This event will bring together media arts educators, teaching artists, and students from across New York state for a day of learning how digital media is informing arts education. Join us at Film: Lincoln Center for panels, discussions with youth media organizations and student participants, and hands-on experiences ranging from animation to gaming that will demonstrate how youth media arts can affect learning, self-expression and communication.
The 2023 NY State Youth Media Arts Symposium is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Featured photograph on this event page by student Deysi Ramirez, Magic Box Photography & Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School Student.
Schedule
(Subject to change.)
| 9:30 – 10:00am | Registration & Coffee |
| 10:00 – 10:15am | Opening Remarks |
| 10:15 – 11:30am | Symposium Keynote: Culture Changes Us: How Digital Stories Work on Hearts, Minds & Bodies |
| 11:30am – 12:30pm | Lunch Break – ON YOUR OWN (lunch not included) |
| 12:30 – 1:50pm | Symposium Wide Workshop: Designing Games for Social Impact: The Games for Change Student Challenge |
| 1:50 – 2:00pm | Transition Time |
| 2:00 – 3:15pm | Workshop Breakouts, select from: — Media Arts for All Learners: Technology and Accessibility in Arts Education — Visual Storytelling |
| 3:15 – 3:25pm | Transition Time |
| 3:25 – 4:25pm | Plenary Panel: Activating and Engaging and Students Through Media Arts |
| 4:25 – 4:30pm | Closing Remarks |
| 4:30 – 5:00pm | Reception |
Session Information
Session information will continue to be updated in the coming weeks.
SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE – 10:15am – 11:30am
SYMPOSIUM WIDE WORKSHOP – 12:30 – 1:50pm
WORKSHOP BREAKOUTS – 2:00 – 3:15pm
PLENARY PANEL – 3:25 – 4:25pm
Accessibility
The symposium hosts are committed to providing opportunities for everyone to participate in the event. Film at Lincoln Center, our venue, strives to make their state of the arts spaces fully accessible; they are a fully ADA-compliant venue. If you have any questions or additional requests for accommodation, please contact Kathy Perrine at kp@magicboxproductions.org.
About Magic Box Productions
Magic Box Productions provides rich media arts instruction for both students and teachers. By supporting the advancement of creative, collaborative, and technical skills, Magic Box prepares young people to navigate the world with curiosity, collaboration, and a critical lens. Since its founding in 2004, Magic Box has served more than 27,000 K-12 students and 3,000 teachers.
About the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable
The New York City Arts in Education Roundtable improves, advances, and advocates for arts education in New York City. We are a community of organizations and individuals that shares information, provides professional development, and communicates with the public to promote our work in schools and beyond. Founded in 1992, the Roundtable produces a major annual conference, Face to Face; monthly professional development programs; a destination website; and other activities, in addition to ongoing advocacy and communications efforts for thousands of individuals and member organizations.
About Film at Lincoln Center
Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) is a nonprofit organization that celebrates cinema as an essential art form and fosters a vibrant home for film culture to thrive. FLC presents premier film festivals, retrospectives, new releases, and restorations year-round in state-of-the-art theaters at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. FLC offers audiences the opportunity to discover works from established and emerging directors from around the world with a passionate community of film lovers at marquee events including the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films.
About the New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts works to foster and advance the full breadth of New York State’s arts, culture, and creativity for all. NYSCA upholds the right of all New Yorkers to experience the vital contributions the arts make to our communities, education, economic development and quality of life. NYSCA funding supports the visual, literary, media and performing arts and includes dedicated support for arts education and underserved communities. NYSCA further advances New York’s creative culture by hosting convenings with leaders in the field and providing organizational and professional development opportunities and informational resources.
Presenter Information
Raymond Barash is the Online Education Coordinator for Tech Kids Unlimited. He has a BA from NYU Gallatin and is an educator, artist, and musician who has been working with TKU for the past five years. Raymond is interested in multimedia tech art and finding creative ways to relate to people.
