Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) and Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, are pleased to announce an exciting opportunity for Pittsburgh-area youth to participate in a new initiative. This summer, we will launch Envisioning Our Future: an 8-week program that utilizes documentary storytelling as a means to explore, produce, and share youth-led visions for the future. The program will begin on June 3, 2016 and end on July 26, 2016. During this time youth will meet on four separate occasions: Twice in Whitesburg, Kentucky (June 2–5; June 23–26) and twice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (June 9–12; July 7–10). Participants will experience a broad range of workshops on media production, including podcasting, digital filmmaking, photography, and creative writing. They will have the opportunity to critically explore their home communities and to create and disseminate stories centered on place, identity, and their desired futures.

Through a partnership with the Appalachian Media Institute (AMI) at Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, youth will participate in an urban to rural exchange centered on media making. Students will connect deeply through digital and in-person meetings at CMOA and Appalshop to share skills, stories, visions, and experiences through a collaboration on a series of short media pieces.

This partnership will provide Central Appalachian and Pittsburgh youth with the opportunity to immerse themselves in a museum environment rich with cultural history while interacting with CMOA staff and a world-class art collection. Focusing on the intersection of art and history, participants will explore works from the collection that address issues of place, identity, labor, and economy including John White Alexander’s The Crowning of Labor mural in the museum’s Grand Staircase; LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Momme; paintings by John Kane; Raymond Simboli’s Pinkerton Riot; Sam Rosenberg’s Mill Scene, Pittsburgh; and Zoe Strauss’s Homesteading series, to name but a few.

Envisioning Our Future is an exciting new initiative of Carnegie Museum of Art’s award-winning publishing program and Storyboard, the institution’s digital journal. Storyboard serves as a vital forum for critical and personal engagements with art, visual culture, and issues relevant to not only Western Pennsylvania, where the museum has been a cultural cornerstone since its founding in 1896, but beyond its borders as well. Since 2014, the journal has spotlighted the city’s artist communities and the changing social and political landscape of the region while remaining focused on the principle of cultural equity. Foregrounding youth voices in the stories we tell is an exciting next step.

We’re also pleased to announce that through the generous support of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, youth participants will have the exciting opportunity to collaborate with acclaimed artists Elaine McMillion Sheldon and Kerrin Sheldon on the production of a short film for publication in a national media outlet, such as The New York Times or The Atlantic.

To apply for this opportunity, applicants must complete the application and return it to Matthew Newton, associate editor at Carnegie Museum of Art, via email at newtonm@cmoa.org. Applications are due by close of business on Friday, May 20, 2016.