Tag Archives: New York Community Trust

Hive NYC Testimony re: Social Media/Tech’s Role in Increasing Youth Participation in the Arts

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Chris Lawrence is at City Hall this morning to testify at New York City Council’s first-ever interactive cultural affairs hearing. The forum is addressing how the city’s arts organizations can/are/should be using social media, the web and other technologies to engage youth and increase participation in the arts. Join the conversation on Twitter using #cultureNYC.

Testimony to the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations

Delivered by Chris Lawrence, Director of Hive NYC Learning Network

Good afternoon Chairman Van Bramer and members of the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations and the Committee on Technology. I am Chris Lawrence, Director of Hive NYC Learning Network, a coalition of local civic and cultural youth-serving organizations who use digital media and technology as tools to enhance learning. Our members range in size and scope from the American Museum of Natural History to Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, as well as all of the City’s major public library systems, the YMCA, and a growing network of learning spaces. We were founded in 2008 as part of The MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative, and are stewarded by Mozilla, creators of the Firefox web browser. Our 40 non-profit members have exclusive access to grants from the Hive Digital Media Learning Fund in The New York Community Trust, a collaborative fund that includes eight foundations and donors, and is led by an advisory committee that includes the Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs. Grants are awarded every six months to members for their collaborative efforts to create innovative learning programs that reach more than 4,000 teens and tweens across NYC each year.

Hive NYC helps youth explore their interests while gaining 21st century skills revealing paths to academic and professional success. Youth start with what interests them — art, science, politics, hip hop, technology and social interactions– and then our programs infuse their interest-based learning with digital media, technology and the web. While the devices, apps and tech tools hook them, our programs let adolescents actually become makers and designers of the experiences and spaces where they dwell online. Hive NYC youth are more than consumers, they are producers of digital media.

This is critical, because social media, technology and the web aren’t just basic channels for promotion or marketing. They are channels for creativity, engagement, enlightenment, and learning. We know that virtually all American teens play computer, console, or cell phone games.Nine out of ten kids use mobile technologies and Black and Latino youth are the most frequent users. This creates an incredible opportunity. We can meet youth where they are, embrace the do-it-yourself (DIY) world they live in, and get them to learn by doing. For example, Urban Word and the New York Public Library use social media websites like Facebook and Twitter to prompt youth to read and then write their own poetry; Urban Word also hosts a live poetry workshop via Ustream, with chat functionality and real-time video where young poets share their work and get feedback from a professional poet/mentor; teens involved with the Rubin Museum of Art created a Tumblr blog to share their reflections on Himalayan Art and spread news about museum events; and, the New York Hall of Science gets young people to use mobile phones to collect and analyze data on urban pollution and take action to improve local conditions.

Hive NYC is helping its members create innovative, fun, valuable, cutting-edge projects. The result? Our cultural institutions are becoming more relevant to young people. By working to better integrate social media and open technology into exhibitions, performances, and after- school programs, we are collectively providing more entry points for youth to participate.

NYC is the cultural capital of the world, and its tech sector is booming. Hive NYC is working to bridge these assets to bring more digital learning initiatives to fruition, to open doors for young people to contribute as engaged audiences, not just passive participants.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Chris Lawrence
Director, Hive NYC Learning Network
@chrislarry33

Hive NYC blog:
http://www.explorecreateshare.org

Hive NYC Twitter: @hivelearningnyc
Hive Digital Media Learning Fund in The New York Community Trust:
http://bit.ly/HiveDMLFUND

New view of the NYC learning landscape

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Our network is expanding!  That means the NYC landscape for informal learning as we see it has some new points of interest.  Check out the Hive NYC coordinates!


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With the latest round of grants awarded through the Hive Digital Media Learning Fund, we’re thrilled to welcome our new members!

A large part of our mission is to provide youth with multiple, continuous and connected opportunities to explore their intellectual and skill-based interests.  Kids seek out involvement with our member organizations based on their interests, and as part of the Hive Learning Network, can gain additional opportunities to work and learn with youth and educators from other local organizations.  It’s a way for youth in any urban center to create and connect with new learning experiences.

Here are more details on the newly-funded projects:

  • Teens participating in the Urban Biodiversity Network with the American Museum of Natural History will use mobile devices to seek out hidden alerts at urban sites in Manhattan and at the Bronx Zoo, where they make a field observation or solve a riddle. With help from the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, they will share findings on an online platform that the teens will help customize.
  • Teenagers will research and create an online guide to African art at the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of African Art.
  • City Lore will pair Reel Works teen filmmakers with skateboarders to make and share online videos about skateboarding and to create a digital map of skate parks in all five boroughs. Bank Street College is advising on the project.
  • The DreamYard Project will host new workshops in graphic and web design; and video, audio, and music production for Bronx youth. The students will also advise on future programs at a new Bronx media and social center.
  • Girls Write Now is developing a creative writing program that will end with a digital portfolio of finished stories.
  • Global Kids and the Brooklyn Public Library will work with teens to create an outdoor treasure hunt that uses GPS-enabled devices to get their peers involved in neighborhood issues.
  • Museum of the Moving Image will host a digital game-design camp during spring break that will produce a replicable game-design curriculum. The Institute of Play will provide mentors for participants.
  • MOUSE will work with teens to plan and implement 2012 Emoti-Con!, a competitive digital media festival in which young designers, programmers, filmmakers, and technologists demonstrate their work, collaborate on social action projects, and meet professionals in the industry.
  • Museum of Modern Art will host a series of digital media and art-making classes called CLICK@MoMA.
  • New York Public Library will develop NYC Haunts, a mobile scavenger hunt in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island that connects local history to contemporary problems. Teens create and post possible solutions.
  • People’s Production House will train youth to use digital multimedia storytelling to capture, edit, and publish news not covered by the mainstream media.
  • Urban Word NYC, Global Action Project and the YMCA will work with young people to write and share poetry through in-person workshops and through Urban Word Live, an interactive website.

