BIG Launches Weekly #IAmBrookline Series

Brookline Interactive Group (BIG) has partnered with the Duckling app to launch #IAmBrookline, a new weekly media series delving into the Brookline identity. The project will give Brookline residents and visitors a platform to share their stories about growing up, living, working, and studying in Brookline.

BIG’s community journalism team will hit the streets of Brookline each week to film interviews for #IAmBrookline, speaking with locals in popular spots around Coolidge Corner and surrounding neighborhoods. In addition to posting #IAmBrookline on BIG’s cable channels and YouTube page, the series will be posted weekly on emerging media app Duckling. Duckling recently launched after a year of development and testing at MIT, where CEO and founder Bjarke Calvin is currently a Fellow as is BIG’s executive director, Kathy Bisbee.

One of the main goals of the project is to create a platform that will engage Brookliners in a dialogue about themselves and their community. “Community media at its best helps to facilitate dialogue for the community it serves. This partnership with a new social media platform, as well as existing ones and our community channels, enables Brookline residents to discuss, share and express how they value their community and how they want it to change,” shared Kathy Bisbee, executive director of BIG.

“We are very excited to work with BIG on this project, and it falls perfectly in line with our mission with Duckling. My vision is that #IAmBrookline will grow into a collective documentary of an entire town, and I think this can set the direction for a new kind of community building and local journalism,” says Duckling’s CEO Bjarke Calvin.

According to Calvin, “[It’s] a time where that’s needed. A lot of us had big expectations when social media emerged and expected it to empower us, but we’ve seen it take a different course. However, I’m still a big believer in the Internet as a powerful tool for collective knowledge, but we need to use it in a better way. I think a project like #IAmBrookline can set a direction for this.”

BIG’s journalists are next scheduled to film #IAmBrookline interviews on Wednesday, February 20th at 3:00pm at the intersection of Harvard and Washington Street, in front of Beacon Hill Athletic Clubs. Members of the public are encouraged to stop by and share their stories. Participants will be asked about their experience of living in or visiting Brookline, their feelings about the culture of the community, and their favorite places around town.

Stories from the series can be viewed on the Duckling app under the #IAmBrookline insights tag, in addition to being posted on BIG’s cable channels. For those interested in getting updates about future #IAmBrookline filming locations, BIG’s Twitter account @brkInteractive will be posting weekly updates.

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About Brookline Interactive Group (BIG):
Brookline Interactive Group (BIG) is an integrated media and technology education center and a community media hub for Brookline, MA and the region. BIG facilitates diverse community dialogue, incubates and funds hyperlocal storytelling, arts, journalism and technology projects, and serves over 500 youth and adults annually through innovative classes and partnerships. BIG offers extensive multimedia training, Virtual Reality (VR) and 360-video cameras and training, access to high quality filmmaking equipment, production grants, and provides low-cost professional media services to non-profit organizations, education partners, businesses, and to local government. Visit www.brooklineinteractive.org to learn more.

About Duckling:
Ducking is an insight media network where people watch and share insights with the purpose of learning and empowering each other, instead of empowering advertisers. By using Duckling’s mobile app, people can quickly create insights with multimedia cards using their own photos, video, and text. Users can also embed links and media from the Internet into their posts. The insights are passed on, changed and expanded by the Duckling network. The result is a deeper, collective understanding of ourselves and the world, that counter the more stereotypical, vanity-based worldviews of social media. You can find more about Duckling at duckling.co or contact CEO and Founder Bjarke Calvin through b@duckling.co to learn more.