Adobe Youth Voices

The core strategy in setting up AYV involved private-public partnership. Adobe is a United-States-based computer software company that provides a range of products for digital media creation and editing, multimedia authoring, and web development. As part of AYV, Adobe organised a collaborative of youth media nonprofit organisations, including Arts Engine, Inc., Educational Video Center, iEARN-India, iEARN-UK, iEARN-USA, Listen Up, and What Kids Can Do. Together these partners are working to engage youth from marginalised communities in exploring and commenting on their world using video, multimedia, digital art, web, animation, and audio. As of November 2006, the programme had been established at 41 locations throughout the United States (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), and India.

Specifically, the programme consists of various projects supporting collaboration with other young people in the participants' communities and throughout the world. To make these projects possible, in-person training was used to enhance the skills and knowledge of educators to use technology-based tools more effectively with youth. The resources they explored in these orientation sessions include creative software such as Adobe® Creative Suite®, Adobe Photoshop® Elements and Adobe Premiere® Elements. A teacher from one of the participating schools (in London, UK) explains the strategy as follows: "Learning occurs best when young minds are excited and interested about the possibility of having a real impact on the world around them....Digital applications allow young people to have that immediate effect." Click here to view examples of some of the students' projects, such as a series of digital photo essays being created by a group of San Francisco, California (USA), students to express what globalisation means to them.

As part of a strategy for motivating students and sharing their work more broadly, exhibiting participants' work is a key element of AYV. That is, the programme provides youth with forums in which to share their vision and voice for a public purpose - via travelling art exhibits, at film screenings and festivals, on the internet, in printed publications, and through other local and global venues. For example, in an effort to raise awareness of youth media makers at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, AYV invited 5 youth media organisations to send 2 young people each to Sundance. The high school students attended films and workshops like regular festival attendees, and they also paired up in teams with the Adobe Design Achievement Awards winners to create blogs, video logs, photo galleries, and a five-minute documentary - to be shared on the Reel Ideas website. (The Adobe Design Achievement Awards are meant to celebrate student achievement reflecting the convergence of technology and the creative arts by honouring talented and promising student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, and computer artists around the world.)

This initiative is built on research showing that motivation and engagement are prerequisites for learning. In a research study titled "The Silent Epidemic - Perspectives of High School Dropouts" (March 2006), almost half of the students said they dropped out because their classes were not interesting and they were bored. In this context, AYV uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) to engage young people with ideas, and with each other.