Community Visions

Community Visions teaches documentary videomaking skills to members of community organizations in Philadelphia, Chester, and Camden. Community Visions is a part of Scribe's mission to explore, develop and advance the use of video, film, audio and interactive technology as artistic tools and as tools for progressive social change. Since 1990, Scribe Video Center has guided over 75 community and activist organizations through the production of mini-documentaries and neighborhood portraits that help communities address important social and political issues. The program is a powerful way to document community concerns, celebrate cultural diversity, and comment on the human condition. We work with local non-profit groups whose members have important stories to tell but limited access to the means of making videos. We invite applications from all groups, including people of color, young people, senior citizens, immigrants, the disabled and poor people. The selected groups — usually four each year — make videos about issues that are important to their constituents. In recent years, groups have made oral histories, documented neighborhood problems, or created neighborhood portraits. The project is free to the group. Scribe provides the instruction, technical assistance, equipment, tape and other expenses necessary to produce a five- to fifteen-minute video. When the documentary is complete, we host a premiere screening and help the groups plan how they will use their videos.