A Year of Community & Healing: Media & Communications in 2025
While this year was jam-packed with new projects, partnerships, and endeavors in our Media & Communications department, it has also been incredibly healing.
As many of you know, film is the medium that we probably utilize the most, and we see it as such a powerful force to share information and open people’s hearts and minds about complex issues. Due to our love of film, we were very proud to be a community partner for two film festivals this year — the New Orleans Film Festival (NOFF) and PATOIS: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival — and we also had the privilege to conduct ticket giveaways for both festivals, so just a note that sometimes it pays off to follow IWES on social or through our newsletter! This Spring we gave away tickets to two films at PATOIS: 1) Birth from the Earth, a powerful documentary on midwifery and maternal health justice; and 2) It Was All a Dream, a visual memoir showcasing the golden era of hip-hop with rare footage and intimate moments through a feminist lens. Then again in October, we gave away tickets to multiple films at NOFF, ranging from narrative to documentary features and covering topics such as reproductive rights, activism, resilience, the arts, Black maternal health, and more. Through these ticket giveaways, we are always humbled and inspired to support new and seasoned voices within the world of film that champion narrative change, speak to real issues, and aim to make a tangible difference in people’s lives.
Speaking of narrative change, to kick off the Summer, in July our Sr. Media & Communications Director, Iman Shervington, and our founder, Dr. Denese Shervington, led a workshop on the fundamentals of narrative change and its intersection with psychological frameworks, such as those popularized by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The workshop was a follow-up to a breakout session they led at a convening for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) grantees that was held in New Orleans in March, and due to the increasing interest on the topic, they decided to offer this session for those that attended or attended other breakouts, as well as the RWJF community at large. With experience in communications, mental health, and public health, Dr. Shervington and Iman led an informative, resourceful, and interactive workshop that covered points such as the foundations of narrative change, the relationship between narrative change and more typical communications, basic Freudian and Jungian principles, and the connection between narrative change and psychological frameworks. We see narrative change as the core to a lot of our work (since our founding, actually!), due to its power to drive transformation at individual, community, and societal levels using both new and traditional media. And since we have a history of narrative change projects, we were able to pull examples from previous media pieces and campaigns, such as our Trails and New Nickels documentaries, and our In That Number and This is Why campaigns (especially the You Deserve a Doula initiative). The presentation itself is also built on theories we presented at the World Social Marketing Conference in 2022, and we are excited to keep exploring the field of narrative change to figure out the most effective ways to share accurate stories that support the health and well-being of marginalized communities, and especially those that catalyze change. We also have some exciting news that came out of these sessions…but we’ll leave that for next year, so make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter to find out what it is!
Finally, towards the end of this year, we launched our newest initiative — Rise Up, Jamaica — a fund we created to support the mental health recovery in Jamaica post-Hurricane Melissa. Building on the lessons learned in the 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, we aim to create trauma-informed programming for both youth and adults, supporting the long-term mental health recovery that Jamaica deserves. Since the launch of the campaign, our Rise Up team has already started the groundwork and visited the island last month. During this visit, we worked closely with the Honourable Professor Wendel Abel, Head of Community Health and Psychiatry at The University of the West Indies, to orient ourselves to the current mental health landscape and dive straight into the work that was already being done. While there, Dr. Abel connected us with the Kingston and St. Andrew Municipal Corporation, who brought together social workers, charities, and government officials — including the Mayor of Kingston, Councillor Andrew Swaby — to have a conversation on how to care for oneself in service of others, mental health needs post-disaster, and lessons and missed opportunities learned from Katrina. This trip (watch the recap here or by following the link below) marks the first of many in this journey, because we know what it’s like when folks show up right after a disaster then go away when the cameras are gone. So make sure to keep up with all of the new announcements and activities by following us on social media and/or joining our mailing list, so you can stay updated on the trauma-informed human recovery and rebuilding.
As we usher in the new year, our goal is to continue inspiring and engaging our community with meaningful content and materials that create a lasting impact.
We are excited to share more information, produce valuable resources, highlight all of our film and media projects, and "creatively ignite community healing through a lens of compassion, respect, and love." Next year, look forward to new media being released (we’ve been working on another podcast), new visuals (can’t say what just yet…), and of course lots of updates and behind the scenes sneak peeks on all of our social media channels, even LinkedIn!