Our Work
"Home" is a song and music video by high school senior Kimberlin and part of our Dreamweavers series. It is accompanied by a documentary on the creative process and inspiration behind the song lyrics and Dreamweavers project as a whole.
We are hosting a screening of this project July 1 at Century High School - save the date!
This poetry video by high school senior Brittany looks at the meaning of Santa Ana as Home. She shares a message of hope and explores how the community uplifts each other. The “Home: Un Lugar Para Todos film was produced by our latest youth team Bernadine Cortina (English and Ethnic Studies major), and Jessica Tonai (Music Education Major). Both Bernadine and Jessica met with Century HS student Brittany Lopez to both help develop poetic expression and digitally document such expressions regarding her city. This video piloted and sparked our most recent project called “Dreamweavers”.
During the summer of 2019 a group of community members and students from Santa Ana, CA, came together with students and a faculty from Chapman University. This project will explore the larger Orange County and Santa Ana racial and educational context as well as display first-hand narratives from youth. These youth narratives will socially contextualize the larger social and economic dynamics that position the youth of Santa Ana within a deficit narrative.
Uprooting Police Violence: George Floyd Protest, Orange, CA (2020)
On May 30, 2020, our team documented a peaceful protest against the police violence that has caused the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless other black lives. Supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, this protest took place in Orange, California, among hundreds of other nation-wide protests that have taken place within the past couple weeks.
To seek more information to donate, educate, and act, please go to: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/.
Chapman students were paired with High School Students to produce a film festival called the “The Roots of our Food”, the project asked students to document the origin stories with their families regarding their food. The virtual event invited community members, parents Chapman dignitaries to demonstrate the films produced. The event was a success, hosted more that 50 participants beyond our classroom.
The “Birds of Our City” film was produced and created by Wendy Medina Herrera, and Silvia Jazmine Miranda, both Chapman Film School students. This film was produced in response to a community Muralist by the name Moises Camacho wanting someone to document youth painting a mural on “diversity” within Downtown Santa Ana. Both Wendy and Silvia were hired by the Lloyd & Elisabeth Klein Legacy Foundation via our Attallah College. The Mural was produced by a mix of High School Students coming from Century HS, Santa Ana HS, and Valley HS. The SAYMP students followed the mural process and interviewed youth at the mural sight for several months, throughout the gathering of the data, both our SAYMP team sat down with the HS students, built relationships, and documented the storyline as guided and told by the youth. We met regularly with both with the Muralist and the student participants to make sure the storylines we were documenting were accurate and enhancing their purpose.
