and tackle issues of social justice — and rely on friends like you to sustain ourselves and grow. Join us by making a gift today.

Making a New Reality Toolkit Provides Resources for Boosting Equity in Emerging Media was originally published in Immerse on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here is a list of resources with URLs that appear in the Toolkit for Change

1. Project Implicit
   Implicit association tests can help you recognize the unconscious feelings and beliefs that shape your thoughts. First, users select a test — Race, Disability, Sexuality, etc. — to assess a form of bias. Next, they answer a few questions to gauge their conscious views on the issue — in other words, how they say they feel. Finally, they “play” a video game-like test, responding as quickly as possible to prompts. Without time to think and reflect, a person’s automatic responses tend to reflect the ideas and beliefs — sexism, racism, ableism — of the surrounding culture and environment.
2. Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do
   MacArthur “Genius” Jennifer Eberhardt, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, wrote this highly accessible book (Viking, 2019) outlining the brain science behind racial bias, its nearly ubiquitous presence, and why persons are not to be “blamed” for it. Eberhardt provides context for individuals seeking to understand more about bias.
3. Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
   Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald wrote this popular guide (Bantam, 2016) to help readers and educators identity and resist our personal prejudices.
4. Guide to Allyship by Amélie Lamont (@amelielamont)
   An open-source guide targeted to white readers. Inspired in
   part by the work of Kayla Reed, who has defined allyship as:
   A- always center the impacted L- listen and learn from those who live in the oppression L- leverage your privilege Y- yield the floor. For white people seeking to ally with people of color, diversity trainers recommend first cultivating racial literacy and self-awareness — in other words, studying how whiteness frames personal preferences, experiences, and views.
5. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk
   about Racism
   Author and speaker Robin DiAngelo pulls no punches and gets the white liberals who don’t storm out of the room to better understand (and even laugh at) themselves in this best-seller (Beacon Press, 2018). See also Robin DiAngelo’s website for a curated selection of anti-racism handouts, checklists, and workshop exercises.
6. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
   Peggy McIntosh, 1988.
7. “How Men Can Become Better Allies to Women”
   W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith, Harvard Business Review, October 12, 2018.
8. “How to be an Ally in the Newsroom”
   Emma Carew Grovum, Source, April 24, 2019.
9. Shine theory
   Is the idea that empowering friends also empowers oneself: “I don’t shine if you don’t shine.” Promoted by podcasting duo Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, shine theory emphasizes collaboration and mutual investment over competition. The website contains examples of shine theory in practice, as well as links to the podcast, Call Your Girlfriend.
10. The Representation Project
    Uses social media, film, and educational activism to promote media projects that challenge gender and racial stereotypes.
11. Mediaversity Reviews
    Movie and TV reviews viewed through the lens of inclusivity, recognizing race, gender, LGBTQ+, and disability. Each production is critically examined on a variety of factors — including representation both onscreen and behind it — and ultimately graded from A+ (Parasite, Luce) to F (Joker, The Hitman’s Bodyguard). The website encourages readers to submit their own reviews.
12. The Reframe Project
    Offers a Stamp of Approval highlighting film and TV projects with a healthy gender balance.
13. Bechdel Test
    This crowdsourced list ranks movies based on 3 criteria: “(1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.” This crowdsourced site indicates whether movies pass or fail this simple test.
14. A number of organizations provide workshops to women and people of color. Take the Lead, for example, is a leadership program that provides professional women with “breakthrough training, mentoring, coaching, and the immediately actionable 9 Leadership Power Tools.” Depending on where you live, you may be able to find a range of local examples.
15. The Memo
    “The Memo is a career development company providing tools, access, and a robust community for women of color and for the companies where they work.” Founder Minda Harts has also written What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table (Seal Press, 2019), which provides “actionable advice on challenges, from microaggressions to the wage gap-and offers a clear path to success.”
16. Gender Avenger (GA) Toolkit
    The Gender Avenger Tally app makes it easy to report gender imbalances at conferences and panels on social media. The full toolkit also includes the GA Pledge (“I will not serve as a panelist at a public conference when there are no women on the panel.”) and a GA Stamp of Approval for public conferences with 40% of women represented on stage, of which at least 30% are women of color.
17. POCIT (People of Color in Tech)
    Website and podcast (Techish) with a focus on networking strategies, job tips, and sharing stories for people who work in all aspects of tech, from creatives to engineers.
18. [ Resource obsolete ]
19. The Pop Culture Collaborative
    A philanthropic resource and funder learning community that uses grantmaking, convening, narrative strategy, and research to transform the narrative landscape around people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and Native people — especially those who are women, queer, transgender, and/or disabled.
20. Narrative Initiative
    A nonprofit organization that “catalyzes durable narrative change in order to make equity and social justice common sense.” Its resource library includes a “curated collection of guides, worksheets, webinars and trainings offered as a resource for the field of narrative change practitioners.”
21. “Equity Screen for Content Creators”
    This post from the blog Nonprofit AF provides helpful questions to guide creators of podcasts, videos, books, and blogs on making content inclusive of all. For example: How does the issue you’re exploring affect (the following) people of diverse identities? Are you the appropriate person/organization to be talking about this issue? Can everyone access your content? Who is getting paid, is it equitable?
22. Understanding the Dunning-Kruger Effect
    Typically, “imposter effect” refers to the impact of sexism and racism on women and people of color, making them feel as if they aren’t good enough to meet cultural (white, male) norms. But research has uncovered the other side of the imposter effect, where privileged people believe themselves to be better, smarter, and harder-working than they in fact are. Perhaps understanding what’s known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect can help all parties identify how cultural norms warp individuals’ perspectives.
23. “What’s the difference between diversity, inclusion, and equity?”
    Meg Bolger, General Assembly Blog, October 24, 2017. An important first step in analyzing institutional inequity is to unite around a common language for identifying challenges. In this piece, Bolger helpfully delineates diversity, inclusion, and equity — and what they mean in practice. All three pieces of the DEI puzzle must be in place in order to be successful.
24. Diversity Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business
    Pamela Newkirk’s must-read book (Hachette, 2019) points out how billions of dollars have been spent on racial diversity initiatives over the past two decades with little-to-no results. Ironically, the fields generally considered more creative and progressive (museums, arts, journalism, Hollywood) have the worst records. Newkirk makes a strong case that many efforts are not successful because they weren’t designed to be. But all is not lost. Newkirk points to ways in which some companies have managed to directly — and successfully — counteract racial inequities through strategic, comprehensive interventions and planning.
