Becca Snyder Capstone

Abstract: Over the summer Bea Gerber and I went to Lesvos Greece and were teaching artists for the refugee media workshop, ReFocus. Through this experience we learned about the refugee crisis and the power of media education for sharing refugee voices. This is when we became inspired to bring what we learned back to Philadelphia and show the work of the amazing people we met. Our process started by finding a place that could host an exhibit with photographs, videos, and informational posters. We found a venue and created marketing materials (posters, sent emails, talked to people) to promote the event. We then went through folders of photographs to create a curated collection of the most powerful photographs from the students. We also went through all of the videos they’ve made and created a long sequence that could be played at the event. We then had to edit down all of the interview footage to have concise and powerful interviews from the students. Bea constructed a website with these interviews while I focused on how to curate the exhibit. We made the posters with information about the refugee and created a way for viewers to interact with a student through an artist card. This card would guide them through understanding each poster (where they came from, why they left, which camp they live in, etc.). Their experience would end with watching an interview from their artist to hear them speak. I also worked on curating the images to relate to each poster for visual understanding. The final product was an interactive exhibition with the photographs from the students, videos about the crisis that the students made, posters about the crisis, and interviews from the students. The main goal was to raise money through the sale of postcards and prints with the images. In the end we raised more than $1,000 for ReFocus which will go back into growing the media program with equipment. In the end I learned a lot about curating an exhibit, how to make visitors feel something powerful by going through the exhibit, how to make something that’s interactive and informative, and how to manage stress with time constraints. Website Page with student interviews: https://bgerber2.wixsite.com/mysite Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1POGiV5X9su1WEd-lPzV1SSFihU9Q4hvjNZUUWkmP0lA/edit?usp=sharing Bibliography for poster information: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9L1iGQqWpYk7woV_fieL1CTovy0dFAQtg8wMMISXfE/edit?usp=sharing