Re-envisioning media literacy education as feminist arts-activism

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis project interrogates the premises of media literacy education – the predominant approach to equipping K-12 students to navigate the contemporary media environment – by moving it beyond teaching students to critique commercial media toward undermining ideological messages about health, violence, race, and gender embedded in media discourses. This participatory programme evaluation uses mixed-methods to assess the effectiveness of an alternative, performing arts education-based approach to media literacy called The Girl Project (TGP), a feminist artist-activist programme based at a non-profit community theatre in Versailles, Kentucky. The 12–18 high school-aged girls who participate in TGP every year are engaged in workshops by guest artists from around the nation to express what they think is important for their audiences to understand about their lived experiences as girls in a conservative sociopolitical environment.The project employed “youth-adult partnership model” to programme evaluation that involved working with programme alumni as co-researchers to evaluate TGP 2017. In June 2017, a team of eight co-researchers comprising alumni from the 2014, 2015, and 2016 classes met to develop evaluation questions and make data collection decisions. Data collection included surveys and interviews conducted pre- and post-programme with participants, field notes of the co-researchers’ observations of workshops and rehearsals, and feedback from guest artists and audience members. The team met again in January 2018 to collaboratively analyse how the data answered their evaluation questions. The survey data allowed us to see that girls’ statistical scores on mental health and body confidence measurements significantly improved after their participation in TGP, meaning that girls are less vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. In talking with participants and audience members, we learned that TGP participation increases girls’ self-confidence and ability to set boundaries in friendships, family relationships, and romantic relationships.