We’re embarking on a new journey. As part of a new initiative we’ve focused on not just telling stories, but empowering others to share their own stories. We’ve partnered with residents of Potrero Hill Public Housing to teach filmmaking and storytelling to a small but passionate cohort of resident filmmakers. Six residents will use this opportunity to share personal stories of their experience on the hill as it relates to building resilience. They will learn the art of filmmaking and focus on stories of health and nutrition. They will develop a YouTube series which will be part of our larger feature documentary called Reboot The Village.

We’ve been asked by the Yang campaign to use the BIG Experience to challenge voters seeking to imagine a radical new world. As the 2020 Presidential campaign heats up the Yang Gang will deploy 500 BIG Experience toolkits in Iowa to engage voters around topics like a new economy, automation, poverty & homelessness and the new American Dream. We couldn’t be more thrilled to see our creativity and storytelling making an impact.

We’re seeing history repeat itself with the cancellation of the Ontario project. Here’s a wonderful article linking the Ontario pilot to the Mincome pilot and how our project is seeking to bring awareness to why this is a mistake.

The Manitoba Story, our medium format documentary about Basic Income is now an official selection at three film festivals including the Big Sky documentary film festival and NYC Short doc film festival. We’re looking forward to presenting the film and BIG Experience in the coming months.

BIG news on the Canadian front! We’ve now shown the BIG Experience over 30 times and are preparing to launch it into a system of 400 libraries in Ontario Canada. Most recently we presented at an Economic Justice conference at Berkeley and next week at Young People For Building a Better Now at the Impact Hub. To date it’s also been used by Harvard University, the People’s Museum and with the Andrew Yang 2020 presidential campaign.

We screened a short proof of concept film for an audience of more than 250 local Potrero Hill Residents at the 2018 Potrero Hill History Night. Residents in the Potrero Hill neighborhood were incredibly receptive and excited by the promise of the film.

I was pleasantly surprised after presenting at a conference on #SolvingHomelessness at the interest in UBI. After the talk I hosted a workshop that was filled with folks supportive of the idea and the film! Clearly UBI is gaining traction. 

Last year we had the honor of working with the Land Trust Alliance and LookOut Mountain Conservancy in Chattanooga. The film we created features an innovative program that engages underserved youth in nature that traditionally lay dormant. The program has had overwhelming success and incredible impact in the community. The Land Trust is hoping to pilot the program in other parts of the country that are desperately seeking to bridge the race divide.

This week I just got word that our film is an official selection at the Lookout Wild Film Festival. It's an important step in the effort to raise awareness and build momentum where it's most important - within the local community! My feeling is that this will be an incredible opportunity to begin having important and sometimes difficult conversations that can lead to healing and positive social transformation. 

We attended a community meeting in Bayview shortly after the Kieta O'Neal was shot dead by an SFPD officer who fired a single shot through his police car window. This is what we heard from the community.

It's an honor to work with such a passionate and creative team motivated to create systemic change. The energy coming from this group inspires hope that a better world is coming! Several breakout groups have focused on specific prototypes for crafting a workshop that engages audiences around creating education and mobilization for the Basic Income Movement. The end result is to activate individuals and communities around issues like financial insecurity, poverty, income inequality and reimagining work for the 21st century. Stay tuned!

This week we presented our film about Basic Income at the Video Consortium San Francisco chapter. We're glad to be part of the community and to engage a diverse community in a conversation about creating financial security, reimagining an economy that cultivates equality and evolving our social contract.

Although this is only a teaser for the film currently in post-production, it was exciting to begin engaging audiences around the issues we intend to tackle with this film.

Today we attended the Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ) Legislative Advocacy Workshop: Supporting the Movement for Black Lives Policy Platform. It provided solid insight into the workings of our government and the strategy for influencing our political process. The team provided a variety of resources from developing your story, to researching your legislators, to effective techniques for lobbying your representatives.

It's empowering to better understand these tangible steps and techniques for engaging our democracy and being proactive about working to create the change we want to see.

Here are a few resources and tips for meeting and lobbying your representatives. This workshop focused on racial justice and specifically on the campaign to end Money Bail, but really this approach applies to any issue.

Check out: Leginfo.legislature.ca.gov & OpenStates.org

We teamed up with Ben Davis the creative mastermind behind the Bay Lights project to tell the story of inspiring hope by connecting the community with Harvey Milk's message of inclusivity. It was truly wonderful to hear the voices of people from the Castro explaining their inspiration and expressing their hope.

With support from an amazing team of creatives, passionate community members and partial funding from the Economic Security Project we are launching a UBI Design Sprint. For the next four weeks we will meet one night a week to develop a grass roots engagement tool for the Universal Basic Income movement. This tool will compliment the release of our film about Mincome so that audiences around the country can engage in conversations about evolving our unbalanced economic system. 

Deliverables will include:

1. Guidelines for hosting discussions that will spur the Basic Income movement on a national scale but at the community level.
2. An interactive activity that inspires activists to create tangible actions for creating change.
3. A business card for the next generation: a way to share who you are and what you do without pigeon holing an individual into a single position or company.

We want you to participate. If you're interested please email us here.

This past week was busy - we had the honor of screening our films and discussing our films at the Reel Impact Film Festival and the San Francisco Video Consortium. We focused on story telling engineered to create impact. It's important to create films, but the real work is to engage audiences and drive actions to create change; this is often done at the community level and just the beginning of how our projects seek to create positive social transformation.