We’d love to hear which projects most appeal to your personal interests, or if you have amazing experiences to share that involve our new member organizations, please post a comment below.

Hive NYC Announces Molecular Change

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From the keyboard of Chris Lawrence, Project Director, Hive Learning Network NYC
If I were to characterize the past year of the learning network project in scientific terms I would say we have passed through a phase transition point, changing from slow-moving molecules of a solid into the hyper, warp-speed molecular frenzy of a gas.  Almost everything about us has seen seismic change, except our core value of supporting youth in their development from digital media consumers to producers.So let me quickly sketch out some of the ways we have grown:
  • Last year we had 13 members and now we have 25, with another growth spurt coming soon
  • Funded projects have increased from 3 to 12, with more to come…
  • We entered into a partnership with The New York Community Trust to better manage and grow our grant-making capabilities
  • We escalated our involvement with New York City-based events like World Maker Faire, Bring To Light and Emoti-Con, and have gone global with greater connections in the Mozilla Drumbeat movement

And some of the key ways that have changed:

  • We increased our alignment with the MacArthur Foundation’s national Learning Network goals and created a cohesive leadership team between the New York and Chicago Learning Networks. Together we created a unified brand and messaging structure, collaborated on core programming principles and began to document the Learning Network building process with the goal of expansion into new cities.
  • We changed our name from “The New Youth City Learning Network” to “HiveLearning Network New York City” to be in harmony with the “Hive Learning Network” brand established by the cross-network leadership team.
  • We have a new team!  We said goodbye to Diana Rhoten and Ingrid Erickson, and established a new team with Jess Klein, Lainie DeCoursy and myself. Thank you Diana and Ingrid for all that you did to start and grow our learning network.

But even with the change and evolution detailed above, we are especially excited to announce what we think will be nothing short of transformative for Hive Learning Network NYC moving forward…

We are now part of the Mozilla Foundation and a key contributor in their movement into the learning space.

Mozilla took over stewardship of Hive NYC in strong, continued partnership with MacArthur’s Digital Media & Learning work and The New York Community Trust. How did this happen you ask?

Honestly it happened in the emergent, hands-on and participatory process that we seek to build into all of our initiatives. A handful of us were at the first-ever Mozilla Festival in Barcelona last year, “Learning, Freedom and the Web,” where we had the opportunity to mix, mingle and work alongside Mozilla designers, engineers and thinkers.  These collaborations resulted in the youth web building tool Hackasaurus, a deeper connection to the Open Badge project and a mutual interest in the work that we were both doing.

Thanks in large part to the talent, grit and creativity of Jess Klein, the relationship between the learning network and Mozilla blossomed through further development of Hackasaurus and a series of Hack Jams held at network members like the New York Public Library, the New York Hall of Science and Eyebeam and with member participation of MOUSE, Institute of Play as well as others. When it became apparent that Hive NYC needed a new home and partner that could be instrumental in helping us grow, the Mozilla Foundation enthusiastically stepped up.

Change is never easy and usually includes a healthy dose of angst and confusion. How do we fit in with a web company when our focus is learning? Would we be viewed as an asset and not a partner? What would this mean for our members who dealt in more traditional literacies and content? How will the agendas of varied groups like our members, the Trust, MacArthur, Hive Chicago and now Mozilla mesh? Would they?

In some areas this is still being sifted through, but my confidence and enthusiasm has been greatly buoyed by working with Mozilla Foundation Executive Director Mark Surman. Mark brings a dreamer’s vision, a pratitoner’s eye for detail and people skills that made the union of us and them feel right. Over the past few months, Mark has been publicly processing and sparking conversation around what he calls Mozilla’s effort to “go big in learning” on his blog Commonspace. I urge you to take a look at these posts and see where he believes we are headed, as well as to hear his take on this new relationship.

I started this post with some bullet points and will wrap up with some more, detailing what I think this new merger between Mozilla and Hive NYC means for our learning network as we move forward as one team:

  • The development of Hive NYC as a Learning Lab for innovation in not only education but peer mentorship models, connected learning practices, youth development and the use of digital tools to spark and shape youth interests.
  • The opportunity to play, design and educate with some of the incredible tools that Mozilla is prototyping and producing. Connections to not only Hackasaurus and the Open Badge Project but also to Mozilla Journalism, P2PU and Popcorn.js.
  • A deeper connection to communities and networks interested in open software development, hacking culture, remixing and the democratization of media production.
  • The opportunity for Hive NYC and its members to help shape Mozilla’s understanding, philosophy and practice in the learning space, especially as it pertains to the free choice, interest-driven and informal settings that we’re so deeply entrenched in.
  • An increased visibility and impact not only in New York City, but across the globe.

While this is a lot to chew on, I hope you continue to follow and contribute to what we at Mozilla’s Hive Learning Network in New York City are hoping to accomplish: nothing less then changing the world, even if it’s one project, hack, youth, work of art, organization, poem or piece of code at a time.

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.