I want to thanks all of you who came out to support us at Citizen Space last Wed. night. It was a really great event!!! Thank you to all who donated funds and equipment for our upcoming August workshop.

In this video I am rehearsing the words to a song I wrote together with my friends Banker White and Chis Velan. I am paying tribute to Sengbe Pieh, the Mende slave from my home country of Sierra Leone, whose heroic story is the subject of the film 'Amistad'. I hope you like it and please leave me comments below. I will share the finished track in my next entry...

lyrics:
How can we forget our slavery days,
Its marked our history in so many ways.

When I look back a few hundred years,
check the history , we were living in fears

Black Nature and I presented our plans for the WeOwnTV workshop and spoke at the Marin School (www.themarinschool.org) in Sausalito, CA last Thursday night. Wonderful night. We were invited by Kieran Ridge who teaches English, Film and Journalism at the High School. Kieran is an amazingly warm and supportive individual and has been a big supporter of us for a few years now. Two years back he invited Nature and I to screen the SLRAS documentary www.refugeeallstars.org and do a Q&A. We were both blown away by the students. They were all interested and engaged in the film; they hosted the entire evening with student presenters; the Q&A was moderated by a student etc... etc... A community of creative, supportive educators and a passionate student body.

To our friend “Mallam Bongo” - An All Star bass man with a world class smile. You will be missed.”

The WeOwnTV crew traveled to Sierra Leone in January/February 2009 on a scouting trip for the WeOwnTV workshop. Our six week, community engaged media workshop is planned for August/September this year. We will be training a group of Sierra Leonean young adults in film/video and storytelling. WeOwnTV has engaged a wide range of participants from young media professionals and students, to ex-combatant, street kids and child prostitutes. The program involves a community-engaged curriculum in which project participants will collaboratively create and produce their own independent media.

On this trip we met with and interviewed over fifty extraordinary young adults to be both project participants and WeOwnTV staff. In the coming weeks we will introduce you to the project participants we selected. They are an amazing group.

Where do we begin??? I have to admit, I am a little embarrassed for signing off 'stay tuned' on my first few blogs entries in Sierra Leone. As eager as I was to share our trip, I should have known we would travel in and out of internet access and that our end of the day energy would become less and less as our project developed. BUT alas here we are now a month later...

...AND to bring you all up to date, Zach, Alex and I are all back in the US after an amazing, intense and successful scouting trip.

Before we left on our trip we had contacted Jon Robson from Cafesociety.org.
They have been running similar workshops to WeOwnTV for the past few years in different countries.

Here are some direct links to the films produced by young Sierra Leoneans during cafesociety projects



http://cafesociety.org/blog/about-our-projects/freetown-sierra-leone/
 
One individual they worked with is a young man called Barmmy Boy – aka lansana mansaray. The British council were so impressed with his initial film that they funded a trip to the UK to to gain further experience in the film industry.

Stay tuned for an update about our meeting with Barmmy Boy early this week.

WeOwnTV crew

First few days have been filled with meetings with potential partner orgs who are doing great work here in Sierra Leone.

We met with Talking Drum Studios (TDS) country director Ambrose James and the chief engineer King Fisher. TDS is a community radio station run by Search for Common Ground. http://www.talkingdrumstudio.org/

Search for Common Ground (SFCG) uses media as a principal tool for peace building and to create opportunities for transforming conflict. In Sierra Leone, SFCG established TDS, multi-media studios with multi-ethnic teams of journalists and producers, to stimulate national dialogue around critical issues. TDS produce a wide range of radio and audio programming, along with print articles and videos, in a common ground approach that factors in all the key stakeholders in the conflicts, while also stimulating the search for solutions. TDS-Sierra Leone has been in operation since 2000.

Good morning Freetown!!! Great to be back here, the sounds, the smells, the feeling. Connection very slow, getting our bearings today;getting connected;getting a cell phone; calling our Salone contacts; calling our loved ones. It is the first day of a new project, but it is also feels like a continuation. Everything is very familiar, but there is the also the excitement that comes with the something new. 2004 was the last time we were here while we were in production for Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars doc. www.refugeeallstars.org
www.youtube.com/user/slrefugeeallstars

Today we will set up meetings with IRC, Talking Drum Studios, Radio UNAMSIL and other future project partners. VERY excited for this project to finally take shape. We are all ready to open up our eyes, to listen and to learn from all the beautiful people we will meet.

enthusiastically,
The WeOwnTV crew
Alex, Banker & Zach