Producing Youth : Producing Media

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Marlo: Difficult Partnerships

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Transcript:

Miriam: So tell me about what makes the partnerships with organizations like media projects that come into your workshops here. What makes those difficult?

Marlo:

Okay, partnerships can be difficult for many different reasons. Actually, I just attended a conference called Collaborative Leadership put on by the Tamarack Institute, and we spent a fair amount of time talking about why partnerships can be challenging. I mean sometimes, for example, the issues that are put forth by say, a group of people, are framed in a certain way that only certain people come to the table. So right away, that’s the challenge, right? If you walk into the room and you’re expectations are to see certain people, you see other people, what does that mean? How do you decide who’s going to be in the room or around that first table or the table, in the first place.

So for example, about local high school, we can call a meeting and say no school drop-outs, no school push-outs, stop systemic racism in St Lukes school. And we can see who comes in the door. We’ll get certain people, we won't get other people. We could change the tone of the meeting and say graduation for all students in St Luke's high school. And it’s a way of approaching the problem but with a different tone, with a different framing device. Again, we’ll get some people, we won't get other people. So right away, I think what kind of language we choose to frame a quote unquote social problem or issue brings up certain challenges.

There’s also how do we define the problem itself as a team, once we're around the table? Do we have the usual suspects at the table? Like what does it mean to go out and get people who are never at the table? Whose voices are never heard in those types of processes. Those types meaning like, for example, local tables de concertation. I think also challenges arise when there’s mission conflict, so very different partners come in together.

Yeah, so for example we created a 'zine a couple of years ago with Robin a stagaire from the university, and it created major waves in the community because we were addressing police youth relations and racial profiling, and that was meant as a tool to be passed hand to hand, and the images were chosen by the youth, they were supposed to be very captivating and very pertinent and they were, and as a result, it really shook up some institutions locally.

Around the 'zine project, major clash in terms of this was supposed to be a collaborative project. Everybody was supposed to be partners on the project. We thought that the approach was very transparent and clear, which was that the youth would decide the content and would oversee the layout and distribution with support from the team. But ultimately, everybody was to stand back and watch it happen. And because of the nature of one particular image that ended up in that 'zine, all of a sudden, everybody called into question those previous goals and the method.

So ideology is a major challenge. We were told that we were being damaging to these youth because we weren’t telling them that they shouldn’t be expressing their rage at the police in this way. That they should be told that they should walk into the police station and ask for a reconciliation options and what-not. And who are we to tell youth what their therapeutic process is or what their process of rage and healing is. So anyways, it got very contentious. That’s just one example of a challenging partnership, and I think some of the elements that come out in that situation.