Heidi Boisvert is an interdisciplinary artist, experience designer, creative technologist, and researcher who interrogates the neurobiological and socio-cultural effects of media and technology. Simply put, she studies the role of the body, the senses, and emotion in human perception and social change. Boisvert is currently mapping the world’s first media genome, while taking great care with its ethical implications. She also architects expanded reality and transmedia storytelling experiences, and devises networked dance and theatre using biocreative technology. She founded futurePerfect lab, a creative agency and think-tank that harnesses the power of pop culture, emerging technology, and neuroscience to ignite culture change with social justice organizations. She created the first 3D social change game, ICED, to shift the frame around immigration and America 2049, an alternative reality game on Facebook about pluralism. She also co-founded XTH, a startup creating novel modes of bodily expression through open-source biotechnology. Boisvert has been a TED speaker, Rockefeller Creativity + Technology = Enterprise Fellow, and a cultural ambassador in Turkey. Presently, she is working with David Byrne on Theater of the Mind, an immersive theater piece and co-curating EdgeCut, a live performance series exploring human-digital relationships. Boisvert is Assistant Professor of AI and the Arts at the University of Florida, a Senior Research Fellow at the Norman Lear Center, a research affiliate in the Open Documentary Lab at MIT, and a member of NEW INC’s Creative Science track.
Jordan Campbell (born November 13th, 1993) is a NYC born and raised Filmmaker and Media artist. He graduated from Rutgers University in 2015 with a degree in Visual Arts and a specialization in Media and Digital Filmmaking. In 2015 Campbell studied independently under Guggenheim fellow Natalie Bookchin. During this time he learned to bring media out of single-channel film projection, and expand the medium to multi-channel projections in a physical space.
His film, Resumé (2021), is a film about a young artist’s attempt to get his life on track after being released from prison. Jordan Campbell’s work often delves into the complex social dynamics amongst New York City residents. Campbell’s latest film Resumé has been officially selected to screen at Venice Shorts film festival in California, Brooklyn Shorty Film Festival, and New York Lift-Off Film Festival, and New Faces New Voices Film Festival. After screening at New Faces New Voices film festival, Resumé received second place in the festival. Campbell’s newest project, currently in post-production, is the short film Mad Clean, exploring the intersection of mental health and human connection.
Currently, Campbell is Director of Media Programs for Hook Arts Media. Since 2016 he has used his position as a Filmmaking Teaching Artist for Eagle Academy, Film at Lincoln Center, Creative Art Works and Reel Works, as a way to expose over 300 young New Yorkers to the power of Film and Media. This is his greatest achievement thus far. Film and Media are not just forms of entertainment for Campbell, but tools that provide a voice to the disenfranchised and unheard. His aim for himself, and his students, is to use the language of Filmmaking, in order to have the power to share their stories with the world.
Tyrone S. Copeland has worked with youth in various capacities over the past twenty years. Art and media have been the cornerstone of those experiences with roles as volunteer, educator, and administrator.
He is an alum of the AmeriCorps program and his career spans the nonprofit and for profit sectors including Peace4Kids, Lollipop Theater Network, Creative Artists Agency, and Harlem Children’s Zone. With a passion for the filmmaking process and youth education, Tyrone was a Museum Educator at the Museum of the Moving Image facilitating tours and workshops. He also spent time as a Teaching Artist for Vision Ed, Magic Box Productions, and BRIC teaching still photography, video production, podcasting, and stop motion animation to middle school and high school students. Tyrone has a Bachelor of Arts from Bard College (Film & Electronic Arts), a Master of Fine Arts (Studio Art) from Long Island University Post, and a Master of Education (Art & Art Education) from Teachers College, Columbia University. He currently works at the NY Transit Museum as the School, Youth and Group Programs Manager and continues his personal photographic practice.
Jazlyn “Jazzy” Gorousingh is a senior at Albany High School in Albany, NY and an engaged student-athlete on the track team and captain of the volleyball team. Jazzy was a part of Students Elevate during her junior year representing Albany High with other representatives from schools in the Capital Region to talk about school improvements and bring attention to equity issues. Jazzy has been a part of Youth FX since 2022, including the summer intensive film program, the History Reclamation Project, and the Gordon Parks: My Camera is a Weapon Photography program. She boasts skills as an actor, writer, documentary filmmaker, photographer, and cinematographer. Jazzy has been in AP classes since the 9th grade and has plans to go to college for filmmaking, acting, and psychology. Jazzy starred in and co-wrote one of the 2023 Youth FX Summer films, Getaway which will premiere in Spring 2024.
Darian Henry is a filmmaker, digital media educator, founding member and co-executive director of Youth FX, a nationally renowned film and media organization. She has shot, directed, and produced over 20 short documentary, narrative, and experimental films. As an educator, Darian uses film to build community and foster self-determination while bridging gaps between the past, present and future. Darian Henry was born and raised in Hanover, Jamaica. She is currently based in New York.