25. “What Gets Measured, Gets Done: Achieving Results Through
    Diversity and Inclusion”
    Maureen Giovannini published this piece in The Journal for Quality & Participation, Winter 2004.
26. “The Mistake Companies Make When They Use Data to Plan Diversity Efforts”
    Katie Wullert, Shannon Gilmartin, and Caroline Simard wrote this piece in Harvard Business Review, April 16, 2019.
27. What Works: Gender Equality by Design
    This book by Iris Bohnet (Harvard University Press, 2016) focuses on de-biasing organizations rather than individuals, an approach likely to have a much greater impact.
28. RacialEquityTools.org
    There are lots of helpful resources here but, in particular, we’d recommend the “Plan” section, which contains toolkits, examples, and assessments for organizations seeking to better understand and to address racial inequity.
29. “The Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards”
    This brief by Aysa Gray in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (June 4, 2019) provides a number of helpful prompts to critically examine one’s institutional culture. Gray writes, “Professionalism has become coded language for white favoritism in workplace practices that more often than not privilege the values of white and Western employees and leave behind people of color.”
30. Project Include: Hiring
    Project Include is a nonprofit that uses data and advocacy to accelerate diversity and inclusion solutions in the tech industry. Its page on hiring recommendations describes a number of best practices, from “Use a broad range of recruiting sources” to “Rethink traditional interview practices.”
31. Textio
    This AI-based software helps employees write inclusive job descriptions and other printed materials.
32. “Paying Attention to White Culture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity”
    A challenge to DEI work is the inability to recognize white institutional culture and the way it defines behaviors, communication styles, and end-goals. This paper by Gita Gulati-Partee and Maggie Potapchuk in The Foundation Review (2014) provides tips to recognize and counter white norms that drive insularity, homogeneity, and unwelcoming climates within organizations.
33. “ ‘Checkbox Diversity’ Must Be Left Behind for DEI Efforts to Succeed”
    Nicole Anand writes in Stanford Social Innovation Review (May 21, 2019): “Good intentions to increase the diversity of organizations have led to ‘checkbox’ approaches that don’t account for hegemony, marginalization, and the creation of sustainable shifts in power. Without a closer examination of these practices, we may wake up in a few years wondering what went wrong.”
34. “Cast a Broader Net: Innovation is Relative”
    Dr. Nettrice Gaskin created the concept of Techno-Vernacular Creativity (TVC) to illuminate the inventive processes that are often overlooked because they do not look like the dominant group’s innovation. She notes that TVC differs from traditional R&D by employing reappropriation, improvisation, and conceptual remixing, aka “tinkering.”
35. Collective Wisdom: List of relevant readings and projects
    The Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab has assembled a list of relevant readings, projects, and programs that can serve as useful reference points for co-created projects.
36. Rising Voices
    Rising Voices, the outreach initiative of Global Voices, brings local communities speaking endangered or Indigenous languages into the global conversation. The initiative offers training, resources, microgrant funding, and mentoring so that underrepresented communities can tell their own digital stories using participatory media tools.
37. Center for Humane Technology Design Guide
    The Center is developing a design guide (currently in Alpha) for tech teams to use as a starting point for creating new apps, websites, and other tech. The simple two-page form asks developers to consider the impact their project will have on human sensitivities such as emotions, attention, social reasoning, and decision-making.
38. Getting Started with Accessibility
    The University of Washington has some good starter guides for making accessible web content.
39. Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium
    This organization is geared toward making Chicago’s cultural spaces more accessible to visitors with disabilities, but many of its resources and guides could serve cultural spaces in other places just as well.
40. MIT Open Courseware
    Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology. Course materials, including videos, lecture notes, and syllabus for this free and shareable MIT class are available online.
41. [ Ms. Factor Toolkit is not online, as of 9/8/2020 ]
42. “10 Stats That Build The Case For Investing In Women-Led Startups”
    Allyson Kapin, Forbes.com, Jan 28, 2019.
43. “The Business Case for Racial Equity: A Strategy for Growth”
    According to this report by Ani Turner (April 24, 2018), “The U.S. stands to gain $8 trillion in GDP by eliminating racial inequities.”
44. “A Field Guide to ‘Fake News’ and Other Information Disorders”
    This 2017 report from Public Data Lab “explores the use of digital methods to study false viral news, political memes, trolling practices, and their social life online.”
45. “Prepare, Don’t Panic: Synthetic Media and Deepfakes”
    The WITNESS Media Lab has been a real leader in thinking through legal, ethical, and infrastructural changes needed to advance nonfiction storytelling through video. The title above is from one of several sections on the group’s website, which has many practical resources and tools, from a quick “Twelve things we can do now to prepare for deepfakes” to in-depth reports that outline pragmatic solutions.
46. “Creating Virtual Reality Journalism: A Guide For Best Practices”
    Frontline, September 2018.
47. Journalism DEI Resource Wheel & Tracker
    Democracy Fund has compiled lists of organizations, scholarship funds, and other educational opportunities for funders to support. See the education and training links on the Wheel, and check the more extensive Tracker for lists of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges with journalism programs and professional organizations serving specific communities.
48. Creativity Connects: Trends and Conditions Affecting US Artists
    A 2016 report from the National Endowment for the Arts that examines the need for artists to develop entrepreneurship skills and collaborate across sectors.
49. List of Arts Resources During the COVID-19 Outbreak
    In the face of the pandemic, artists and media makers have been working to rethink both their business models and their creation models. Updated regularly, this collects online workshops, resources, and grant opportunities for artists.
50. “The Death of the Artist — and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur”
    In this 2015 thought piece from The Atlantic, William Deresiwicz explores the history of art markets and the tensions between creative production and commodification.
51. The Code Cooperative
    This New York-based organization is run by people of color who learn, use, and build technology with communities impacted by incarceration.
52. Black Girls Code
    This organization works with girls of color ages 7 to 17 “to become innovators in STEM fields.”
53. Girls Who Code
    This group aims “to close the gender gap in technology and to change the image of what a programmer looks like and does.”
54. “Advancing Racial Literacy in Tech”
    Jessie Daniels, Mutale Nkonde, and Darakhshan Mir argue that racial literacy must be taught alongside media literacy and other initiatives in order to have a substantive impact. This Data & Society report (2019) identifies the shortcomings in any uni-dimensional approach and defines a framework for moving forward.
