FJP Community Network Grant Winner: The Everyday Projects

Partner with a local organization to build a visual storytelling toolkit for community members with the goal of fighting stereotypes and misrepresentation, and take control of their visual narrative.

$25,000

The Everyday Projects and Dysturb, two of the most important grassroots photojournalism organizations of recent years, will partner to build a toolkit that focuses on visual storytelling as a means of building community and strengthening local news. As newsrooms and budgets shrink across the country, endangering local capacity and distorting local coverage, we will encourage photojournalists, students, and other community members to take control of their own visual narrative. We will pilot the program in Akron, Ohio, with The Devil Strip, an Akron news, arts, and culture publication serving a metropolitan area of more than 500,000 households.

Traditional media in Akron leans on crime, tragedy, exodus, and job loss, which skews the civic narrative. The Devil Strip, meanwhile, takes an asset-based approach to journalism to better engage the area’s underserved residents who have learned to ignore the news that ignores them.

This pilot will build on the strengths of The Everyday Projects and Dysturb, each with proven records of rallying communities around photography with viral impact worldwide, to fight misrepresentation and reach people where they are to inform and educate. As a member-supported publication, The Devil Strip wants to expand its reach, encourage renewals, and attract new members. Both The Everyday Projects and Dysturb want to pilot programs that have the potential to extend their impact while generating revenue to ensure sustainability.

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