Love Now Media: May-July Round-up

Love Now Media has been buzzing this summer. If you’ve been following us on social media, you’ve likely caught glimpses of our productions and projects. From facilitating stories with our community of Woman’s Way Fellows to spearheading tools and events for industry players in the city of Philadelphia, our team has been collectively helping to empower and transform the media landscape. Here’s a small taste of our summer.

Making Love & Designing the Future:

Our new podcast series premiered in May of this year and is currently on its 9th episode. Making Love & Designing The Future refers to the intentional creation of experiences, environments, and systems that promote feelings of love and connection between people. Each week Jos interviews an expert within their field, to dig into the heart behind their social impact, entrepreneurship, philosophy, and artistry.

Using the digital landscape as a lens to invoke change and disrupt the status quo, each episode of Making Love & Designing the Future allows listeners to participate in innovation and self-actualization, promoting more awareness of how to design for success. You can listen to it now here.

Woman’s Way Fellowship Podcast:

Nicole Blackson interviews Fellow Sappho about her thoughts on how to center harm reduction in the conversation of reentry.

Jos Duncan Asé in conversation with Fellow Victoria ‘Vicky’ about the role education plays in destigmatizing and empowering justice-impacted individuals.

In 2020, Women’s Way received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Voices for Economic Opportunity Challenge. The grant supported the Change the Narrative Fellowship Program, which aims to change the predominant stories about gender and economic insecurity. The fellowship empowers women and gender-expansive individuals with personal experiences of economic insecurity to share their stories through professional-level audio, visual, and print. The program aims to raise awareness of racial and gender inequities in economic opportunity, and spur action to improve economic security in the Philadelphia region.

The fourth cohort of the Change The Narrative Fellowship is focused on the experiences of incarceration and reentry for women and gender-expansive individuals affected by the carceral system. By challenging assumptions about their experiences and advocating for policy change, the Fellows utilize the framework of narrative change to uplift their respective calls to action.

In the Beyond the Razor Wire Fence: Change the Narrative podcast, created in collaboration with WOMEN’S WAY and produced by Love Now Media, each episode highlights the link between incarceration and wealth extraction. Fellows explore how the carceral system perpetuates the gender wealth gap, and emphasize the support needed for individuals reintegrating into society to build and maintain a dignified life. Look out for the podcast coming soon!

Fellow Jamila speaks about the reality of court fees, restitution, and fines several years after serving time.

Philadelphia Media Founders Exchange Summit:

Fellow Nadira Branch during her presentation about securing grants for mission driven projects at the 2024 PMFE Revenue & Sustainability Summit.

A room full of Fellows and Industry professionals engaged with the Keynote presentation at the 2024 PMFE Revenue & Sustainability Summit.

This year, Love Now Media hosted the Philadelphia Media Founders Exchange Revenue & Sustainability Summit at our headquarters in University City. The Founders Exchange is an accelerator program geared toward supporting and investing in BIPOC media entrepreneurs from the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, with additional support from the Independence Public Media Foundation. The program is intentionally developed to share strategies, resources, and insights into building your wealth and power for people of color working in media.

This year’s program featured panels by Will Toms of Rec Philly, Nadira Branch, CEO, Administrative Associates and Grants Professional Officer at US (EPA), and Mitra Kalita, CEO and Co-founder of URL Media Holdings Inc., and many more. Fellows learned first-hand about sustainability, small newsroom strategies, journalistic principles of excellence, and how to uphold and manage trust.

Sara M. Lomax speaks to the Fellows about her experience as President and CEO of WURD Radio, the only Black-owned talk radio station in Philadelphia.

Monument Lab Summit:

Nathan Mutale interviews photographer and videographer Daniel Jackson about love and civic engagement.

Love Now Media’s youth producers and editor in the midst of setting up community interviews at the Independence Visitor Center in Philadelphia.

The 2024 Monument Lab Summit in Philadelphia brought together thought leaders influencing and innovating the monument landscape through groundbreaking forms of commemoration, acknowledgment, justice, and belonging, organized around the theme of “Past is Presence.”

Artists, curators, grassroots organizers, federal officials, municipal and civic workers, educators, and students from around the country converged for keynotes, panels, workshops, and field trips.

Love Now Media attended to, share our mission, ask questions about civic engagement and love, and connect with an equally passionate community of artists and educators.