Playback, Hip Hop, Alternative Media & Social Change-2005 Dates: May 28-June 5. This is a ten-day program for artists, performers, activists, and media makers who wish to create and examine socially engaged art and media projects. This will be an intensive time of both critical thinking and direct training. Students will be introduced to key theoretical concepts in culture, media and social ecology, providing a framework for students to identify and promote their political visions and artistic work. They will also receive Core Training in Playback Theater including; improvisation, Playback story forms, music and Hip Hop for Playback. This program critically examines the nature of art and popular cultural forms in society. Students will look at the differences between alternative and revolutionary media in detail, specifically focusing on issues such as objectivity, editorial control, democracy, and how media shapes our notions of information, power and freedom. Students will discuss the role of the artist as animator, someone who facilitates the expression of community stories and helps to build bridges between the marginalized groups. We will ask how we can take our art into schools, shelters, prisons and put them to the service of social action groups and our abandoned communities to lay the groundwork for developing a truly just and sustainable society. In addition to lectures and discussions, each day will also be filled with learning and sharing music, dance, movement, acting, rhyming, DJing and story telling...(no previous training required). For students who have focused on theory and academics this will be an opportunity to develop and improve their communication and performance skills in a supportive environment. Performers, spoken word artists, free stylers, dancers and musicians will be able to learn more about how to ground their art within a larger social and political context. The aim of Playback, Hip Hop, Alternative Media & Social Change is to provide participants with the practical and conceptual skills, along with a theoretical perspective, to make activist art and media that is at once accessible, transformative, and revolutionary. Facilitated by Members of Playback (NYC) and Paul McIsaac, (M.A. Social Ecology, graduate of the School of Playback Theater and Director of the Community Media Program at Goddard College). The mission of the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) is the creation of educational experiences that enhance people's understanding of their relationship to the natural world and each other. By necessity, this involves the ISE in programs that deepen students' awareness of self and others, help them to think critically, and expand their perception of the creative potentialities for human action. The purpose of the ISE's programs is the preparation of well-rounded students who can work effectively as participants in the process of ecological reconstruction.