The Community Volunteers – Expanding the Notion of Community

A team of community volunteers has assembled to coordinate their local community’s annual women’s film festival. The women’s film festival recruits and selects short films from women in the community and screens their productions each week throughout the summer. The film festival is a local tradition, spanning three decades, with an explicit mission of highlighting filmmakers from the organizers’ town and surrounding rural region.

Following the announcement of the film selection and the release of the summer schedule, the film festival leaders receive feedback from patrons and other community stakeholders that the selection of films for the festival lacks representation from women of color directors. The leaders contest that they would have included women of color perspectives, but they did not receive ample submissions from women of color in the surrounding area. Several volunteers suggest expanding the mission of the film festival to include submissions from across the state with targeted recruitment in communities where more people of color reside.

The proposed change in mission is met with consternation. After two meetings devoted to the deliberation of the proposal, the coordinators are not able to reach consensus. All coordinators agree that change is needed, but they feel more time is needed to explore the perspectives of all their stakeholders. The team agrees to sustain dialogue for the duration of the summer and invite community feedback at each film screening. Community feedback is largely in support of the proposed change, and with further dialogue, the coordinators form a shared commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. The coordinating team ultimately agrees that change is needed, and that the current model is not sufficiently meeting the needs of the local community. They agree to pilot the expansion of filmmaker recruitment to include contributions of women from across the state.

Key Take-Aways
  • The Issue: A local film festival is confronted with a lack of racial diversity among the festival filmmakers. The coordinating team is ambivalent about change, citing its mission to promote the creativities of women in their local community.
  • The Deliberation: The coordinators are not able to achieve consensus easily and agree to a protracted dialogue process that includes input from community stakeholders through the duration of the summer film festival.
  • The Growth: The coordinating team recognizes that commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion may require change to its organizational mission.