Festival Overview
Our festival will explore the relationship between youth and digital media. A generation, born after 1980 and known as “Digital natives,” has experienced a rapid evolution in digital and social technology, which has changed the trajectory of their identities. Youth are able to use these technologies as self-expressive tools to present and learn from their own and their peers’ interests, passions, and individuality. This self-expressive tool can also operate as a self-distorting enabler. A fifteen-year-old teenager can produce an online identity that completely misrepresents her personal appearance, interests, and emotions in order to fit into a particular social mold. The muddling of lines between social and digital technology has sparked tension among youth, parents, educators, government, and private sectors, introducing new debates on privacy, online identity, and more.
We want to encourage a healthy conversation that materially changes not only the way that youth can defend and protect themselves online but also how youth, along with the rest of the community, can enhance their life, interaction, and learning by embracing social and digital technologies with a smarter and more insightful approach.
We want to encourage a healthy conversation that materially changes not only the way that youth can defend and protect themselves online but also how youth, along with the rest of the community, can enhance their life, interaction, and learning by embracing social and digital technologies with a smarter and more insightful approach.
Mission
Exploring the arts and engaging the world through technology.