Global Action Project's final collection of curricula, workshops, and stories from our community. Published in 2021.
Curriculum
The product of over two decades of experience, Global Action Project's Media In Action Curriculum is available here for free download. Grab it, read it, use it, adapt it, and tell us how it worked (or didn't) for you.
Global Action Project developed the Media In Action Curriculum through its after-school media arts programs and, more recently, its Media in Action trainings. Media in Action runs multi-day, intergenerational trainings for community organizers who want to harness the power of youth media to move their work further, faster.
How to Use
This curriculum is a rough guide, not a blueprint. Think of it as a foundation on which to build your own house. The workshops as rendered here capture a moment in the evolving history of our work. We want you and your work to be a part of this evolution. Adapt these pieces to fit your own needs, then tell us about it!
A note about this site's functionality: The curriculum is most useful when used online as PDF files, rather than as paper copies. Most of the resources referenced in the PDFs are available for download via html links. We recommended that you visit the links now and, if possible, print out relevant materials, because these links may expire at any point.
Rising Together, Moving Forever: Curriculum & stories from Global Action Project
Download this workshop (22.68 MB)Media in Action, 2010
Global Action Project developed the Media In Action Curriculum through its after-school media arts programs and Media in Action trainings. It was originally published in 2010.
Download this workshop (42.67 MB)AESTHETICS OF CENTERING DARK SKIN TONES slidedeck
A slidedeck presentation that accompanies our How to Fight Your Racist Camera workshop, which is available in full in our 2020 Rising Together, Moving Forever publication.
Download this workshop (1.8 MB)Fighting for #counselorsnotcops in schools
An action toolkit and education resources originally developed with our partners at Dignity in Schools - NY. The goal for the toolkit is to provide educational, informational, and actionable resources to help realize the ongoing struggle to remove police from public schools, curb spending on technology that criminalizes young people, allocate more funding to restorative justice, and break the school-to-prison pipeline.
Download this workshop (4.94 MB)cell phone tool
A classic GAP tool, adapted from our TV tool, used to support groups in developing social media and narrative strategy to push forward their campaigns. The original TV tool can be found in our 2010 Media in Action curriculum guide.
Download this workshop (235.59 KB)Framing and Messaging
The media frames their messages according to ideologies.
This workshop helps participants decode the media's messages, view media critically, and consider media's role in advancing social justice.
This workshop helps participants decode the media's messages, view media critically, and consider media's role in advancing social justice.
Download this workshop (4.27 MB)Media Advancing Movements
How can we use media to embody and promote the values of liberation? This workshop encourages participants to consider positive impacts that media have had on them personally as well as on social movements in the 20th Century.How can we use media to embody and promote the values of liberation? This workshop encourages participants to consider positive impacts that media have had on them personally as well as on social movements in the 20th Century.
Download this workshop (832.52 KB)movement history timeline
A practical, technical guide to using GAP's Movement / Media History Timeline digital tool.
Download this workshop (878.27 KB)Oppression and Liberation
This workshop explores oppression by examining how oppressive systems function in our lives interpersonally, internally, and institutionally. Participants also begin envisioning possibilities for liberation.
Download this workshop (911.78 KB)Power
In the Unites States, there is a vast gap between the rich and poor. This is a product of the economic system that we live in, and understanding this is key to organizing towards social justice. This workshop explores the nature of power in the U.S., and is an excellent introduction to many of the core concepts in G.A.P.'s curriculum.
Download this workshop (5.65 MB)Sticker bombing guide
Sticker bombing is a form of activism! Here's our short guide on where to start.
Download this workshop (68.26 KB)Acknowledgements
This curriculum could not have been possible without the hard work and creative insight of Global Action Project's staff members and young people over the years--especially G.A.P.'s media educators past and present. We are especially grateful to the curriculum committee (Sumitra Rajkumar, Pilar Valdes, Binh Ly, Dan O'Reilly-Rowe, Teresa Basilio, and Chrystian Rodriguez) for their extraordinary work innovating our synthesis of media, youth development and political education. We'd like to thank Susan Siegel and Diana Coryat for their early contributions, and Jeremy Engle, Dare Dukes, and Meghan McDermott for supporting its completion.
This curriculum has been generously funded in part by: The Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.