(Video) Slum TV: Media Technology Penetrates All Levels of Culture
It’s delicate when artists deal with marginalized communities. As hard as it is to establish trust, you have to be hypercritical of the way a project portrays the community so that it doesn’t rely on tired angles: the benevolent middle class portrayed as offering its drippings to the poor. Empowerment has to take precedence over “help”. This is where Slum TV comes in.
Created by artists from Africa and Europe, the mission is to develop a television network about slum culture and also produced by its inhabitants. In four years it has managed to sustain itself and create jobs for 16 to 20 people in Kenya. Disavowing the political requirements of NGO’s and the UN for such programming, the types of programs do not just focus on politicizing the living conditions (to Westerners’ horror) or documenting hardship/turmoil. It is equally rooted in producing dramas and documentaries.
All programming is made available to those living in the slums, and some videos are available for streaming off the link to the website. Below is a clip from its programming.
Recent Articles By Lisa Baldini 
Lisa Baldini is a regular contributor to PSFK.com. As a student of Graham Harwood, Luciana Parisi, and Matthew Fuller, Lisa's interest in technology lies in how culture is changed from the bottom up through history, materiality, databases, user experience, and affective computing. A student of social media marketing, she sees how people try to engage consumers through technology and how much failure is at hand by misunderstanding the medium. A teacher at heart, she writes and curates in an effort to link the knowledge derived between the academic, art, and business worlds.
Comments
| TOPICS: | Arts & Culture, Entertainment, Environmental / Green, Media & Publishing, Retail, Web & Technology |
| TAGS: | african media, Kenya, ngo, slum tv, UN |
Daily Ideas & Inspiration Email