Sharing the Stories of Community Media Makers in Philadelphia
Antoine Haywood (Ph.D. '24) fell in love with public access media the day he walked into the studios of People TV, the public access television channel in Atlanta.
“I came in and was just totally swept away,” he said. “It was really about seeing other Black people in a space, in a community media center, making content and working collaboratively.”
Haywood, who graduated from Annenberg this year, didn’t lose his enthusiasm for public access media over the two decades that have passed since he first entered the now-defunct People TV.
As part of his dissertation research, he recorded the stories of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) media makers at Philadelphia Community Access Media (PhillyCAM), where he directed community engagement programs for eight years.
His project, “Telling Our Stories: A Multimodal Philadelphia Community Media Storytelling Project,” informed by an advisory committee of PhillyCAM members, pairs portraits taken by Annenberg Digital Design Specialist Kyle Cassidy with oral histories recorded by Haywood and his research assistants Karen Walker and Maya Winneg.
“Something that I feel that’s not really focused on in research is the story of the storytellers,” Haywood said. “This is a multimodal way of getting at the experiences, the motivations, the aspirations that live within the people who produce content through our public access TV and local radio resources at PhillyCAM.”
Haywood received the 2022 Sachs Program for Arts Innovation grant for his project, which includes a website that features short videos and audio clips of BIPOC storytellers reflecting on their experience making community media in Philadelphia.
“Often, emphasis is placed on what media makers produce, and very little is known about their processes and motivations...Our project aims to shift and expand that perspective.” – Antoine Haywood
While at the Annenberg School, Haywood studied the impact of local storytelling networks on civic participation, democratic communication, collective learning, and community care in communities of color. His immediate research focused on understanding the contemporary relevance of public, educational, and governmental cable television (PEG) infrastructure.
An interactive exhibit featuring “Telling Our Stories” portraits and oral histories premiered at PhillyCAM’s “People Power Media Fest” in 2023. It was installed at Philadelphia City Hall in October 2024 as part of the City of Philadelphia’s “Creative Philadelphia” program.
This fall, Haywood joined the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications as an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism.