Created Equal Project Enters Second Year

The Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) is proud to announce that the Created Equal: Image, Sound, and Story project enters its second year of implementation this spring. Growing from two schools in Brooklyn to four, this collaborative initiative between the JBFC and the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) provides an engaging look at the civil rights movement. Expanding on traditional literacy instruction to include viewing and analyzing media, Created Equal: Image, Sound, and Story empowers students as historians, storytellers, media makers, and social activists as they grow to understand how the past and the present are connected, shaped, and shared. During professional development sessions with the JBFC, participating teachers put themselves in the role of their students by completing all components of each of the curriculum's three units of study: photographing a campaign about school segregation, writing a protest song, and producing a short documentary film. These partner educators will go on to implement the curriculum in their classrooms in April, and cap off the experience with a presentation of the students' short documentary films at BHS in early June. Funding for this initiative is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.