Youth Media & Journalism

It's time for a youth-led documentary – and we need your help!

Published on
Authors
Researched and written by Andreas Karsten and Tom Pincus.
Contributors
Trailer developed and produced by Erik Dubs, Karla Schieferstein and Tom Pincus.

We are trying something slightly crazy at the moment, even for our standards: a youth-led documentary, a participatory film project, young people telling their own stories in their own words and through their own lens – and we need your help to make it happen!

How exciting would it be to be able to tell 20 young people from around the world that we have 70.000 Euros to bring them to the initial film camp, but also a sizeable budget for the documentary itself already?! That's why we currently run a Kickstarter campaign – and what we need your help for 🙏🏼.

Why?

Media really likes to cover young people through a very individualising or very generalising lens. It's either the personal, touching story of a young person — emotions sell! — or a sweeping story about Gen X, Y or Z. The elephant in the newsroom? Either way, media coverage tends to contribute to building stereotypes rather than dismantling them. Great stories about young people do exist, of course, but great storytelling is rare. It's frustrating.

Here are four Time Magazine cover examples about youth generations, ranging from 2020 to 1967 – from left to right: from 2020, 2013, 2011 and 1967:

The image shows four covers of Time Magazine about youth generations. From left ro right: (1) The Youthquake from 2020; (2) The Me Me Me Generation from 2013; (3) The generation changing the world from 2011; (4) Twenty-five and under from 1967.
The image shows four covers of Time Magazine about youth generations. From left ro right: (1) The Youthquake from 2020 (larger, source); (2) The Me Me Me Generation from 2013 (larger, source); (3) The generation changing the world from 2011 (larger, source); (4) Twenty-five and under from 1967 (larger, source).

The 2013 “Me Me Me” cover about millennials received particularly strong backlash, with a couple of edits still populating the web to this day:

The image shows four remixes of the 2013 cover of Time Magazine about millennials. The original cover reads: “The Me Me Me Generation. Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents. Why they‘ll save us all." The first of four remixes reads: "The doomed generation. We pissed their future away on endless war, golden parachutes for bankers, and handjobs for stockbrokers. Why? Fuck ‘them, that’s why.” The second of four remixes reads: "The unemployed generation. Millennials are narcissists because we fucked their entire generation over and they don't have anything better to do than jerk off and look at Tumblr. Why they‘ll starve to death.” The third of four remixes reads: “The Me Me Me Generation. Cicadas are lazy, entitled narcissists who lurk underground for years. Why they‘ll eat us all.” And the fourth of four remixes reads: "Stupid fucking article. Sweeping generalization about an entire generation. Fatuous hook.”
Four remixes of the 2013 cover of Times Magazine about millennials. From left ro right – note that source links are likely not linking to the original artists, but to where the remixes can still be found online today: (1) The doomed generation – fuck ‘em, that's why (larger, source); (2) The unemployed generation – why they'll starve to death (larger, source); (3) The Me Me Me Generation – cicadas are lazy (larger, source); (4) Stupid fucking article – fatuous hook (larger, source).

Some generalisations are applied to practically every new youth generation – such as the claim that young people use technology too much:

The image shows four magazine covers from different countries and for different generations, all of them claiming that this new generation of young people is going overboard with technology. From left to right: (1) Spiegel Magazine, from 2018, entitled “My kid, his phone, and me”; The New Yorker, from 2010, showing a kid sitting in an armchair with a laptop, behind him a huge bookshelf that he is seemingly ignorant about; (3) Time Magazine from 2006, asking “Are kids too wired for their own good?"; (4) Newsweek from 1985, entitled “The Video Generation: Kids and MTV”.
The image shows four magazine covers from different countries and for different generations, all of them claiming that this new generation of young people is going overboard with technology. From left to right: (1) Spiegel Magazine, from 2018, entitled “My kid, his phone, and me” (larger, source); The New Yorker, from 2010, showing a kid sitting in an armchair with a laptop, behind him a huge bookshelf that he is seemingly ignorant about (larger, source); (3) Time Magazine from 2006, asking “Are kids too wired for their own good?" (larger, source); (4) Newsweek from 1985, entitled “The Video Generation: Kids and MTV” (larger, source).

Another very common generalisation is that young people are rioting for no good reason – notice how all of a sudden young persons become faceless monsters in this context:

The image shows four magazine covers about riots, all picturing a faceless young man, three of four times with a hoodie. From left to right: (1) Daily Express, UK, 2011 (larger, source); (2) The Spectator, UK, 2024 (larger, source); (3) Der Spiegel, Germany, 1968 (larger, source); (4) Der Spiegel, Germany, 1981 (larger, source).

It usually takes years, sometimes even decades, before it is acknowledged that the riots were not, in fact, driven by young faceless men in hoodies without purpose or reason – and these acknowledgements you will, of course, not find on any front page.

