Flash: Capturing Community - Digital Stories

"It was a real honor to work with the youth at DAVA. They were my eyes and ears -- revealing an Aurora few visitors ever experience. Their images forced me to confront my own expectations and assumptions about youth and inner-city life. They saw rivers in a sea of urban sprawl, unity in the face of isolation and hope amongst uncertainty."

- Josh Schachter

For the third summer, middle school students in DAVA’s Job Training in the Arts and Computer Art Lab worked with guest artist Daniel Weinshenker of the Center for Digital Storytelling in Denver. This summer, students had the unique opportunity to create their digital stories from their digital photo essays developed with guest artist Josh Schachter from Tucson, Arizona. While the origin of each photography project was in students’ views of their community, many of the digital stories delved further into the students’ personal lives.

After editing their collection of photographs, students began the digital story process by fine-tuning their creative writing skills to develop a “script” that best communicated their personal stories. They each narrated their own story and added digital photographs to create their own “mini-movies.” In a culture where youth are constantly bombarded with messages from television, music, and movies, DAVA youth seized the opportunity to self-produce their own media and broadcast their unique voices and experiences.

Believing is believing, but more and more we need help getting there. Seeing, yes, and hearing too. Now, we have both. No longer is news coming from major media outlets. Instead it’s coming from us. When it comes to what we think, how we feel, what we see, we’re all professionals. The youth at DAVA proved that. See them. Hear them. Believe them.

– Daniel Weinshenker