55. Teaching Tolerance’s Digital and Civic Literacy Skills
    Geared to 6–12 students, this framework — complete with exercises and video — helpfully melds media literacy with civic literacy.
56. “Everything you need to teach digital citizenship”
    Common Sense Media’s education division created this curriculum for K–12 educators.
57. For the most up-to-date resources, follow on Twitter
    Safiya Umoja Noble, Ph.D. @safiyanoble
    Ruslan Berozov @back_to_the_sun
    Data & Society Research Institute @datasociety
    Data For Black Lives @Data4BlackLives
58. Our Data Bodies Digital Playbook
    This collaborative, participatory research project is centered on marginalized communities in Charlotte, North Carolina; Detroit, and Los Angeles. It examines strategies for marginalized adults to protect their digital privacy, self-determination, and data rights.
59. A People’s Guide to AI
    This comprehensive beginner’s guide uses a popular education approach to explore and explain AI-based technologies so that people of all walks have the chance to think critically about the kinds of futures automated technologies can bring.
60. The Algorithmic Justice League (AJL)
    “An organization that combines art and research to illuminate the social implications and harms of artificial intelligence. AJL’s mission is to raise public awareness about the impacts of AI, equip advocates with empirical research to bolster campaigns, build the voice and choice of most impacted communities, and galvanize researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners to mitigate AI bias and harms.”
61. Here is a list of just a few institutions and think tanks working to figure out the future of emerging media and tech, which could be target partners for programs to embed or engage artists:
    – Center for Humane Technology
    – Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
    – World Economic Forum Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
    – Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
    – MIT Institute for Data Systems, and Society (IDSS)
    – The VR/AR Association (The VRARA)
    – Open AI
    – UC Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence
    – Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA)
    – The Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative
62. Our Brave New World
    This Immerse series by Paulien Dresscher examines cross-disciplinary labs in the Netherlands as artistic practice, and “the various technical, philosophical, ethical, and mind-expanding questions arising at the intersection of art, science, technology, society, and the future.”
63. Byproduct
    This book by Marisa Jahn (YYZ, 2010) outlines a robust culture of artist residencies and fellowships embedded in science and technology institutions in the mid-twentieth century. She notes that despite the resurgence of embedded residencies today, the history is under-chronicled, which can lead to organizations wasting cycles by reinventing the wheel.
64. The Center for Humane Technology Resources
    Founded by Silicon Valley employees who left their jobs, the Center for Humane Technology counters practices such as addictive design in interactive and social media. The nonprofit has a number of cross-disciplinary initiatives designed to educate students, educators, and legislators about the impact of emerging technologies — and the urgent need for new infrastructure and accountability. The group’s podcast, Your Undivided Attention is a great place to start, and the website is continuing to expand with new resources.
65. Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need
    Sasha Costanza-Chock (MIT Press, 2020) explores practices that allow marginalized persons to lead in designing their own communities, dismantling structural inequality and advancing collective liberation.
66. Collocate (creator of the Design Justice Platform) and Allied Media Projects have been leaders in catalyzing thinking, practices, systems, and pedagogy to help media makers design for justice.
67. Civic Signals
    Co-directed by Eli Pariser — the author of the bestseller The Filter Bubble — and Talia Stroud, who founded the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin, this project is researching ways to create “public-friendly” digital spaces inspired by lessons from urban planning.
68. The Impact Pack: Unintended Outcomes
    In order to help media makers and technologists think through the ways in which their productions might trigger unintended results, we’ve developed a new suit for Dot Connector Studio’s Impact Pack that we’re releasing in conjunction with this toolkit. Co-author Jessica Clark developed the Impact Pack to help makers, funders, and advocates develop social impact strategies for digital media projects. The original deck included an array of positive outcomes — this new suit allows users to add in negative ones so that they can consider ways in which their work might be misused.
69. Consequence Scanning manual
    Developed by doteveryone, a think tank focused on supporting responsible technology, this manual provides innovators with a roadmap for events that help teams “think about the potential impact of their product or service on people and society.”
70. The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream
    This book by Amy Webb (PublicAffairs, 2016) provides practical steps for forecasting, scenario planning, and navigating the ever-changing landscape of emerging technologies. Webb leads the Future Today Institute, which also provides an invaluable and free annual report on tech trends.
71. COVID-19 Civic Freedom tracker
    This tracker from the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law “monitors government responses to the pandemic that affect civic freedoms and human rights,” focusing on emergency laws associated with issues central to media, including disinformation, internet access, press freedom, privacy, and access to information.
72. Contract for the Web
    Experts and citizens across the world worked to create this contract “to make sure our online world is safe, empowering, and genuinely for everyone.” It is designed to allow governments, companies, NGOs, and citizens all to sign on to a set of shared principles. Current co-signers include the governments of France and Germany; major tech companies and platforms such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon; advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Reporters Without Borders; civil society groups such as Wikimedia and Avaaz; and many others. While some might question the efficacy of such a contract given the actions of certain co-signers, it is an example of an effort to coordinate systemic change.
73. The Case for Digital Public Infrastructure
    This essay by Ethan Zuckerman for the Knight First Amendment Institute lays out the arguments for how the history of public media might inform a strategy for building “a thriving future of democratic communications.”
74. “We Need a Media System That Serves People’s Needs, Not Corporations”
    In a piece adapted from his 2019 book Democracy Without Journalism?, media scholar Victor Pickard offers five approaches for creating a publicly owned media system, including establishing non-commercial options, breaking up media monopolies, regulating news outlets through public interest protections, enabling working control of newsrooms, and fostering community ownership and oversight of outlets.
75. InnoPSM
    This “research network on innovation in public service media policies” brings together academics from different disciplines and countries to work with stakeholders on ways to support new forms of funding, content innovation, distribution, and accountability.
76. Here are some other initiatives that use science fiction, futurism, and healing narratives to innovate, empower, and support community-building:
    The Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF)
    Playable Cities
    And Also Too
    Feminist Futures
    The Design Futures Initiative
    The World Building Media Lab

