Elevating Student Voices
Client: Bronx Letters Foundation
About the Project
This was our second project with Bronx Letters (gallery of previous videos embedded below).
Following a successful debut video, we decided to take a more creative approach in our second project with Bronx Letters. Beyond its rigorous academic program, the school's central focus is to empower its students—through writing, the arts, activism and more. In honor of this focus, we collaborated with Bronx Letters’ writer-in-residence program and had students write a group poem about their lives inside and outside the school. We filmed students reciting the poem and added b-roll that illustrated their ideas.
Since the video was debuting at an annual fundraising gala, we added context by interviewing staff and students about the importance of writing and the power created by uplifting student voices. Students were really excited to see their poem come to life and the full poem video still acts as the landing page for the Bronx Letters website, today.
Bronx Letters
The Bronx Academy of Letters (BAL) is a middle and high school located in the South Bronx, New York. A self-described “community school,” when you ask students how they would define it, the same word comes up again and again — “home.”
Bronx Letters has created a uniquely supportive environment for students who often face great challenges outside the school walls. BAL is located in the heart of the “poorest congressional district in the country” (a true, but reductive, common trope that both students and faculty both smart at), which means resources are scarce even though needs are immense. To address this, the school was founded on a unique model: In addition to standard (insufficient) support from the school system, BAL has a non-profit arm — The Bronx Letters Foundation -- that raises funds to provide the unique programming and experiences that help BAL students succeed.
Our relationship with Bronx Letters has been a special collaboration. Through years of working together, we have had the opportunity to see middle schoolers become college students, shy high school freshmen become mentors and performers as seniors. Each new project we have embarked on has highlighted a different aspect of this unique school, and we can’t wait to dive into the next one.
More Bronx Letters Videos
Previous Collaborations
