NBPC is very excited to have awarded a $5,000 research and development grant toward the development of an interactive video player being developed by Mozilla’s WebMadeMovies project in partnership with filmmaker Luisa Dantas of JoLu Productions. The award was granted at the Integrated Media Association (iMA) conference held in Austin, TX in conjunction with the South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference.

The work of NBPC’s Public Media Corps is to surface new models of community engagement relevant to public media affiliates, in order to help those stations reach into more diverse communities and pursue more robust local partnerships. In service of this goal NBPC has launched its Kindred website (http://publicmediacorps.org/kindred). The website is described as “speed dating for community collaboration” – a social network dedicated to bridging the collaboration gap between public media affiliates and the community organizations and technologists around them.

“This player is exactly what we need for a deeper reach into the community,” said David Freeman of WWOX in New Orleans, a radio station based in the city where Ms. Dantas now lives and is working to complete her film “Land of Opportunity.” Dantas’ film is a post-Katrina exploration of the state of affairs in New Orleans, but ultimately a contemporary tale of the consequences of urban development on inner cities nationwide.

The grant is meant to further the work of WebMadeMovies, specifically their attempts to make video more web-friendly, and more integrated with other content online.