This publication was produced with support from Ford Foundation JustFilms and supplemental support from Sundance Institute.

Toolkit For Change Resources was originally published in Making a New Reality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Kamal Sinclair

In 2008 my life took a turn from the world of performing and visual arts to an increasingly more virtual engagement.

I went from a primarily analog world to a primarily digital one in a period of rapid innovation and fundamental changes to human communication architecture. This personal journey has informed the long-form research project on the Making a New Reality website, and my recent journey from Sundance to the Guild of Future Architects.

Commissioned by the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program with supplemental support from Sundance Institute, researching Making a New Reality allowed me to intensively listen to a host of voices. What is emerging media? What are the concerns related to equality and equity in emerging media? What interventions can mitigate inequity in emerging media?

Answers to these questions built up over the seven chapters, each of which consists of a lead article, as well as supplementary related articles. All of these were published between November 2017 and May 2018 at makinganewreality.org. Each of these lead articles was also published on Immerse.news — a publication designed to foster creative dialogue about emerging nonfiction storytelling.

Now that the series is complete, with support from the Ford Foundation, I’ve worked with Immerse editor Jessica Clark and associate editor Carrie McLaren to develop this related toolkit, to help storytellers, technologists, funders, policymakers, and others understand how and why emerging media forms can be a powerful force for social equity. The toolkit uses the original series as a launchpad for finding concrete ideas and resources to help the field evolve.

Over the 80-plus years of its history, the Ford Foundation has made catalyzing interventions in media, including establishing the framework and seed resources for public television in the United States and supporting the rise of the independent documentary field. Seeing new narrative technologies emerging, Cara Mertes, then the Director of JustFilms, commissioned this global field scan and analysis to identify the kinds of interventions that might tip the scales of emerging media toward justice and equality. As she notes in her forward, what this research makes clear is that the scale of disruption in creative media-making, distribution, and moving-image storytelling will touch every aspect of society. The stakes are too high for limited inclusion.

Says who? Over the course of Making a New Reality, I conducted more than 100 interviews with selected Ford Foundation grantees and media stakeholders, who offered insights on emerging media, as well as the challenges to and possible interventions for increasing equity and inclusion. Interviewees and peers also reviewed the draft analysis for comments. The research was supplemented by a review of secondary sources, including industry reports, news articles, blogs, and academic publications, as well as my own participation in the emerging media field since 2007. Associates Lisa Osborne and Paisley Smith, and editors Jessica Clark and Carrie McLaren, have also shaped the report and this subsequent toolkit. Finally, I’ve gathered responses to the research from many different events and collaborative processes.

Through this multilayered process, since 2016, I’ve had the pleasure and honor of being in a rigorous discourse with artists, thought leaders, media-makers, community organizers, business leaders, technologists, policymakers, researchers, philanthropists, activists, academics, philosophers, engineers, cultural leaders, students, family members, friends, children, and spiritual practitioners about how to further equality and equity in (and through) emerging media. I believe Yelena Rachitsky said it best when she said the conversation about how we are Making a New Reality is “soul-filling.”

The conversations were dizzying and often felt beyond the reach of possibility, so there were moments I almost lost faith in the work. You can imagine my joy when the affirmations began to flow, first in a trickle and now in powerful waves, making it clear that this work is urgent, meaningful, and achievable.

At the Ford Foundation JustFilms Emerging Media Summit, I spent time with the deviant artists in the tech space. They are already on the frontlines of future civil rights movements and are challenging us to ask why we’ve been frantically innovating into what looks to be an unjust future? Who do we really want to be in that future, and how we will establish better value systems and ethics?

These artists are from a broad range of identity backgrounds, working at the intersection of art and bioengineering, artificial intelligence, public media, immersive media, brain hacking, data storytelling, social art practices, speculative objects, and futurist narratives. Seeing them gathered in one space, laughing, questioning, sharing, educating us and each other, developing community, and unapologetically putting stakes in the ground for justice, well-being, and prosperity was a deep and powerful affirmation. Of course, these artists represent a small fraction of artists starting to awaken, assemble, and collaborate on the future of culture. In the last year, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work with an expanded community of people that include artists and technologist, but also people on the bleeding edge of reimagining healthcare, wellness, food systems, our justice system and more through the Guild of Future Architects.

Around the same time, I made a trip to Silicon Valley to meet up with the deviant geeks. The first day I had a series of meetings at Stanford University that went from disheartening to transcendent. My early meetings exposed the thickness of the famed “Silicon Valley bubble” when I realized that powerful and influential people on the campus had little reference for some of the most landmark works in emerging media storytelling and that their industry analysis is faulty and skewed. I left the meeting feeling like there was no hope for working within Silicon Valley to make change and that maybe our only hope was to “Buckminster Fuller” emerging media and build new systems from the ground up.

Since then, I have been heartened to discover a passionate community of technologists and engineers who not only want to design for justice and well-being but beauty. I have discovered allies, eager to have this frank conversation, to take ownership, and to work towards mitigating future harms. These “geeks” represented a small fraction of people beginning to awaken, assemble, and collaborate on the future of culture. The momentum building in the #TechWontBuildIt, #MoreThanCode, #PublicInterestTech, and #HumaneTech movements are a testament to that fact.

When I presented Making a New Reality research at industry events, employees from power centers like Amazon, Netflix, film studios, and financiers came up to me wanting to galvanize their resources to heed the call to action, and to make up for assertions that narratives with diverse characters “just don’t sell.”

At one of the events where I presented the research, a white woman said, “I’m so excited for this initiative and 100% committed to diversity and inclusion, but how are we going to get white people to give up what they have, so others can have a seat at the table?”

I was genuinely taken aback by her question because I really never thought of it as a zero-sum proposition, where someone has to lose for others to gain. In fact, I never thought of white people having to give up anything because I’ve always seen them as already operating in a deep deficit. The circumstances of history have caused massive numbers of people of color to live under restrictive systems that hindered the development of their potential.

Study after study shows the negative impact on all of humanity when groups of people are not able to fulfill their potential. We lose human brilliance in every field. We lose important contributions to science, medicine, technology, philosophy, art, culture, and commerce. And we gain the burden of human potential suppressed (i.e., expensive prison systems, abusive immigration systems, the impacts of poverty in our cities, climate change, war, and mental health epidemics).

