media and healing
I am very excited to bring together the things that my life have been about for the last few years…making media, telling stories, healing myself and my community, and getting stronger.
I am working on some ideas about using radio and video here for healing and building community amongst military families, veterans, and active duty soldiers. I am thinking about how radio can provide practical resources and communication to folks who’s communications are monitored and who are often stigmatized for seeking support.
I’m gonna start a good list here of blogs that either use media to aid in the healing process and want to start researching media projects with trauma survivors, or how storytelling and group listening projects can help people both heal and take action.
I feel like there are a couple of different formats here, they are more informational/resource focused type media projects that are for ‘survivors of trauma’ ( like the Healing Combat Trauma blog or The Refuge Media Project ). These projects look really different depending on if they are made by civilians or veterans….I like this one, Winning the War Within, but it is made by a military family member not a veteran. Then there’s the awful/dangerous realm of media made by civilians that sensationalizes PTSD or those struggling with it as ‘dangerous’…(see the coverage of shootings in Colorado Springs) or talk to me about shitty media coverage of Spc. Lookabill, Oregon National Guard Member killed by the police in Vancouver last month.
Resources from the Dart Center on media makers working with veterans or active duty folks:
Books to check out:
Beyond the Trauma Vortex by Gina Ross (the media’s role in healing fear/violence)
From the Belly of the Beast 
I just found this other example that could be kind of interesting…a group of Israeli journalists working with women in South Africa to do storytelling projects and also somatic healing/therapy during their creative process…here’s an article about the work of the group Talking Out and Walking on:
http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/4381
and their site http://towogroup.blogspot.com/
Comment by fromthebellyofthebeast | November 26, 2010 |
fuck yeah. though i don’t work in the context of veterans and their families i’m really interested in what you said–how storytelling can be used for people to heal together and take action.
i see a lot of media that is made with the goal of getting people (beyond the mediamaker/s) to take action about something, and i assume there’s a lot in the psychology world about storytelling for healing (narrative therapy, etc.). i think the former misses a foundational step of building community among people in order for their actions to be more powerful and sustainable, and the latter fails to carry out personal healing to the larger aims of community change…so, let’s figure out how they can intersect! i’ll be excited to see and share more examples…
Comment by Kara | December 15, 2010 |