Including Samuel: The Power of Youth brings us behind the scenes of a youth summit, inspired and co-organized by the film Including Samuel, to create an arm of the audience engagement campaign that is teen led and teen focused. What materializes is the “I am Norm” campaign, a youth-led campaign for the full social and educational inclusion of people with disabilities. This national campaign, launched in 2010, has extended the life and reach of the film. The creation of this peer-to-peer campaign demonstrates how to empower youth in a way that is truly participatory and meaningful.

How do you make your documentary film resonate with local audiences and issues? How do you build a bridge between community activist groups and the movements in your film? Watch how Deep Down’s film team are bringing together grassroots leaders from Appalachia with community leaders from across the country engaged in similar struggles.

Deep Down’s protagonist Beverly May, co-director Jen Gilomen, and outreach director Lora Smith traveled to Chicago for an ITVS Community Cinema Screening partnered with members of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). The group toured the Little Village neighborhood, a community known as “The Midwest Mexico,” to learn about their struggle to fight the abuses of several toxic industries including two massive coal powered power plant that are poisoning their air and people.

How do you create an audience engagement campaign that is unique, yet has ties to a movement that already exists? Gillian Caldwell, Campaign Director of 1Sky, puts it simply when speaking about their partnership with No Impact Man, “It’s important that the relationship be reciprocal.”

No Impact Man: Activating Your Audience illustrates the benefits of mutually beneficial relationships and demonstrates creating opportunities for participation that extends the story beyond the film. Find out how the film No Impact Man and its partners, like 1Sky, worked together to move participants from individual action to collective action.

Assessing Impact: A Funder’s Perspective is the first video in our series. It features our partner The Fledgling Fund and gives you an insider’s look at how to assess the impact of a film, its distribution and related campaign. Founder Diana Barrett and Executive Director Shelia Leddy discuss the impact of Born into Brothels and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. You’ll get a close look at how these films supported the social change goals of their partner organizations and how they were tied to urgent actions. Diana and Sheila also lead you through their foundation’s transformation into one of the leaders in the field of supporting creative media and audience engagement.

The Everything’s Cool campaign was a two-year national campaign aimed at engaging communities to take action on climate change with the goal of building a green and just future. Working Films directed the campaign, from late 2006 through late 2008, in partnership with grassroots organizations at the forefront of the climate action movement – from those coordinating national days of action and putting political leadership on the spot, to those raising young voices against the climate crisis and demanding a green energy economy that will provide jobs and advancement for low-income people.