The fears embedded in the “zero-sum” framing is probably a key factor in our failure to achieve equity goals in media and in society — especially when notions of scarcity helped fuel systems of oppression historically. The fears embedded in notions of scarcity also fuel our frenzied appetite for exponential growth, expansion, and productivity, which can hinder the adoption of the values of reflection, collaboration, and consultation.

Scarcity is an antiquated concept, but our economic systems perpetuate
a constant and exponential hunger for growth, especially for those that have already accumulated more than they could ever use. We are in an age of abundance, but we are still operating on the subconscious survival mechanisms of scarcity.

If we care for more than just people’s bodies and elevate their intellectual and creative potential, we will attain a level of civilization that we’ve never seen. We can enact enlightenment and become a more true civilization, not one that claims allegiance to civility but fails in practice. We have the opportunity to become a better version of ourselves.

There has been a wonderful response to the digital version of the project from philanthropists, academic institutions, industry-related companies, and community organizations. We’ve been exploring strategies with institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, MIT, and Stanford University to apply the recommendations from the research in intersectional programs and pedagogy. We are also developing initiatives to share the research in communities that are ripe for taking leadership positions in furthering equity in emerging media.

Now, this toolkit is designed to help all of us convene as a field — to outline, debate and implement strategies for structural change that enable artists, technologists, policymakers, community leaders, and scientists to make a new — and more just — reality.

This publication was produced with support from Ford Foundation JustFilms and supplemental support from Sundance Institute.

How We Got Here and What Comes Next was originally published in Making a New Reality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Kamal Sinclair

In 2008 my life took a turn from the world of performing and visual arts to an increasingly more virtual engagement.

I went from a primarily analog world to a primarily digital one in a period of rapid innovation and fundamental changes to human communication architecture. This personal journey has informed the long-form research project on the Making a New Reality website, and my recent journey from Sundance to the Guild of Future Architects.

Commissioned by the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program with supplemental support from Sundance Institute, researching Making a New Reality allowed me to intensively listen to a host of voices. What is emerging media? What are the concerns related to equality and equity in emerging media? What interventions can mitigate inequity in emerging media?

Answers to these questions built up over the seven chapters, each of which consists of a lead article, as well as supplementary related articles. All of these were published between November 2017 and May 2018 at makinganewreality.org. Each of these lead articles was also published on Immerse.news — a publication designed to foster creative dialogue about emerging nonfiction storytelling.

Now that the series is complete, with support from the Ford Foundation, I’ve worked with Immerse editor Jessica Clark and associate editor Carrie McLaren to develop this related toolkit, to help storytellers, technologists, funders, policymakers, and others understand how and why emerging media forms can be a powerful force for social equity. The toolkit uses the original series as a launchpad for finding concrete ideas and resources to help the field evolve.

Over the 80-plus years of its history, the Ford Foundation has made catalyzing interventions in media, including establishing the framework and seed resources for public television in the United States and supporting the rise of the independent documentary field. Seeing new narrative technologies emerging, Cara Mertes, then the Director of JustFilms, commissioned this global field scan and analysis to identify the kinds of interventions that might tip the scales of emerging media toward justice and equality. As she notes in her forward, what this research makes clear is that the scale of disruption in creative media-making, distribution, and moving-image storytelling will touch every aspect of society. The stakes are too high for limited inclusion.

Says who? Over the course of Making a New Reality, I conducted more than 100 interviews with selected Ford Foundation grantees and media stakeholders, who offered insights on emerging media, as well as the challenges to and possible interventions for increasing equity and inclusion. Interviewees and peers also reviewed the draft analysis for comments. The research was supplemented by a review of secondary sources, including industry reports, news articles, blogs, and academic publications, as well as my own participation in the emerging media field since 2007. Associates Lisa Osborne and Paisley Smith, and editors Jessica Clark and Carrie McLaren, have also shaped the report and this subsequent toolkit. Finally, I’ve gathered responses to the research from many different events and collaborative processes.

Through this multilayered process, since 2016, I’ve had the pleasure and honor of being in a rigorous discourse with artists, thought leaders, media-makers, community organizers, business leaders, technologists, policymakers, researchers, philanthropists, activists, academics, philosophers, engineers, cultural leaders, students, family members, friends, children, and spiritual practitioners about how to further equality and equity in (and through) emerging media. I believe Yelena Rachitsky said it best when she said the conversation about how we are Making a New Reality is “soul-filling.”

The conversations were dizzying and often felt beyond the reach of possibility, so there were moments I almost lost faith in the work. You can imagine my joy when the affirmations began to flow, first in a trickle and now in powerful waves, making it clear that this work is urgent, meaningful, and achievable.

At the Ford Foundation JustFilms Emerging Media Summit, I spent time with the deviant artists in the tech space. They are already on the frontlines of future civil rights movements and are challenging us to ask why we’ve been frantically innovating into what looks to be an unjust future? Who do we really want to be in that future, and how we will establish better value systems and ethics?

These artists are from a broad range of identity backgrounds, working at the intersection of art and bioengineering, artificial intelligence, public media, immersive media, brain hacking, data storytelling, social art practices, speculative objects, and futurist narratives. Seeing them gathered in one space, laughing, questioning, sharing, educating us and each other, developing community, and unapologetically putting stakes in the ground for justice, well-being, and prosperity was a deep and powerful affirmation. Of course, these artists represent a small fraction of artists starting to awaken, assemble, and collaborate on the future of culture. In the last year, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work with an expanded community of people that include artists and technologist, but also people on the bleeding edge of reimagining healthcare, wellness, food systems, our justice system and more through the Guild of Future Architects.

Around the same time, I made a trip to Silicon Valley to meet up with the deviant geeks. The first day I had a series of meetings at Stanford University that went from disheartening to transcendent. My early meetings exposed the thickness of the famed “Silicon Valley bubble” when I realized that powerful and influential people on the campus had little reference for some of the most landmark works in emerging media storytelling and that their industry analysis is faulty and skewed. I left the meeting feeling like there was no hope for working within Silicon Valley to make change and that maybe our only hope was to “Buckminster Fuller” emerging media and build new systems from the ground up.

