Begin By Listening

Making a new reality can only begin after addressing the existing reality, as evidenced by Kamal Sinclair’s extensive research. In her project, she presented several issues worth addressing. What we lay out below is an attempt to begin a dialogue in response to her question “What might it look like to adjust the design of our media and tech spaces so they center the needs of those historically marginalized in those spaces?”

Detroit Narrative Agency (DNA) is a project that directly confronts present conditions to develop more equitable pathways into emerging media for people and communities who have historically been excluded and/or tokenized within mainstream media making. DNA’s work centers Black and people of color (POC) media makers working to shift narratives about Detroit and build power, with an emphasis on developing tools for equitable community partnerships. In order to talk about our work, we must begin with a critical frame: Our strategies come out of an immense historical legacy of activism and cultural production in Detroit. This includes two decades of media-based organizing and over a decade of community-building and network cultivation through Allied Media Projects. This context is important; these strategies and tools were developed out of a long-term commitment to radical organizing in Detroit.

An essential piece of our work that comes directly from Allied Media’s network principles is the idea that “we begin by listening.” This is a crucial first step towards equity: deep, active listening to those most impacted by the conditions that many of us are critically resisting.

For DNA, this principle in practice meant convening an advisory team who conducted an audit of existing moving-image media about Detroit. They were able to identify inequitable patterns, such as confirming our hunch that the majority of films made about Detroit are not by people from Detroit. The late Detroit water warrior Charity Hicks often said, “If you’re not at the table you’re on the menu.” Black and POC Detroiters have not been at the table when it comes to narratives around our city’s “rebirth.”

The advisory team then conducted a community research process to understand which stories Detroiters are sick of hearing, and, alternately, which stories need to be uplifted. The team also brainstormed about the infrastructural needs required to shift those narratives. This process involved more than 200 community members and informed the priorities of the project and helped form the guidelines for a Seed Grant application — which resulted in our first DNA cohort. Ten applicants were selected from nearly 150 to receive a year of funding, training, mentorship, access to equipment, and other support in order to seed their moving-image projects. Five of these projects have now moved into the second round of DNA and their makers were provided a fellowship to develop short films and accompanying community impact strategies.

There are three documentaries and two narrative projects that each focus on different narratives about Detroit, including resisting displacement and foreclosures, connecting the ’80s sanctuary movement with today’s immigrant justice work, Black land sovereignty, public transportation, and uplifting the experiences of Black trans women. The filmmakers come out of the communities that they are representing in their projects, and are intentionally partnering with social justice organizations and activists in the creation and distribution of their projects to create a greater impact. For example, one of the DNA-supported narrative projects, Riding With Aunt D. Dot, uses magical realism and experimental elements to highlight the culture and community that exists on Detroit buses, destigmatizing public transportation users and raising critical questions about mobility and equity in our region. As part of their impact strategy, the filmmakers Bree Gant and Hanniyeh Cross are bus riders who are partnering with the Transit Justice Team, a program of Detroit People’s Platform that fights for racial justice in public transportation policies in Detroit.

Ecosystem-building is a cornerstone to our work. One of the needs we identified in our feedback sessions was connecting the media professionals, organizers, and community members in our network, as well as providing structure and space to build those relationships over time.

DNA has also experimented with using cultural community benefits agreements (CBA) in partnerships with other cultural institutions (MIT’s Open Doc Lab and Co-Creation Studio, for example). This model of creating intentional partnerships and ensuring that these partnerships truly benefit community members affected by narrative work is rooted in our purpose. Early on in this work, the need for these practices was articulated by community members desiring deeper agency and inclusion in narrative work about the city. This can be as simple as prioritizing specific caterers and venues for meetings, creating explicit expectations of participation, and advocating for fair compensation when needed. This work is not new. Detroiters have been organizing around CBAs for new corporations and entities attempting to enter and profit off of the city. In Hollywood, there is already precedent for the work DNA is doing on a community level. Inclusion Riders, which Frances McDormand mentioned in her Academy Award acceptance speech, prove that mechanisms similar to the CBA are already in place and are under-utilized in the industry.

We understand our work as part of a Detroit legacy of fighting for marginalized people to gain access to resources and opportunities that have been systematically denied by the institutions of philanthropy, professional media, and technology industries. It is also in our cultural heritage to be dynamic and prolific media-makers, through moving-image, sound, music, writing, and beyond. Our role is to find solutions that mitigate and react to biases while advancing deeper structural change.

We encourage anyone thinking through these issues to focus on what it means to build equity into a process from the outset and intentionally hold space for marginalized communities and media makers. It won’t look like our work and it shouldn’t, as every space and situation involves its own unique context that must be considered with intention. In many ways, the root of the work is in acknowledging that no model is perfect. There is no equity panacea, and we’ve got to make our best attempt anyway. Our best advice on how to start is to begin by listening.

The Making a New Reality research project is authored by Kamal Sinclair with support from the Ford Foundation JustFilms program and supplemental support from the Sundance Institute. Learn more about the goals and methods of this research, who produced it, and the interviewees whose insights inform the analysis.

Immerse is an initiative of Tribeca Film Institute, MIT Open DocLab and The Fledgling Fund. Learn more about our vision for the project here.