On the opposite end of these sweeping generalisations is an equally frustrating focus on individuals and their live stories – most recently the life of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg:

The image shows four magazine covers featuring Greta Thunberg, from left to right: (1) Vogue Scandinavia, showing Greta in a forest, patting a horse, entitled “The Wonders of Greta Thunberg"; (2) Saturday magazine by the Guardian, showing Greta's head, half of which is covered in oil, saying "The time is now: Greta Thunberg and the power of hope"; (3) British GQ – GQ stands for Gentlemen's Quarterly, showing Greta pointing at the audience in a blazer, which has in white capital letters "Can you hear me?” on the front, with the cover also saying "Greta Thunberg: Game Changer of the Year; and (4) TeenVogue, showing a side profile of Greta, with her hair tied into a ponytail, saying “Greta Thunberg: Climate Strike now".
The image shows four magazine covers featuring Greta Thunberg, from left to right: (1) Vogue Scandinavia (larger, source); (2) Saturday magazine by the Guardian (larger, source); (3) British GQ – GQ stands for Gentlemen's Quarterly (larger, source); (4) TeenVogue (larger, source).

There are many more examples we could have picked to illustrate the state of youth coverage in media – and the worst of it is how much this kind of coverage informs and shapes policies. In practically every project, we need to dissassemble the stereotypes and prejudices and presumed knowledge stemming from this kind of coverage. Globally speaking, political responses to demands of youth movements and youth protests oscillate between ignorance and violence – in luckier contexts, between disregard and hostility. It really is frustrating.

How?

With the frustration from these widespread approaches to covering young people — and the effect this has on policy-makers and policy-making! — in mind, we want to produce a youth-led, participatory documentary about youth protests and youth movements. Participatory film-making is not yet very common, although also not new. It is better known for experiments with audience interaction, and less frequently used in documentaries as a collaborative and inclusive form of storytelling. We think it is a great tool to give marginalised communities a voice – in our case, to let young people tell their own stories, in their own words, through their own lens.

We will start youth.direct with a ten-day film camp, where we will bring together small teams of young people from all over the globe to develop initial scripts, story boards, story lines, and interview questions. During these ten days, we will also train everyone in the crafts and arts of story-telling and film-making, in workshops and hands-on sessions run by film students.

After the camp, we will take care of additional fundraising, if needed, and teams will have time to film material in their home countries. We will then return for a second film camp, where we will collectively review the material, decide on narratives, sequences, soundtrack, and more – again underpinned by workshops and trainings.

With our kickstarter fundraising campaign, we want to finance, at the very least, the costs for the initial ten-day film camp: flights, accommodation, meals, workshops, insurances… A broad budgetary overview is here:

The image shows a piechart with a budgetary overview for the initial film camp, for which we are fundraising: (1) board and lodging for 10 days amount for 35.000 Euros, (2) travel costs for 20 young people amount for 18.000 €, (3) expenses for programme and technology amount to 10.000 €, and (4) then the costs of crowdfunding: reward fulfilment and processing fees for Kickstarter and credit card companies amount for 15.000 Euros.
A budgetary overview for the initial film camp, for which we are fundraising: board and lodging for 10 days, travel costs for 20 young people, expenses for programme and technology, and then the costs of crowdfunding: reward fulfilment and processing fees for Kickstarter and credit card companies. Click on the image or here for a larger version.

That way, young people will be truly free to shape the documentary in whichever way they want, without a corset built by us for an application, and without interference from grant managers, funding agencies, or donor publicists.

But…

Couldn't we finance this more traditionally, through public funding programmes and/or cooperation with foundations? Yes, of course we could! But the first steps of this specific project we want to take differently on purpose. Applying for funding requires quite elaborate plans: aims and objectives, locations and agendas, work packages and gantt charts. We would be building a corset for ourselves, restricting the scope and reach of the documentary before the first second of shooting anything. We would, for example, have to define which regions and countries the documentary should cover – and we don't want to do that.

So?

So, we need your help! Pitch in, if you can, and make a small or big contribution to the documentary – and to seeing fewer silly covers and stories about young people in the media. And yes, of course, we would absolutely love to finance much more right away 😇

Imagine how exciting it would be to be able to tell 20 young people from around the world that we not only have 70.000 Euros to bring them to the initial film camp, but also have a sizeable budget for the documentary itself already.

How cool, and empowering, would that be?! Exactly :) If you can, pitch in!

Speaking of…

…cool, and empowering – make sure to watch the first trailer for the documentary, co-produced by Erik, Karla and Tom: you can just click on the image that appears atop the Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/youthpolicy/youth-direct-a-youth-led-documentary.

Thank you for your interest and your support!