Since then, I have been heartened to discover a passionate community of technologists and engineers who not only want to design for justice and well-being but beauty. I have discovered allies, eager to have this frank conversation, to take ownership, and to work towards mitigating future harms. These “geeks” represented a small fraction of people beginning to awaken, assemble, and collaborate on the future of culture. The momentum building in the #TechWontBuildIt, #MoreThanCode, #PublicInterestTech, and #HumaneTech movements are a testament to that fact.

When I presented Making a New Reality research at industry events, employees from power centers like Amazon, Netflix, film studios, and financiers came up to me wanting to galvanize their resources to heed the call to action, and to make up for assertions that narratives with diverse characters “just don’t sell.”

At one of the events where I presented the research, a white woman said, “I’m so excited for this initiative and 100% committed to diversity and inclusion, but how are we going to get white people to give up what they have, so others can have a seat at the table?”

I was genuinely taken aback by her question because I really never thought of it as a zero-sum proposition, where someone has to lose for others to gain. In fact, I never thought of white people having to give up anything because I’ve always seen them as already operating in a deep deficit. The circumstances of history have caused massive numbers of people of color to live under restrictive systems that hindered the development of their potential.

Study after study shows the negative impact on all of humanity when groups of people are not able to fulfill their potential. We lose human brilliance in every field. We lose important contributions to science, medicine, technology, philosophy, art, culture, and commerce. And we gain the burden of human potential suppressed (i.e., expensive prison systems, abusive immigration systems, the impacts of poverty in our cities, climate change, war, and mental health epidemics).

The fears embedded in the “zero-sum” framing is probably a key factor in our failure to achieve equity goals in media and in society — especially when notions of scarcity helped fuel systems of oppression historically. The fears embedded in notions of scarcity also fuel our frenzied appetite for exponential growth, expansion, and productivity, which can hinder the adoption of the values of reflection, collaboration, and consultation.

Scarcity is an antiquated concept, but our economic systems perpetuate
a constant and exponential hunger for growth, especially for those that have already accumulated more than they could ever use. We are in an age of abundance, but we are still operating on the subconscious survival mechanisms of scarcity.

If we care for more than just people’s bodies and elevate their intellectual and creative potential, we will attain a level of civilization that we’ve never seen. We can enact enlightenment and become a more true civilization, not one that claims allegiance to civility but fails in practice. We have the opportunity to become a better version of ourselves.

There has been a wonderful response to the digital version of the project from philanthropists, academic institutions, industry-related companies, and community organizations. We’ve been exploring strategies with institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, MIT, and Stanford University to apply the recommendations from the research in intersectional programs and pedagogy. We are also developing initiatives to share the research in communities that are ripe for taking leadership positions in furthering equity in emerging media.

Now, this toolkit is designed to help all of us convene as a field — to outline, debate and implement strategies for structural change that enable artists, technologists, policymakers, community leaders, and scientists to make a new — and more just — reality.

This publication was produced with support from Ford Foundation JustFilms and supplemental support from Sundance Institute.

Making a New Reality Toolkit Provides Resources for More Inclusive Emerging Media

Download for free or purchase a print copy here

Based on research by Kamal Sinclair, The Making a New Reality Toolkit provides a host of carefully curated resources for making emerging media (such as VR, AR, social media) more diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI).

The toolkit breaks the work down into 3 categories — personal change, institutional change, and system change — all of which complement each other, all of which are needed for countering historic injustices when it comes to race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability status.

With so many changes in the media ecosystem happening so quickly, now is the moment to seize on this work and wholly re-imagine how media needs to counter deeply entrenched historic inequities.

For the original version of this research project, published here and on Immerse, Kamal Sinclair conducted more than 100 interviews for Making a New Reality in 2017–2018. With this toolkit, Jessica Clark and Carrie McLaren have updated and supplemented Sinclair’s original work with recommendations and resources to help readers develop initiatives that further equity in emerging media.

DOWNLOAD A FREE PDF

(Right-click the pdf and select “Save Link As” to download.)

or

ORDER A PRINT COPY FOR $39.99

This publication was produced with support from Ford Foundation JustFilms and supplemental support from Sundance Institute. It would not have been possible without the foundational work of Shari Frilot, the visionary behind the New Frontier Program at Sundance Institute. Since 2007, she curated thousands of innovative artists and storytellers and provided transformational support as they forged new pathways to making meaning through the arts.

Toolkit Provides Resources for Inclusive Emerging Media was originally published in Making a New Reality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Jessica Clark

When Kamal and I first started working together in 2016, we knew a few things for sure: That emerging media forms such as VR, AR, and AI were poised to remake storytelling and the ways that we comprehend, experience, and shape reality itself. That too many of these new forms were being pioneered by the same old, same old — and that this would stifle innovation and fail to reflect the full range of human experience.

What we couldn’t know is that in 2020, we’d find ourselves together in the jaws of a global pandemic, which is simultaneously deepening already abysmal chasms between haves and have-nots, and forcing many of us to newly mediate our work, play, and grieving through digital platforms.

This jarring break from what we considered “normal” — already a fraught concept — has underscored the urgency of giving many more people across the world the tools to dream up not just new, but improved realities.

To make this possible, I worked with longtime collaborator Carrie McLaren. Carrie is the associate editor of Immerse — a publication on emerging forms of nonfiction media that I co-founded — and art director for my media strategy and production firm, Dot Connector Studio. Together, we reorganized and updated Kamal’s research, which we’d edited and published from 2017–2018 here at makinganewreality.org.

We’ve also been thrilled to collaborate on design with Lope Gutierrez-Ruiz and his team at In-House International. They created the eye-popping graphics for the digital version of the project and have done a beautiful job of translating them into this new version.

Social change and progress are living processes fed by constant dialogue and struggles to make all perspectives visible.

We took the insights Kamal gleaned from her interviewees and research, and reorganized them around three key targets for action: things that each of us can do to increase equity in emerging media, ways that institutions can pitch in, and systemic interventions — which require collaboration across institutions, sectors, and governments. For each of these sections, we did original research to add resources designed to help readers get a better grasp on each recommendation, and find ways to move forward.

We also stepped back and took a deeper look at what we meant by “equity” — not just in terms of race, but gender, class, religion, ability, and ideology. Debates on these topics have heated up to searing over the past few years, with movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter and high-profile productions such as Black Panther and The 1619 Project bringing issues of injustice and representation to the fore.

