Echoes from Lock One
Roles: Multimedia Coordinator, post-production
Runtime: 30 minutes
“Echoes From Lock One” is a participatory documentary that explores the legacy of the Erie Canal through Troy teens's research and stories.
Uniquely situated at the Canal’s confluence with the Northern tip of the Hudson River Estuary, this project—based at our headquarters in The Sanctuary for Independent Media, a stone’s throw from the Troy Federal Lock— merge tales of the past with present.
Once-splendid homes and towering factories bear silent witness to Troy’s influential role in the creation of great wealth during the Industrial Revolution. In our neighborhood, little of that privilege remains, with the vast majority of children growing up below the poverty line. Their inheritance: a toxic landscape along the Hudson River, devastated by industrial waste, PCBs and pollution.
Artists, professionals and educators worked with teens in media, science and STEAM workforce skills, including camera and audio production, script writing, creative storytelling, music and dance, research, media literacy, editing and graphic design, to create this call to action.
— Branda Miller, Arts and Education Coordinator, The Sanctuary for Independent Media
The trailer for this film was presented at the 37th Annual International Visual Sociology Association Conference in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. on June 20, 2019 in “Plenary Workshop on Community Media Organizations as Agents of Social Change”.
Catherine Rafferty presents work from Uptown Summer, the Sanctuary’s summer youth employment program in which the research for Echoes was conducted in summer 2017.
(from left) Branda Miller, arts and education coordinator at the Sanctuary, and interns Mikaela Clark Gardner, Petra Holler, Catherine Rafferty, Diani Drake and Juliette Brown at the 37th Annual International Visual Sociology Association Conference.