Sometimes, the best ideas come from a bit of inspiration and a bit of tweaking.
That was the case when Dr. Dana Little, a UMES professor in the Department of English and Modern Languages Digital Media Studies program, attended the annual South by Southwest convention and festival in Austin, TX earlier this year.
It was during that experience that she came up with the idea of an event that would incorporate the University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s missions of interdisciplinary studies in addition to community engagement.
“I was trying to figure out exactly what would be the best way to introduce what I could do from South-by-Southwest here,” Little said. “I wanted to do something that would be a symposium or series and I just said ‘media’ and that pretty much was it.”
Little then pitched it to Dr. Cynthia Cravens, the director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and a fellow professor in the English department. During their conversation, Little said Cravens not only agreed with her but also recommended increasing the scope of the event.
“She was like ‘we should totally do this thing … and she said, ‘a media and community festival,’” Little noted. “And that’s when it became more (of a focus) on digital media and to span it over a couple of days and make it more integrative to the community.”
UMES’s inaugural Media and Community Festival takes place over three days starting Thursday, Oct. 13, and running through Saturday, Oct. 15 with a town-and-gown component on the first and final days of the event.
“When I knew we were going to pursue (the idea of the festival), I thought that would be an excellent way to combine what we’re doing academically with what Dana wanted to do with media (and other initiatives the Center for Teaching Excellence does such as the social justice committee) to do with more community engagement,” Cravens said. “So, it became this sort of holistic project trying to bring together all these disparate threads under one sort of umbrella.”
On the first day, which will take place in downtown Princess Anne as part of the town’s monthly “Second Thursday” celebration, faculty and students will participate in the festivities.
The second day of the festival, which coincides with National Dessert Day, will take place in the Student Services Center ballroom and theater from 1-8 p.m.
In the ballroom, there will be a number of demonstrations and exhibitions from a number of different academic departments and student organizations to show their latest innovative projects as well as desserts, Cravens said.
In the theater, there will be special guest speaker forums led by Dr. Marshall Stevenson, Jr., the Dean of the School of Education, Social Sciences and the Arts, author Jerry Mikorenda, members of the UMES Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and reality television star Amber Eggers from the WeTV show, “Life After Lockup.”
On the final day of the festival, held at Hawk’s Corner on Main Street Princess Anne, Eggers, who is Little’s niece, will return to participate in an “Ask Me Anything” forum.
Little said the discussion will allow both students and Eggers to learn about their varied experiences.
“It will give students the opportunity to learn about ‘how do you get in this industry?’ while also giving them the opportunity to talk about their experience attending an HBCU, so Amber can learn things as well and share that with her following in the community that she has,” Little said. “So, there’s bound to be overlap with the Princess Anne community, with her and her experiences and then the broader national and even international community she has.”
In addition to the forum, there will also be a ‘pop-up’ podcast that will feature the discussion of “Afrofuturism,” where Little and UMES English professor Dr. Amy Hagenrater-Gooding address the topic and offer students the opportunity to Afro-futurize their HBCU experience. Saturday’s events will also be live-streamed through Hawk Media’s Twitch channel.
Cravens said she hopes the event will continue to strengthen the relationship between the town and the university while getting students immersed in the area beyond the campus.
“It’s about student voices within the community and bringing different experiences to the community and knowing what the experience can bring to them,” she said. “So, we’re not only looking for a reciprocal relationship but an ongoing conversation of what community engagement means.”
For more information on the Media and Community festival, go to https://wwwcp.umes.edu/mediafestival/.
