Engagement Lab

One week from today! On Tuesday 4/11, join TNGV and for a film screening and vital discussion with community members affected by gun violence, medical professionals, and stakeholders from fields such as trauma, emergency medicine, public health, research, policy and more.

➡️ Swipe to meet all of the panelists, including Chaplain Clementina Chéry, Eric Gordon, Dr. Cornelia Griggs, Kate Haskins, Rahsaan Peters, Ruth Rollins, and LeeAnn Taylor.

For more information and to register, visit the link in our bio!

🏆Last night we had the pleasure of attending the 22nd annual Emerson Film Festival. We presented our inaugural Social Impact Award to Gund Kwok!
📣At the Engagement Lab, we believe strongly in the power of film — and all collaborative storytelling forms – to create meaningful change by elevating awareness of social issues and amplifying the voices and stories of underrepresented communities.
🎥This film is a tremendous example of precisely the sort of civically-engaged creativity that Emerson is uniquely positioned to cultivate and support both here on campus and throughout our city and world.

As the 2019-2020 Media Design year comes to an end, we want to take a moment to spotlight and celebrate the hard work and creativity of each of our students and their thesis groups. Our first highlights the work of Chitra Anwar, Kathleen Carroll, Paul Cifarelli, and Rakshya Devkota, who had the opportunity to work with the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Services in Boston:

“We partnered with the City of Boston Mayor's Office of Recovery Services on a youth prevention initiative that takes a holistic approach to prevention and increases marginalized youth’s access to community resources. We designed Future Connect, an app that helps Boston youth gain positive future orientation, set goals, and access community resources related to their goals. Youth are guided through imagining their best future self, identifying activities involved, building a support system, identifying barriers, and connecting with resources. Our prototype also includes a journal, which can be digital or physical, that prompts youth to respond creatively to questions related to each step of the app, in addition to giving space for more personal reflection. Our research has identified that positive future orientation and access to community resources are protective factors against substance misuse, but are less accessible to low-income youth of color. Our prototype bridges the gap between these youth and the resources they need.” @ Emerson College

cities throughout the United States and the world, people have taken to the streets because they have reached the tipping point for tolerating racial injustice. This is deeply humbling. It is incumbent upon all of us, and especially for white people in relative positions of power, to join the chorus of voices that are demanding and committing to being a part of structural changes. It is imperative that we reform our broken criminal justice system and put an end to police brutality, and we are committed to supporting the work of the Black Lives Matter movement in order to make these changes happen.

For the last ten years, the faculty, staff and students at the Engagement Lab, have sought to craft mechanisms for inclusive participation in a digital public sphere: from government to education to health care. We are still committed to this mission, but understand now more than ever that to dismantle racism and its constituent violence, we need to continue to call attention to it in everything we do. We recognize that this will require continued, arduous effort. We are committed to looking deeper into our own practices as an organization, and continually striving to make them more equitable. We are committed to raising the voices of black and brown people who have for too long been shouting into a vacuum. We want to share the brave and poignant words of the president of Emerson College, Lee Pelton, who shared his personal experiences as a Black man in this statement to the College. In the words of President Pelton:

“This is not a black problem, but a structural issue built on white supremacy and centuries of racism. It’s your problem. And until you understand that, we are doomed to relive this week’s tragic events over and over again. What changes will you make in your own life? Begin with answering that question and maybe, just maybe we will get somewhere.”


Here at the Engagement Lab, we are committed to asking ourselves the hard questions and being a part of the profound changes that our world calls for.

Last week, we partnered with Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell () and Union Capital Boston to host an incredible "Neighbors Helping Neighbors" virtual conversation. We had nearly 150 people in attendance and discussed various ways neighbors are coordinating care and connection within their communities during COVID-19. We also began to imagine together how we might learn from these new ways of interacting to create a better future in Boston.

We want to invite you to participate in another virtual convening to continue learning and building together. Please join us on Zoom next Tuesday, April 21, from 4:00-5:30pm as we explore further what we are doing individually and what we can be doing together. We will discuss creative approaches to connecting and engaging our communities, mutual-aid infrastructure, amplifying arts for connection, parenting through the crisis, mental health and self-care, visioning for a more equitable future, and more. Please follow the link in our bio to RSVP!

Our very first post takes us back to about a month ago, where Media Design students and faculty gathered for their last in-person class of the semester. Our small communities are often the glue that holds us all together during moments of uncertainty and confusion. We hope that everyone is taking care and able to spend time (physically or virtually) with the people they love.

We are conducting a research study in partnership with Agora Journalism Center to understand how journalists are pursuing community engagement in our online-only worlds. We’re looking for up to 15 U.S.-based journalists who are currently working on or planning an engaged journalism project to participate in a six-month study that will help evaluate how they are doing their work. Over the course of the study, we will interview each participant twice and they will self-interview once, using the Meetr guidelines. Each interview will take approximately 60 minutes. Participants will receive a $400 research incentive.

Follow the link in our bio to sign-up!

@ Boston, Massachusetts

While we are closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation and what it may mean for this year’s Salzburg Global Academy, we are still accepting nominations for the Transformative Media Literacy Scholar Award through the end of April.

A brief refresher: this award will provide an emerging teacher, scholar, or activist that is currently engaged in the practice and pedagogy for social justice-oriented media work with a stipend to complete a project in the year that they receive the award along with travel and room/board at the Salzburg Academy on Media Global Change. The form to nominate can be found on www.sjmsymposium.org!

The Engagement Lab is devoted to the design and understanding of values-forward public participation with media and technology. Much of the work of our faculty, staff, and students over the last decade has focused on connecting geography and place to mediated communication. As we are now living through a global pandemic that is necessitating social distancing for the foreseeable future, we need to reimagine what this looks like absent of place and co-presence. What does it mean to be socially distant and connected?

In the age of COVID-19, we have no choice but to embrace the Internet that is, and make the Internet we need. The Engagement Lab is committed to contributing to this in whatever way we can. We are committed to building processes with people that connect them to public life by cultivating social connection and good information, through creativity and play. We are committed to creatively reimaging readily accessible digital tools that serve everyone, especially those most marginalized, to participate, create, and connect in this new reality.

Please follow the link in our bio to read a statement from our Director Eric Gordon regarding the current COVID-19 pandemic.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who attended and participated in our first annual Social Justice and Media Symposium! It was an empowering day of dialogue and activities centering around a shared commitment to engaging in the important working happening at the intersection of social justice and media. We hope to keep this energy going in our hearts and minds as we plan for 2021’s event! @ Emerson College

ONE WEEK LEFT! Make sure to RSVP to our first annual Social Justice & Media Symposium on 2/28 to hear from our keynote speaker, Catherine D’Ignazio (), an Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT and Director of the Data + Feminism Lab, who will be leading a conversation about the ways in which data science and data ethics are informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism. ✊

We are proud to announce the inaugural Social Justice and Media Symposium, in partnership with , , , and to honor of our beloved professor, colleague, activist, and media-maker Moses Shumow, who tragically passed on October 22nd, 2019. Moses was a firm believer in the power of the story to reframe the narratives of the marginalized and worked tirelessly in the classroom and the community to help people use media to advocate for their rights.

In order to honor Moses’ life and work, the symposium will convene activists, scholars, students, and storytellers to explore how media pedagogy and practice can persist in the face of our increasingly transactional, shallow, and fractured media infrastructure.

Join us for a day filled with engaging keynote speakers, labels, community building, and a reflection of Moses’ most recent documentary, Liberty Square Rising. Please RSVP with the link in our bio!