about

Back Story

In November of 1999, Big Mouth Productions was finishing up the production of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty," a documentary about James Forman Jr. and his work with juvenile ex-offenders. Our program officer at The Ford Foundation, Alan Jenkins brought together a group of media and nonprofit organizations from all over the country to discuss how media makers and activists can work better together, and Julia Pimsleur, one of Big Mouth Productions' producers attended the meeting.

The audio-visual, print and radio makers present were unanimous about the need for a central place where we could keep up on each other's work and find out about new projects. The activists wanted to collaborate with media makers, from whom they felt generally cut off. As a producer who worked at the crossroads of media and activism, Pimsleur was interested in creating a platform to bring together three communities, who are natural allies and partners. At that time, many felt that the Web had been almost entirely overtaken by commercial interests, and that makers of "media that matters" needed to stake out a space on the Internet before it was too late.

A year of grant-writing later, The Ford Foundation generously funded the research and development of "MediaRights.org", the meeting of media makers and human rights activists, produced by Big Mouth Productions and administered by Arts Engine, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Our official site launch was in July 2000.

Since 2000 we have dropped the ".org" and expanded our programs to include numerous online and offline initiatives.