Enlightened artists, change-makers, and community members co-vision an equitable and just future through creative collaboration. With proximity as a starting point, these collaborators challenge “extractive” storytelling norms and co-create narratives with and not about. How do these collaborations emerge? What are the challenges? How different from other approaches do these projects look and feel? Join artists, activists, and those closest to the story to discuss a new vision for storytelling.
Katerina Cizek is a two-time Emmy winner and a pioneer in digital media. Her work has documented the Digital Revolution, and has itself become part of the movement. She is the Artistic Director and Executive Producer of the emergent Co-Creation Studio at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Open Documentary Lab, while based in Toronto, Canada. For over a decade at the National Film Board of Canada, she helped redefine the organization as one of the world’s leading digital content hubs. She was the director and creative force behind the NFB’s award-winning 7-year digital documentary project HIGHRISE, and she realized the acclaimed NFB Filmmaker-in-Residence program. Cizek has built collaborations with a diverse range of community, academic and media partners to co-create media, including The New York Times, Wired Magazine, City of Toronto, United Way and most recently, Canada’s top YouTube stars. She has been recognized with 2 Emmys, a Peabody Award, World Press Photo Prize, 3 Canadian Screen Awards, 2 Webbys, amongst others. Her work has been seen by millions around the globe, through TV broadcasts and publishing on the web. She has travelled the world with her projects, teaching and advising on her innovative approaches to digital media and co-creation models.
Chief of the Yawanawa, Associacao Sóciocultural Yawanawa
Tashka Yawanawá is chief of the Yawanawá people in Acre, Brazil. As chief, he leads 900 people stewarding 400,000 acres of Amazon rainforest in Brazil. The son of the former leader of the Yawanawá, Tashka grew up witnessing the virtual enslavement of his people by the rubber industry and experiencing the near annihilation of the tribe’s culture by missionaries. Since the 1980s, Tashka has actively fought for the rights of indigenous peoples. Realizing that he needed further education to improve the situation of the Yawanawá, he pursued higher education in the U.S. and abroad. He was directly involved in the creation of the Indigenous Lawyers Association and co-founded the Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Youth Alliance, through which he shares the experiences and knowledge of the Yawanawá with youth around the world, and works with projects that guarantee the preservation of different indigenous cultures.. In 2001, Tashka returned to Brazil, and chose to use the knowledge gained from his experiences abroad to help his people transform their future. He became the youngest Chief in the history of the Yawanawá at age twenty-five. In a short amount of time, Tashka and Laura have managed to double the extent of Yawanawá territory, reinvigorate Yawanawá culture, and establish economically and socially empowering relationships with the outside world. Tashka and Laura have two daughters—Kenemani and Luna Rosa—and divide their time living and working in the Yawanawá community and Rio Branco, Brazil.
Megan' vision for JEI’s blend of legal empowerment and community mobilization was born in rural Cameroon and refined in South Africa’s townships, before it took root in Nigeria where she has worked since 2011. With a wide variety of international and domestic human rights and development organizations, Megan has helped to build community-based paralegal programs and supported strategic human rights litigation in Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Nigeria, she is seeking sustainable ways to bring skills and resources directly to urban poor communities. Megan holds a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law (summa cum laude), where she was a Public Interest/Public Service scholar and the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Human Rights Brief. She holds a B.A. in history from University of Chicago (high distinction).
My name is Akinmuyiwa Bisola Temitope, am a community paralegal, render free legal services. Also a media coordinator. In 2018 I was nominated has a member of Management Committee (MC) in slum dwellers international (SDI).
Tabitha Jackson was appointed Director of the Documentary Film Program (DFP) at Sundance Institute in late 2013. The DFP is dedicated to supporting nonfiction filmmakers worldwide in the production of cinematic documentaries that tell compelling stories, push the boundaries of the form, or address contemporary issues including social justice and human rights. In supporting such work, the DFP encourages the diverse exchange of ideas by artists as a critical pathway to developing an open society. Recently supported films have included Cameraperson, Hooligan Sparrow, Whose Streets?, The Look of Silence, I Am Not Your Negro, and CITIZENFOUR.
With almost 25 years experience in the field, Jackson is an award-winning Commissioning Editor, director, and producer of non-fiction work. Prior to joining Sundance she most recently served as Head of Arts and Performance at Channel 4 Television in London, where she supported and championed the independent and alternative voice and sought to find fresh and innovative ways of storytelling. She also executive produced a number of projects for Film 4 including Mark Cousins’ cinematic odyssey The Story of Film, Clio Barnard’s hybrid The Arbor, Sophie Fiennes’ essay The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, Bart Layton’s thriller The Imposter, and Iain and Jane’s recent Sundance-winning Nick Cave biography 20,000 Days on Earth.
Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist/filmmaker who has consistently worked with emerging media technologies. Wallworth’s work has shown at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the American Museum of Natural History, New York, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian, Royal Observatory Greenwich for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad; Auckland Triennial; Adelaide Biennial; Brighton Festival and the Vienna Festival among many others as well as film festivals including-Sundance Film Festival, London Film Festival, Tibeca Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival and the Margaret Mead Film Festival. She has been awarded an International Fellowship from Arts Council England, a New Media Arts Fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts, the inaugural Australian Film, Television and Radio School Creative Fellowship and the Joan and Kim Williams Documentary Fellowship. She has had artist residencies in many parts of the world including Southern Italy, Iran, Northern England and New Mexico.
Her works include the interactive video Evolution of Fearlessness; the full dome feature Coral, with accompanying augmented reality work; and virtual reality narrative Collisions, developed through the inaugural Sundance Institute New Frontier - Jaunt VR Residency. In 2014, Wallworth’s feature documentary Tender won the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award for best televised documentary. In 2016, Wallworth was awarded a UNESCO City of Film Award, the Byron Kennedy Award for Innovation and Excellence and Foreign Policy magazine named Wallworth as one of the “100 Leading Global Thinkers’ of the year. Wallworth lives in Sydney and mentors regularly at Sundance Labs.
Fred Dust is the founder of Making Conversation, LLC and works at the intersection of business, society and creativity. As a designer, author, educator, consultant, trustee, and advisor to social and business leaders, he is one of the world’s most original thinkers, applying the craft and optimism of human-centered design to the intractable challenges we face today. Using the methodology in his book Making Conversation, he has been working as the Senior Dialogue Designer with The Rockefeller Foundation to explore the future of pressing global needs; and with The Einhorn Collaborative and other foundations to host constructive dialogue with leaders ranging from David Brooks, Reverend Jenn Bailey, and Vivek Murthy to rebuild human connection in a climate of widespread polarization, cynicism and disruption. He is also proud to be faculty at the Esalen Institute.
As a former Global Managing Partner at the acclaimed international design firm IDEO, Fred works with leaders and change agents to unlock the creative potential of business, government, education, and philanthropic organizations.
