Think Win-Win: Charles Meyer on NCME and Community Cinema

Executive Director of the National Center for Media Engagement (NCME) Charles Meyer outlines his organization’s recently announced partnership with ITVS’s Community Cinema.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephan Covey’s fourth habit encourages, “Think Win-Win.” As Covey points out – and as we’ve discovered in our community engagement work with public media at NCME  – Win-Win is a frame of mind that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all interactions. Win-win means agreements or solutions that are mutually beneficial and satisfying. In other words, solutions that grow a bigger pie. That’s what effective collaboration is about, too. And collaborating is a key behavior among those with an engagement ethos.

There’s no better example than our new “win-win” partnership with ITVS and its highly successful Community Cinema program. In just six years, Community Cinema has expanded to more than 100 communities across the country, producing more than 2,500 screenings and welcoming over 150,000 participants. Its commitment to bringing communities and local organizations together through the featured documentaries aligns perfectly with NCME’s CPB-funded mission to support public media in working collaboratively with their communities to discover, understand, and address community concerns.
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Tags: 7 habits, community cinema, engagement, free screenings, independentlens, NCME, PBS, public media

If You Facebook in the Forest Does it Make a Sound?

Managing Editor of Independent Lens Brooke Shelby Biggs offers advice on how to trigger and track engagement on Facebook.

A common misconception about Facebook is that however many friends or fans you have, they will all see each of your posts. This is simply not the case. In fact, only about one of every four of your posts will be seen by a given fan. And it isn’t because Facebook has some dark ploy to censor you, despite the viral rumors to that effect that surface every few months.
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Tags: brooke shelby biggs, engagement, Facebook, Social Media

Community Cinema Remembers Lynn Allen

Community Cinema is the largest engagement program in broadcast history in 100 markets across the country. The program started in Boise, Idaho with Regional Outreach Coordinator Lynn Allen. The Community Cinema family recently lost our colleague, friend, and an inspirational leader. Here is a tribute to her 30 years of service to Public Broadcasting.

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Tags: boise, community cinema, engagement, Idaho, ITVS, lynn allen, PBS, programming

ITVS Takes Engagement Behind Bars and into Schools

A Village Called Versailles was one of the films screened before inmates

As we gear up for another season of Community Cinema, BTB is highlighting some recent coverage of how this program has been adapted to engage inmates in San Francisco and Los Angeles. These pilot initiatives are furthering our mission of reaching underserved communities, including the incarcerated.

This past year, Community Cinema screenings were incorporated into two educational programs: the Five Keys Charter School in San Francisco — the first charter high school based in a prison — and the M.E.R.I.T. Program in L.A., which provides educational and life-skills courses for inmates.

Read more about these programs from this recent profile by the National Center for Media Engagement.

Tags: A Village Called Versailles, community cinema, community classroom, education, engagement, prison

Tip of the Day: Engage Beyond the Broadcast

The internet is completely revolutionizing all kinds of media by freeing creators from linearity and one-way paradigms. Here at ITVS, we’ve been working with filmmakers for more than a decade to create multifaceted and multi-platform projects that liberate the story from dusty old limitations.

It’s easy to get stuck in a familiar way of doing things, but when you begin to think of your audience as a collaborator, and technology as an ally, you break into new dimensions and open up fresh perspectives on your story. We have a large library of the interactive projects we’ve produced in the past 10 year, and encourage you to check them out for ideas and inspiration.

Tags: engagement, film festival, interactive, ITVS, PBS, public media, tips, tips of the day, web-original

Use Films to Organize and Engage Your Community

Can a film change the world if everyone just sits on their sofas and watches it, and then goes to bed? OK, sure, films can change minds and inform, but at ITVS, our goal is to leverage great films to engage and activate communities. The whole idea is to create a conversation — from the local town hall to the halls of justice around the world.

If you work for a community organization, a non-profit, or dedicate your free energy to volunteer for a cause you feel passionately about, ITVS.org is an amazing and easy-to-use resource to help you to foster dialog and move the conversation forward.

There are many ways you can use our new website to access films that address the issues you’re interested in:

• Attend a Community Cinema or theatrical screening: Type in your zip code and find out when you can attend a screening in your area, often with spirited panel discussions and additional resources to delve into the subject presented.

• Search by topic: Right from our new front page, you can search our nearly 800 films to find the ones that speak directly to your cause.

• Drill down into our catalog: Narrow your search by region, genre, or television series to find the film that most accurately suits your needs.

And check out our new engagement section, where you can learn more about Community Cinema as well as our engagement campaigns that include discussion guides, printable posters and postcards, and more.

Dive in and let us help you get your community talking about the issues that matter where you live. And share your success stories with us!

Tags: community, engagement, non profit, volunteer