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Welcome.
The Digital Literacies Symposium is a week-long series of keynote talks and workshops designed for youth media producers and peer-to-peer production mentors who help other youth to create new media. The symposium will consider how ideas of citizenship and social justice can be explored throughout the digital media production process. Beyond inspirational and critically engaging keynote talks by noted local and international writers, educators and activists, the symposium will provide participants with resources, ideas and networks to help further the way issues of social justice and citizenship are taken up when youth produce videos, craft web spaces, or develop new mobile media projects.


 * **TO REGISTER** for keynotes and workshops - please contact Adam Brayford, abrayfor@sfu.ca


 * **LOCATION** - SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street - Please see map http://www.sfu.ca/about/vancouver_maps.html for information on how to get to Harbour Center by public transit or car, and for information on parking


 * **PROJECT WIKI** - please note that this wiki is open to all participants in the Digital Literacies Symposium. We encourage you to upload information about yourself (under the DISCUSSION area on the HOMEPAGE) and also hope you will contribute to the wiki through the discussion sections of each workshop. We also invite you to upload any media (including your own) that you think relevant to this series of talks and workshops.


 * **HOW TO USE the WIKI** - Here is a detailed description of how you can use this wiki, including uploading media clips and links, and participating in ongoing discussions: [[file:Wiki How-To Guide.pdf|Wiki "How To" Guide]]


 * Please note that this event is **FREE**, and we gratefully acknowledge the support of our sponsors

Sponsor Statement
We also wish to thank our program sponsors: The Imagining Citizenship Project at SFU's Institute for the Humanities; the UBC Center for Cross-Faculty Inquiry and the Faculty of Education at UBC; and SFU's School of Communication. We also note the leadership and guidance provided by Dr. Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibbon, Director of SFU's Institute for the Humanities, and Dr. Mary Bryson, Professor and Director, Network of Centers and Institutes in Education (NCIE) & Center for Cross-Faculty Inquiry (CCFI), Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, without whom this project would not have been possible.



Workshop One: Creativity, Media Production & Storying the World

 * Nov. 2, 2009 8:15pm-10:00pm**
 * SFU Harbour Centre Room 1600: Canfor Policy Room**

Patti Fraser & Stuart Poytnz

In this workshop, we challenge the idea that creativity is something we only find by looking deep inside ourselves, to find our own unique vision of the world. Our own voices matter, but in this workshop we also show how creative and compelling stories can be fostered when youth media producers think of their work as part of a rich and complex world. The maxim for this workshop might then be: "You don't have to believe everything you think." With this in mind, the questions we ask are: how might we think about creativity? And in what ways might our creativity be connected to our perceptions of the world? Participate & Interact

Workshop Two: Playful Spaces of Knowing & Citizenship - Storying the Self Through Performance & Technology

 * Nov. 3, 2009 7:00pm-9:00pm**
 * SFU Harbour Centre Room 1600: Canfor Policy Room**

Kathryn Ricketts & M. Simon Levin

Through playful inquiry, we will blur the roles of performer and cinematographer. We are interested in pushing the limits of linear narrative to explore the potential of embodied critical understandings of self and representation. Through movement practices and new direct imaging technologies, participants in this workshop will explore new ways of 'storyboarding', allowing immediate creation of image sequences that produce surprising and poetic new ways of constructing narratives. Who tells the story, and can the story tell us? Participate & Interact

Workshop Three: Public Service Announcements & The Construction of Publicness

 * Nov. 4, 2008 8:15pm-10:00pm**
 * SFU Harbour Centre Room 1600: Canfor Policy Room**

Lori MacIntosh & Brian Ganter

This workshop will explore the history and growth of the Public Service Announcement - from its earliest conceptions in print and commercial culture through to its current digital forms. Who (or what) is the "public" that the PSA claims to address? The first section of this workshop explores more conventional notions of public address through a look at visual representations that play off of our understanding of "public life" and the "public good." In the second half of the workshop participants will define, explore, and (hopefully) unsettle the boundaries of the public worlds they inhabit, by storyboarding and shooting their own "flash film": a mini-PSA. From internet political campaigns to culture jamming, the workshop closes with the following question: what is the future of the PSA? Participate & Interact

Workshop Four: Citizenship, Intellectual Property & Using the Creative Commons

 * Nov. 5, 2009 7:00pm-9:00pm**
 * SFU Harbour Centre Room 1600: Canfor Policy Room**

Kate Milberry & Jean Hébert

Copyright law and remuneration for creative production has historically evolved in the interests of commercial intermediaries (publishers, broadcasters, media companies). The traditional framework built to reward media creators is not an inevitable regime for governing the circulation of texts and media. Digital media demands that we revisit these issues, inviting us to think about art and media as modes for the 'circulation of ideas' (rather than as sites for inscribing ideas as things which can be owned, or worse, commodified). Through the use of vivid case studies and creative exercises, participants in this workshop will explore issues of accessibility, voice, public communication, politics and commercial opportunities that arise in the contemporary era of digital media production. Participate & Interact

Workshop Five: Network Thinking, Boundary Objects & Collective Intelligence

 * Nov. 6, 2009, 8:15pm-10:00pm**
 * SFU Harbour Centre Room 1600: Canfor Policy Room**

Neil Thomas & Stuart Poyntz

The question at the centre of this workshop is: In what way does networked thinking, tied into a creative process, nurture a more complex and richer outcome for youth media producers and youth mentors? Broadly, we suggest that network thinking involves two elements: first, it invites one to think of video making or web design, etc. in terms of the alliances and translations across boundaries that such work can create. Second, it invites one to imagine how online networked information can be brought together easily to make media production richer and more exciting for youth producers. Besides working through how youth-made media operates as a boundary object, participants in this workshop will also leave with a set of resources detailing how to use network thinking as part of producing new media. Participate & Interact