BACKGROUNDER
Formed in 1988, Cincinnati’s first public and educational access center has been serving the community for 17 years. Media Bridges’ mission is to provide the education, equipment, and environment to assist people in communicating effectively through media.Media Bridges has grown to a full-scale media arts and education facility and continues to steward Cincinnati’s four cable access channels. In 1999, Media Bridges initiated a comprehensive Strategic Plan that included relocation of its media arts center to Cincinnati’s controversial hotbed neighborhood, Over the Rhine. Once the arts and cultural center of Cincinnati, Over the Rhine was in the midst of a comeback in the nineties as “the” area to visit to experience art, culture and technology. Since the 2001 riots, Cincinnati, and the people who live and work in Over the Rhine, have undertaken the arduous task of rebuilding. Media Bridges was one of the first new organizations to move into Over the Rhine after the riots. We would help heal a fractured community by demonstrating that Over the Rhine is a viable place to live, work and create.
Media Bridges conducts free outreach to Cincinnati schools. We train children in media literacy and critical thinking. We offer no cost, high-quality professional video production services for Cincinnati 501 (c) (3) organizations and we offer mass communication of their message and mission. Non-profit groups request coverage of an event, the creation of public service announcements, or a video presentation promoting their organization.
Media Bridges provides a community space where constituents develop and focus their own messages for broadcast. We offer professional-grade training from project inception to completion and classes in industry-standard computer and video technology. This increases the marketable skills of constituents, offering value-added economic empowerment to the fulfillment of our Media Literacy mission. Constituents utilize, free of charge, our live studio for public dialogs covering local to national political, social and religious issues, at no cost to themselves.
Media Bridges also “trains the trainer”, giving educators broader knowledge of media technology so teachers have a better understanding of the power of the media, and children become proficient in the most important critical skill set of the new millennial: media literacy. Media Bridges increases the diversity of voices in our communities, which makes for a more Democratic society. We serve a population that lives predominately in the low-income neighborhoods surrounding Over the Rhine, who have been disproportionately affected by current technology. There is an access gap separating those who can use technology effectively from those who cannot. Media Bridges, as the name implies, exists to “bridge” this
gap, this widening digital divide between Cincinnati’s disadvantaged and under-served citizens and their full participation in modern culture as workers, parents, and American citizens.
Honoring the First Amendment, Media Bridges supports freedom of expression by being content neutral, neither screening nor censoring programs submitted for broadcast. We function as a conduit, providing universal access for the formation and communication of ideas. Media Bridges provides the education, equipment and environment for effective communication
to those who might otherwise have no voice. We help that voice grow and through media, effect positive social change in our community.
With the Media Bridges Youth Channel we will hope to develop a solid block of time on our education channel that displays youth produced media. To start the program we have acquire hours of youth produced media from other organizations such as Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Through local organizations we have started to produce local youth produced media. The next VISTA will continue both of the prior tasks and continue to solidify a process, procedure, and policy book.