Free and Fun! RSVP when date posts on EventBrite!
Join us to expand the conversation about consumerism, consumption, commercialism and more as Shaping Youth relaunches our parent education FREE FILM series partnering with Reach and Teach.com in their inviting new local hub in San Mateo. (ALWAYS available online)
6:30pm reception with snacks followed by 7:00pm showing of Consuming Kids and an informal guest panel of Q&A with yours truly (Amy Jussel) & other parent education leaders!
Kids, collegiates, interns and care providers, join in the conversation and take away hands-on media literacy tips and activities to use in your own work with children.
We’ll talk about how kids can become ‘junior advertising executives’ and use fun-filled art projects with music, magazines, markers and more to ‘create’ a brand and learn how they’re being ‘targeted’ by marketers and how to deconstruct the messages with media literacy insights.
Learn about label lingo, name generation, how ads appeal to kids with color, sound, endorsements and heroes to shield themselves with knowledge and help their peers do the same.
Depending on the group size, we may even go online to demo how we train kids as powerful ‘CIA agents’ (cyber info advocates!) to explore their favorite sites and play hide and seek with the commercial messages embedded throughout the digital arena, and ‘design their own cereal box’ online.
Reference sites we use are DigitalAds.org, interactive pbskids site “Don’t Buy It” the FTC “You Are Here” consumer site and the new FTC government media literacy offering: Admongo.gov
Eager to meet you all…And remember, you can email me directly:
Amy at ShapingYouth dot org…Or contact me on Twitter: @ShapingYouth!
We are asking all attendees to RSVP on the EventBrite free site for headcount…Click here!
Please do so, as it will help our organizing immensely!
Consuming Kids Video Trailer (below)
Here’s more about Consuming Kids to inspire you to RSVP now!
Remember, it’s ALL FREE! (A labor of love and a ‘research’ opportunity for me to hear what’s prevalent on parent/youth minds each month to guide my writing for Shaping Youth!)
The films pack a powerful punch for insights into youth culture and media/marketing’s implicit role in the need to create healthier messaging and a brighter worldview for kids.
We MUST use the power of media for positive change…for with power comes profound responsibility.
Shaping Youth is proud to partner in our spring/summer 2012 film series with Reach And Teach.com
Reach and Teach is an online store AND a local retail presence as a peace and social justice learning company with amazing offerings from books and games that encourage creative play to healthier eco sourced goodness and indie toys where you never have to twist and turn wondering if the products are ‘safe’ or manufactured w/exploitive means…all hand-selected for inclusion!
We’re thrilled to partner in their new local environs to shift from our ‘house party’ style screenings to a larger but intimate, bookstore venue with a permanent screen. Here are directions to visit their wonderful storefront.
We’ll soon announce the order of our 2012 slate of films once we get a handle on the weeknight or weekend offerings!
Right now we’re alternating between Sunday evenings and Tuesday evenings so that everyone gets a chance to juggle with workaday schedules. Some of our events will include media literacy activities engaging kids hands-on, so childcare will be provided in the courtyard when apropos!
Here’s the Consuming Kids study guide, perfect for deconstruction and media literacy eye-openers if you want to get a head start on the evening!
And by all means, if you have suggestions for OTHER films to be screening, please weigh in!
We’ll be posting new ones like “Playing Unfair”about female athletes, body image and the currency of sexualization in endorsement deals (yes, I have a volleyball teen tribe that needs to see this!) and “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” the fabulous Byron Hurt film on media, masculinity, and the impact of misogynistic, homophobic, violent messaging and how it pertains to not just boys but gender, culture, race and the music world’s influence cross-culturally.
…ALWAYS feel free to reach me on Twitter @ShapingYouth or via email: Amy at ShapingYouth dot org!!!
Hope to see you at one of our screenings soon! And if you’d like to host a screening yourself, please DO! Here’s how!
About the Reach and Teach venue: (short video)
Praise For Consuming Kids, the Film
“This powerful, disturbing and heartbreaking film has the power to change the way we Americans treat our children. It is the best possible parent education product. I recommend it to schools, universities, churches, mosques and synagogues.”
– Mary Pipher | Author, Reviving Ophelia
“Consuming Kids is an invaluable resource for parents, teachers, health care professionals, and anyone wanting to foster children’s well-being. This film will be opening eyes and sparking discussion in psychology, media and cultural studies, sociology, health, and economics classrooms for years to come. As a professor of media and children’s culture, and as a parent, this is the film I’ve been waiting for.”