Protests against police violence in 2020 catapulted these concerns to the forefront of public debate. Digital media and devices — most notably a mobile phone video of George Floyd’s killing, but also body cameras — have been central to this moment.

To give us more clarity, Carrie drafted a section called “The urgency of defining our terms,” and worked to refine the language we were using throughout the toolkit to reflect current discourse.

We know that the language used to describe identities and secure justice will continue to change, but we wanted to challenge ourselves at least not to reflect old baggage or assumptions, and to honor conventions being advanced by those communities most affected by bias and oppression. We know too that not everyone will agree with our editorial choices — and that’s how it should be. As we edit this, journalists and advocates are debating new terms that better represent the nuances and concerns of the moment. Responses to the pandemic have also made it clear how valuable a diversity of perspectives on technology can be. As many people around the world strained to adapt to working from home, people with disabilities shared what they’d learned from long experience with forced isolation and lobbying for accommodations. Social change and progress are living processes fed by constant dialogue and struggles to make all perspectives visible.

Finally, we made updates throughout to reflect both changes in emerging media since 2018, and in the global arguments around the role of social platforms and of multinational technology companies in our public sphere. You’ll find many of these revisions reflected in section 2, and in the recommendations in section 3. We wrote the bulk of these in late 2019, before the ravages of the Coronavirus pandemic became clear. But we’ve worked to include key mentions of the ways we see our online lives shifting in response to this global crisis, and the disturbing incursions on privacy and civil liberties that governments around the world are already making because of it.

That’s why, in this moment, we hope this toolkit will make it into many more hands, and inspire makers, artists, and advocates. We need to not only hold the line on human rights and civil liberties, but to take this moment of rupture as a chance to use media in fresh ways — to reimagine our relationships to one another, to power, and to the natural world.

Join us.

This publication was produced with support from Ford Foundation JustFilms and supplemental support from Sundance Institute.

What’s New in the Making a New Reality Toolkit? was originally published in Making a New Reality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Kamal Sinclair

For almost two years, on a daily basis, I’ve been asking myself and everyone in my radius: “How do we make a new reality that centers the values of equality, equity, and inclusion through emerging media?”

The answers were dizzying and often felt beyond the reach of possibility, so there were moments I almost lost faith in the work. You can imagine my joy when the affirmations began to flow, first in a trickle and now in powerful waves, making it clear that this work is urgent, meaningful, and achievable.

From the Deviant Artists…

At the Ford Foundation JustFilms Emerging Media Summit this summer I had the opportunity to spend time with the deviant artists in the tech space. They are already on the frontlines of the civil rights movements of the future and are challenging us to ask:

• Why are we frantically innovating into the future we are currently on track to create?
• Who do we really want to be in that future?
• How will we establish value systems, ethics, and well-being in that future?

These artists are from a broad range of identity backgrounds, working at the intersection of art and bioengineering, artificial intelligence, public media, immersive media, brain hacking, data storytelling, social art practices, speculative objects, and futurist narratives. Seeing them gathered in one space, laughing, questioning, sharing, educating us and each other, developing community, and unapologetically putting stakes in the ground for justice, well-being, and prosperity was a deep and powerful affirmation.

Of course, these artists represent a small fraction of artists starting to awaken, assemble, and collaborate on the future of culture.

From the Deviant Geeks…

This summer I made a trip to Silicon Valley. The first day I had a series of meetings at Stanford University that went from disheartening to transcendent. My early meetings exposed the thickness of the famed “Silicon Valley bubble,” when I realized that powerful and influential people on the campus had little reference for some of the most landmark works in emerging media storytelling and that their industry analysis (which informs some of the most powerful tech firms and investor cohorts in the industry) is faulty and skewed. I left the meeting feeling like there was no hope for working within Silicon Valley to make change and that maybe our only hope was to “Buckminster Fuller” emerging media and build new systems from the ground up.

However, each meeting got successively more enlightened and engendered more hope, until my final meeting of the day with a mechanical engineer at the design school who exposed me to what he called “the deviant geeks” of Silicon Valley. He showed me that there is a passionate community of technologists and engineers who not only want to design for justice and well-being, but beauty. A powerful affirmation!

The following day I went to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park to present for the Oculus Women series with Yelena Rachitsky, at the invitation of Ebony Peay-Ramirez. Although I have great relationships with these women at Facebook, I was nervous to present Making a New Reality in this environment because of the critiques that emerged in the research of “the Valley” mythologies, the company, and its founder. I was steadied by the comments from a good number of interviewees who said it is critical for those working on equality to “be in the room” of these centers of power, despite suspicions, because it is a more powerful position to be “in the room” than “outside throwing rocks.”

To my joy, the community I engaged at Facebook was ready and eager to have this frank conversation, to take ownership, and to work towards mitigating future blind spots. The event was maybe a third full, with a live video being streamed to staff at their desks. Throughout the talk and conversation people started coming down from their desks and coming into the room. The conversation was so robust we went almost an hour over the original end time. Afterwards I had person after person passionately asking how they could disrupt the blind spots in Silicon Valley and further design principles grounded in justice, well-being, and prosperity. Again, I was exposed to the deviant geeks and they were awesome!!! Another wave of affirmation.

Of course, these “geeks” represent a small fraction of people beginning to awaken, assemble, and collaborate on the future of culture. The momentum building in the #TechWontBuildIt, #MoreThanCode, #PublicInterestTech, and #HumaneTech movements are a testament to that fact.

From the Privileged…

This month I attended a very prestigious event for producers of film and TV, where I had the opportunity to present on the Making a New Reality research. Affirmations came when person after person from centers of power like Amazon, Netflix, film studios, and financiers came up to me wanting to galvanize their resources to heed the call to action.

One affirmation came to me while sitting in a dark screening room with 200 industry decision makers, when one white man made a vulnerable admission of his complicity in the suppression of black people in film. As we talked about the successes of Black Panther and Moonlight, he shared that for 12 years he followed his mentors’ advice not to make black films if he wanted to make money, a choice he deeply regrets.

