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In 2020, Black Public Media (BPM), MIT Open Documentary Lab (ODL), and MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (MIT CAST) created the MIT & Black Public Media Visiting Artist Program to support Black creatives who use emerging technology as their medium for documentary and nonfiction storytelling. Typically, our participants are filmmakers, artists, journalists, or creative technologists. The mission of this joint program is to support and develop the emerging-tech storytelling skills of makers who are underrepresented within creative technology industries and to bring visiting artists into community with like-minded storytellers.
Program Year: 2022
Country: USA
Project: AR Museum for the People: A Black Panther Mural Tour
About the Nonso Christian Ugbode Digital Media Fellowship
The NCU Emerging Media Fellowship was founded in 2016 to commemorate the contributions of Nonso Christian Ugbode, BPM’s first director of digital initiaties. The fellowship is designed specifically for young artists who are producing their first independent digital media project. Funding for the 2023 NCU Fellowship is provided by Gimlet Media.
Black Public Media (BPM) and the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts are collaborators on a residency for independent filmmakers, creative technologists and artists who need access to emerging-tech equipment, studio time or workspace. The in-person residency was launched on the campus of University of Nebraska-Lincoln during the summer of 2022. Emerging technologies include, but are not limited to, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, and 3D printing. Candidates may also choose to focus on older technologies, such as projection mapping, multichannel video, VFX, or 3D animation. Residency funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Johnny Carson Foundation.
Program Year: 2023
Country: USA
Project: LASTSUMMER
Program Year: 2023
Country: USA
Project: Falling Stars and Freedom Fighters
Program Year: 2023
Country: USA
Project: Air Quality Orange Interactive
Blanca was named an NCU Fellow in 2022. At the time, she was a graduating senior International Studies major attending Spelman College. Throughout her matriculation through Spelman, she was able to explore how her love of storytelling, art, and creating communities could come together in a way that she could make a career. She is the founder and CEO of Culturally Kreative a publishing company that focuses on bringing emerging technologies to young readers. As a result of her work creating Culturally Kreative, she has been accepted as a fellow for Spelman College’s inaugural Entrepreneurship Fellowship and the Black Girl Venture NextGen Fellowship.
Josie was named an NCU Fellow in 2021. She is a multimedia creative technologist whose practice involves experimenting with emerging technology, coding, and exploring cyborgian art forms as a medium of expression. She is influenced by radical techno-counterculture and technology as a liberatory tool based in indigenous knowledge. Black Public Media awarded her the 2021 Nonso Christian Ugbode Fellowship.
Kian was named an NCU Fellow in 2020. An activist at heart and artist by trade, his focus resides at the intersection of storytelling, social justice and technology. As the founder and leader of RXNIN LIFE, an independent production house, Kian’s work is diverse, ranging from music, to films, comics and AR/VR. His most notable work is his photography of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement in Washington, DC, which was featured in the Washington Post and auctioned off for the VTF NABJ scholarship fund. He has spoken on several panels addressing diversity, social justice, storytelling and technology, including at BPM’s 2022 Black Media Story Summit on Vaccine Equity in Baltimore; and the 2020 Consumer Electronic Symposium in Las Vegas. He taught workshops for Johns Hopkins’ Baltimore Youth Film Arts program and The University of Maryland’s Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House while finishing production on his docutrilogy “Free The People.” As a Saul Zaentz Fellow and an honorary BPM 360+ Incubator fellow, Kian was awarded the inaugural BPM Nonso Christian Ugbode Digital Media fellowship to complete an AR demo of his comic book, “BLACKGUARD.”
