The Youth Producers of EVC’s Saturday 2020 New Media Arts Program are in the process of creating a website that presents in real time how exactly Covid-19 has stressed our mental bandwidth and economic elasticity through personal journals and video diaries, as well as, researched articles, community and expert interviews.
The website highlights the effects Covid-19 has had on the mental health of students, essential workers, unemployed and those working remotely in NYT, as well as showcase the economic inequality in the City. As part of the process we interviewed Congressman James F. Keith, Economics Professor Troy Tassier from Fordham University, and Sean Brennan from Urban Green Council.
Prior to the pandemic crisis, the youth producers were working on choosing one social issue that they cared about and wished to create a website to bring awareness about this topic and encourage a call to action among website visitors. At the time, students were deciding among mental health, socio economic inequality and climate change. After the pandemic, the focus of the project encompassed all of these topics with a central theme being how Covid-19 intersects with these issues.
The interactive documentary is housed in a website. When a viewer enters the site, it asks the viewer a question. Based on the answer, the viewer will be led to a certain part of the documentary for a personalized experience.
The aim of the project is to build empathy and understanding of how people are impacted by the pandemic and resources and information to support vulnerable populations during the pandemic.
The video file is an interview one of the youth producers conducted with his teacher. Note for Judges: The website is not available to share yet, but the slides detail the concept for the site, as well as some of the media that will be featured on the site.
Emoti-Con 2020 has ended and leaving new reactions is now off.
Your idea is so incredibly important in today's social climate. The current pandemic has had a huge impact on peoples' mental health and your thought to shed light on this fact is so great to me. The fact you even decided to conduct an in-depth interview with an educator as well was a great addition and gives the viewer more perspective on this matter. I would love to see the completed project one this is finished. I suggest you supply more visuals (hypothetical or not) for your site next time so people could get more of an idea of what this would look like.
Your interview was great, you were clearly well prepared and asked great questions!
The idea for your website and film are well articulated and I loved the interview you shared - great questions. Good work and I look forward to seeing the final project when it is published!
