The DOCumentary Arts Initiative (DocArts)

OVERVIEW: The DOCumentary Arts initiative

“DocArts” foregrounds the healing, restorative, regenerative nature of our work at the intersections of multicultural knowledges, multimedia production, and the arts. Within a framework of collective community care and “Culture as Prevention,” DocArts fosters community-based and culturally centered collaborations, community health, well being, and resilience.

Still from the 2019 documentary BAM! co-directed by English Department Professors Thabiti Lewis and Pavithra Narayanan.

DocArts seeks to foster cutting edge multimedia work, including hybrid forms blending historiography, oral history, autoethnography, radio, documentary poetry and theater, podcasts, zines, investigative journalism, public service announcements, painting, graphic arts, infographics, songwriting, music, hip hop, etc. 

The initiative represents a proactive and urgently needed response to unprecedented media consolidation, censorship and defunding public media. The International Documentary Association (IDA), for example, has “expresse[d] profound dismay” at the federal government’s elimination of “funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

History

From its inception in 2002, the mission of the Collective for Social and Environmental Justice (CSEJ) has included work across a wide range of media, from videos, documentaries, websites, radio [to] TV programming. Over more than two decades, CSEJ members have continued to grow the range of media in which we work, along with the media platforms in which our work can be found.

A still from Antonia: A Chicana Story. showing Antonia Castañeda wearing a purple shirt, sitting in the back of a vintage red pick up truck. She is facing toward the camera, smiling with her head resting on her hand.
A still from Antonia: A Chicana’s Story, a film by Professors Luz Maria Gordillo and Juan Javier Pescador.

In recent years, the collaboration between CSEJ and NAP has exponentially increased opportunities for programming and collaborations with nationally and internationally renowned Indigenous writers, artists, musicians, video/tv producers and filmmakers.

The DocArts initiative seeks to integrate documentary production across a wide range of justice-related courses. This synergistic approach opens doors to the imagination, helping to inspire new generations of multimedia storytellers. 

Photo of profile of Richard Nixon surrounded by yellowed newspapers with headlines about My Lai massacre
Still from the web series How I Learned to Breathe Thru the Apocalypse, co-directed and co-produced by Desiree Hellegers

DocArts content can be found on the Portland-based community-supported radio station KBOO Radio, 90.7, which airs throughout from SW Washington throughout the Willamette Valley, and on Open Signal Cable Television.

For more information on the Doc Arts Initiative, contact desiree.hellegers@wsu.edu and van.csej@wsu.edu