Media and creativity to transform our selves and our world

The 11th annual Allied Media Conference will advance our visions for a just and creative world. It will be a laboratory for media-based solutions to the matrix of life-threatening problems we face. For the past 10 years, we have evolved our definition of media, and the role it can play in our lives – from zines to video-blogging to breakdancing, to communicating solidarity and creating justice. Each conference builds off the previous one and plants the seeds for the next. Ideas and relationships evolve year-round, incorporating new networks of media-makers and social justice organizers. The 2009 AMC will draw strength from our converging movements to face the challenges and opportunities of our current moment. We are ready to create, connect and transform.

The AMC supports learning of all different kinds and at all different levels. The workshops are hands-on and participatory. Knowledge is passed horizontally rather than from the top down. Everyone teaches and everyone learns. At the AMC, media creation is not only about personal expression, but about transformation – of ourselves and the structures of power around us. We create media that exposes, investigates, resists, heals, builds confidence and radical hope, incites dialogue and debate. We do it ourselves and as communities, connecting across geographic and generational boundaries.

The AMC is a network of many networks – youth organizations, international solidarity activists, women of color anti-violence organizers, radical educators, media policy activists, alternative economists, hip hop community-leaders, disability pride activists, and many others – all using media in innovative ways. Some of these networks have sprouted from the conference, grown over the course of the year, then reconvened in Detroit larger and healthier. Others have adopted the AMC as an annual point of convergence and a space to forge new relationships. Through cycles of collaboration, question-asking and experimentation, our networks continue to grow, bringing new analysis, and new tools to the AMC every year.

The deeper our networks grow, the greater our capacity grows to take collective actions to transform our world. We recognize that transformation happens through our everyday movements. At the AMC, we develop new leaders and new forms of leadership, design new methods of problem-solving, cultivate the visions of our communities and build our power to make those visions real. Our strategies for transformation don't begin or end with the three days of the conference. They evolve in our lives and our work throughout the year.

The Allied Media Conference cultivates strategies for a more just and creative world. We come together to share tools and tactics for transforming our communities through media-based organizing.

The AMC is produced by Allied Media Projects.

Read the AMC Case Statement.