N-CITE Community Media

In the spring of 2012, Angelique Webster and Eric DeMeulenaere worked together on a film project with youth to challenge racism and foster culturally relevant teaching with urban youth. Through the experience and several conversations, they came to recognize that the power of media as communicative tool combined with the relational and story-telling aspects of film-making offered an exciting way to engage in transformative work with youth and with the community in Worcester. In the summer of 2012, they pulled in Thu Nguyen, a community artist and one of Eric’s former students from Main South Worcester and other youth involved in the previous film project, to engage in a conversation about creating a media program in Worcester.
In the August, 2012, Angelique, Eric and Thu formed N-CITE Community Media. They began to apply for funding. In January of 2013 they launched their first two main projects which form the core of the work: Community Cinema Worcester and SPIT-IT! Community Cinema Worcester connected N-CITE with the PBS/Independent Lens national Community Cinema program and enabled N-CITE to screen compelling and provocative films with the community before they debuted on Public Television. Community Cinema Worcester also engages the community in a conversation about how the themes from the films connect with our local Worcester context.
The other program launched in January of 2013 was the SPIT-IT! Youth Producers program. SPIT-IT! develops a dozen high school-aged youth from Worcester to become film producers. Through a fifteen week after school program, the youth learn critical media literacy, counterstory-telling, interviewing, cinematography and editing in order to develop youth produced and conceived films. The films produced by the first cohort were screened locally and nationally to high acclaim.
In the winter of 2013-14, N-CITE began working towards incorporation as a non-profit and to develop the infrastructure to make its offerings sustainable.