– Lynn Phillips | Author, Flirting with Danger: Young Women’s Reflections on Sexuality and Domination
“Like never before, children today are plagued by a variety of ills, from violence to hyper-sexualization to obesity to rampant materialism. Consuming Kids connects these dots, showing how these problems all relate back to corporate marketers preying on our children for profit. Watching this movie will open the eyes of everyone who cares about children to the disturbing new realities of our consumer culture.”
– Tim Kasser | Associate Professor of Psychology | Knox College | Author, The High Price of Materialism
A handful of related posts on Shaping Youth about play:
If Kids Could Be Dolphins: The Power of Creative Play
Seeding Green With Richard Louv
Media Savvy Kids and Nature Deficit Disorder
The Nature of Tweens: Wired Worlds & Outdoor Ed
Shaping Youth Through Nature, Media Unplugged
Can Somethin’ Be Done About All This Consumption?
Power of Play Series: Innovations in Getting Active Pt1
Power of Play: Tag-Teaming Innovation to Get Kids Moving Pt2
Power of Play Series: Active Video Games in Schools Pt3
We’ll continue with FREE screenings of other important films and feature guest panelists from filmmakers themselves to parenting organizations and media literacy educators… We have a host of other youth/parent education media films and documentary screenings, including:
Cover Girl Culture: Awakening the Media Generation (film by Nicole Clark, Women Make Movies)
Where Do the Children Play? (pbs documentary)
Adina’s Deck (Solving Cyberbullying Mysteries, plus 2 new films!)
Killing Us Softly (Series on Body Image/Self Esteem)
Behind the Screens (Hollywood Goes Hypercommercial)
And more…from our Media Education Foundation friends where we purchased screening rights for nonprofit small group media education events for Shaping Youth’s 501(c)3 Corporation!
More About Some of the People IN the Consuming Kids Film
I’m proud to sponsor the ongoing work of these luminaries and help to get the word out to Bay Area educators, youth, advocates and families throughout the region…Back in April ’10, I attended the UC Berkeley screening where Dr. Susan Linn and Dr. Allen Kanner, two pivotal thought leaders and child advocates on the impact of the commercialization of childhood were IN PERSON as panelists for Q&A following the screening, moderated by Michele Simon, of the Marin Institute (alcohol watchdog/policy expert) and author of Appetite for Profit!
It was a great turnout, and it inspired me to once again begin hosting Shaping Youth’s MONTHLY SCREENINGS in partnership with Reach and Teach.comwhich we’ll post on Brave New Theaters each month with details.
Susan Linn, EdD, Director and Co-founder of CCFC
Susan Linn, is co-founder and director of The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and a psychologist at Judge Baker Children’s Center and Harvard Medical School.
An award-winning producer, writer, and puppeteer, she is the author of The Case for Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World, and Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood and lectures internationally on reclaiming childhood from corporate marketers.
Susan Linn On Shaping Youth:
The Value of Unstructured Play
The Case for Make-Believe Part One
Defending Pretending: The Need for Prominent Play: Part 2
Generation Digital MIT Review & Six Degress of Susan Linn
Related: Interview with Susan Linn, by Lisa Ray
Allen Kanner, PhD, Co-founder of CCFC
Dr. Allen D. Kanner is a Berkeley child, family, couples, and adult psychologist and a co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
His work includes consulting with parents on how to counter the harmful effects of advertising on their children. Allen has co-edited two books, Psychology and Consumer Culture and Ecopsychology. In 1997, Utne Reader chose him as one of the nation’s ten leading psychotherapist activists. Currently he is writing a column for Tikkun magazine on the corporatized society.
Michele Simon JD, MPH, CCFC Steering Committee, Author
Michele Simon is a public health lawyer specializing in policy analysis, legal strategies, and countering corporate tactics. With 12 years of experience researching and writing about the food industry, Ms. Simon is the author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back.
Ms. Simon is a regular speaker on both food and alcohol policy at various national and international conferences. Her recent areas of research include the failure of self-regulation and corporate lobbying that undermines public health. Ms. Simon received her law degree from University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and her master’s degree in public health from Yale University.
Don’t miss these exciting films and the opportunity to be a part of the conversation…RSVP now! 🙂