Leah Hirsch is an educator, curriculum coach, a professional development facilitator, and Senior Director of G4C Learn at Games for Change where she supports students and educators in harnessing the power of games and play. Prior to G4C, Leah was a founding teacher at Quest to Learn, which uses games, play, and design challenges to engage students in solving real-world problems.
Saumya Dave is a student at Pace University where she majors in Behavioral Neuroscience. In her spare time she is an artist.
Aaron Jean-Francois is set to graduate from Brooklyn College in 2025 to be a future teacher. In Summer 2022, he interned at Floreo, a company that develops virtual reality lessons for autistic individuals using an Oculus headset. Aaron has earned a green belt in Karate.
Halenur Komsul is the Work-Based Learning Coordinator for Tech Kids Unlimited and has a BS in Integrated Design and Media from NYU Tandon School of Engineering with a double minor in Science and Technology Studies, and Feminism and STEM. She is interested in the connection between multimedia technologies and their role in altering cultures and societies.
Phoenix Ra (they/them) is an NYC-based, Korean diasporic filmmaker and actor. As a Film Fellow at Hook Arts Media, they were the writer, director, and actor in their debut short film “U AND U”. They write about themes of home, family, gender, and queer relationships. Phoenix has performed at The DR2 Theatre, the Tank Theatre, The Stay True Theatre Company, and the Parsnip Ship. They have interned at FilmNation, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and the Smithsonian Channel. Phoenix is a part of The Queer 26 (Q26) Filmmaking Club under its screenwriting cohort and a production fellow at Third World Newsreel.
Arana Shapiro is a parent, educator, and Chief Operations and Programs Officer at Games for Change, where she oversees game-based learning programs and partnerships for schools, organizations and families, and supports a growing global community of educators using games in the classroom. As the former Executive Director of the Institute of Play (IOP), Arana was part of the founding team that designed and opened the first-ever school with a game-like learning model – the NYC public school, Quest to Learn.
Caroline N. Sharkey, PhD, LCSW is a visiting assistant professor and researcher at the University at Albany School of Social Welfare and Project Director for the Juvenile Drug Court Treatment Enhancement program. She is a licensed clinical social worker with 25 years of experience working with young people as an educator and clinician. Caroline’s work centers on meso/macro-therapeutic interventions, socially engaged art, digital storytelling, restorative practices, and civic engagement to foster positive collective efficacy and social cohesion as ways to mitigate trauma/historical trauma, and community violence impacting young people in city contexts. She has facilitated trauma-informed training nationally to schools, courts, juvenile circuit judge coalitions, libraries, youthspaces, arts-based organizations, and community organizations. Caroline is committed to expanding the role of social workers in non-clinical/non-tradition settings and arts-based organizations.
Allison Shyer is an artist and educator with a focus on lens based media. They have a BA in written arts and are pursuing their MFA in lens based media from Hunter College. They are lifelong New Yorker and love taking long walks around the city. They currently work at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School as an high school art teacher.
Aurora Sikelianos is an emerging filmmaker and actor from Albany, NY. She has acted in numerous plays and had her first on-screen role in 2018 in the short film Nights of Autumn. In 2019, Aurora wrote and directed her first film Auntie which debuted at the Youth FX annual world premiere. In 2020, Aurora won 2nd place in the Saint Rose Film Festival, 15-Minute Max category. She was the recipient of the 2019 Youth FX Rising Star Award and has had her work accepted to the Connect Her Film Festival and Color Congress. In 2021, Aurora wrote and directed her second short film Affirming Ourselves, and has since directed the 2022 Youth FX film Out of Her Mind. She attends the film conservatory at Purchase College. Aurora aims to spark change in the industry through storytelling by highlighting complex narratives focusing on People of Color.
Justus Snyder was born into the world of film when shortly after being brought into the world, was brought into the starring role of his mothers graduate film thesis at NYU “The Baby That Ate My Day.” Since then he has always pursued a role in film and the performing arts, from studying at one of NYC performing arts high schools to then going on to get his BFA at the Savannah College of Art & Design in Film & Television with a minor in Creative Writing. Since then he has gone on to work on both professional and personal projects but finds that working with the next generation of filmmakers to be the biggest reward. Having worked as teaching artist with Film At Lincoln Center, Spoke The Hub, The Center School, and most recently Hook Arts Media helping facilitate programs that teaches short filmmaking as visual literacy in different public schools around the city helping the next generation of filmmakers find their voice.