For 20+ years I too heard the narrative that black people just needed more education, more skills, more artistry, or more willingness to play into the minstrel stereotypes in order to succeed. Just like him, I heard statements like: “Black films just don’t sell.” “This is a business first, so we have to make what sells.” “No one will believe that character, you need to make them more street.” Do you know how crazy that can make you feel? When you know the truth of your worth and when you doubt it?

To hear him validate that there was an explicit narrative, an industry mythology, that he bought into and helped perpetuate was an affirmation — at least that I’m not crazy. Then to hear him apologize was an affirmation that rigid bias can change. Truth and reconciliation is a powerful thing; even this small step towards it made a part of my heart soften. This small willingness to tell the truth caused something resembling healing in me.

He was not the only one to break with narratives that perpetuate inequality, to demonstrate allyship, and to offer a commitment to change. It has been an increasing part of the conversation around this research. In fact, this part of the discourse has exposed another dominant narrative among those in positions of privilege that maintain the status quo, particularly related to white privilege.

At one of the events where I presented the research, a white woman said, “I’m so excited for this initiative and 100% committed to diversity and inclusion, but how are we going to get white people to give up what they have, so others can have a seat at the table?”

I was genuinely taken aback by her question, because I really never thought of it as a zero-sum proposition, where someone has to lose for others to gain. In fact, I never thought of “white people” having to give up anything, because I’ve always seen them as already operating in a deep deficit. The circumstances of history have caused massive numbers of non-white people to live under restrictive systems that hindered the development of their potential.

There is empirical study after empirical study that shows the negative impact on all of us, when groups of people are not able to fulfill their potential. We lose their brilliance in whatever field of study or area of practice they would have advanced. We lose whatever contributions they may have made to science, medicine, technology, philosophy, art, culture, or commerce. Perhaps they had the potential to find a cure for the very ailment that will eventually kill you. We also gain the burden of human potential suppressed (i.e. expensive prison systems, abusive immigration systems, the impacts of poverty in our cities, climate change, war, and mental health epidemics).

Those whose privilege is generated by the oppression of others over long periods of time suffer from this “privilege.” They suffer the loss of contributions oppressed peoples could have made to their well-being, as we discussed in the first article when unpacking Heather Rae’s quote about climate change and its direct correlation to the oppression of indigenous peoples contributions to designing our value systems in the industrial age. They also suffer from the mental health impacts of generations of their kin living in the constant fear and paranoia of rebellion, the guilt of benefiting from another’s pain, the consequences of victim-perpetrator dynamics, and/or the dissociation with reality caused by the dehumanization of another to preserve a moral self-identity.

The fears embedded in the “zero-sum” framing in the context of furthering diversity, equality, equity, and inclusion is probably a key factor in our failure to achieve these goals in media and in society. Especially, when notions of scarcity helped fuel systems of oppression historically and systems of oppression help fuel fear or paranoia of the other, or of the oppressed. The fears embedded in notions of scarcity also fuel our frenzied appetite for exponential growth, expansion, and productivity, which can hinder the adoption of the values of reflection, collaboration, and consultation.

As Morgan Willis, Director of the Allied Media Conference, told me during my interviews for this research project:

The person that needs to be most changed in this scenario is ‘this guy’ who is making the decisions because he’s the one in power to ultimately put people in these positions… There’s such inequity and inequality that it is ‘his’ responsibility to both receive the diverse people coming to him AND to do the work of recruiting people from underrepresented groups… Ultimately, that handful of [privileged] people are going to have to accept their responsibility to diversify their rooms if it is ever going to change.

How do we structure involvement at that level in a way that resources him with a framework, a blueprint and the tools, language, and a way of holding him accountable to doing something that he’s probably never had to do? We have to consider that throughout his entire life, he’s never had to think about who to put in a room. That does not mean that he’s not able to be transformed.

If he does this, his room will give back. You’re diversifying not just the representation of people, but ideas, creativity, imagination and perspective. You can’t really get that when you have a room full of yourself.

Scarcity is an antiquated concept, but our economic systems are still operating on the fear of it and therefore perpetuating a constant and exponential hunger for growth, especially for those that have already accumulated more than they could ever use. We are in an age of abundance, but we are still operating on the subconscious survival mechanisms of scarcity.

Artificial Intelligence alone is a “surplus technology” that can help us manage the earth’s resources in a sustainable and balanced way (even if it will never be the same as it was as it was before human-induced climate change) if we have the will to re-organize according to this new reality. We have enough to feed, house, and provide medical care for the earth population right now if we can create the political will.

And if we care for more than just people’s bodies and elevate their intellectual and creative potential, we will attain a level of civilization that we’ve never seen. We can enact an enlightenment and become a more true civilization, not one that claims allegiance to civility but fails in practice. We have the opportunity to become a better version of ourselves.

What comes next?

There has been a wonderful response from philanthropists, academic institutions, industry related companies and community organizations. In fact, we are already exploring strategies with institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, MIT and Stanford University to apply the recommendations from the research in intersectional programs and pedagogy. We are also developing initiatives to share the research in communities that are ripe for taking leadership positions in furthering equality in emerging media. Finally, we are planning further opportunities to convene as a field to outline strategies for structural change to enable the artists, technologists, policymakers, community leaders and scientists to make a new reality.

At Immerse, we’ll continue to both amplify the findings and insights from the Making a New Reality research, and to find new writers and respondents to explore these themes. To do this, I’ll be stepping into a new role, as a contributing editor for the publication: send me your story ideas at newreality@immerse.news.

We’ll also need your help to spread the word. Below, you’ll find a summary of the research that you can share with colleagues, students, inventors, investors, and anyone else who has a stake in this issue. Please tag us on Twitter using the #makinganewreality hashtag; we are excited to see how the conversation evolves.

On the Making a New Reality site this month, you’ll also find notes from the Ford Foundation JustFilm’s Emerging Media Summit, a summary of the research, and a framework for action. Stay tuned for more in the coming months.

• Making a New Reality Summary
• Notes from the JustFilms Emerging Media Summit
• What is a Framework for Action? Discussed in Democratize Design.

The Making a New Reality research project is authored by Kamal Sinclair with support from Ford Foundation JustFilms and supplemental support from the Sundance Institute. Learn more about the goals and methods of this research, who produced it, and the interviewees whose insights inform the analysis.

Affirmations and What Comes Next was originally published in Making a New Reality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.