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ManorMeta
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
The living learning lab ManorMeta is a visionary multimedia series sharing problem solving adventures, diverse young leaders, musical stars and AI characters in an amazing mashup for web, virtual worlds, television, film, comics and print media.
Supporting organization:
Amoration (a nonprofit 501(c)3 project of the International Humanities Center)
URL:
http://www.amoration.org
City:
Los Angeles
State/Region:
CA
Country:
USA
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
ManorMeta is interactive media expedition launched the Amoration creative network in 2005. We are developing an innovative family TV show, a fully participatory online community and virtual interactive world that stimulates creative growth and international development.
ManorMeta is kid-friendly edutainment featuring six foster kids, three visionary adults, numerous animal and computer-generated characters working out solutions for major global crisis. Our organic home is filled with music, humor and technological wizardry.
Visit ManorMeta in Second Life to see our world from the inside out or tour our photo galleries.
Sustainability (financial) model:
Based on the Sesame Street financial model, ManorMeta works in partnership with key nonprofits, foundations and businesses to create solid structures for education around social change.
The AMO Plan is available in brief form online or a detailed 25 page PDF can be provided on request. Our social venture structure is based on a robust media production calendar for award-winning machinima animation, comics and television/film projects.
Manor relies on a balanced ecosystem of production partners, sponsors, supporters, content creators and series seeders. Everyone plays a role and there are no spectators in our space.
In 2006 we began producing ManorMeta machinima videocasts and fine tuning our series development while hosting interactive art salons and open studio events. Our machinima shorts have won numerous awards and our team is now hired to produce a handful of short videos for private clients including the US Holocaust Museum and Consumer Insight (a health/nutrition educational team). Toyshoppe Productions LLC is our primary production partner for live action programming, broadcast and Second Life design.
Potential obstacles:
As an independent production studio based near Hollywood our greatest challenge over the last year has been to identify partners and producers with integrity and vision for this particular project. We have a tremendous creative team from major blockbuster film projects and are now seeking the right production team to work with for mass release of the ManorMeta series. While our independent studio team is flexible, talented and award-winning we need double our small staff to produce our upcoming works over the next 3-6 months.
Resource Needs:
* Committed partners in development, especially business-saavy leaders with passion for inspiring social action through new media.
* Sponsoring partners and foundations for the ManorMeta series for television/film.
Key Milestones:
Our next steps:
* Create the first Go Green Guide comics with our new youth interns for inclusion in youth magazines and publications
* Produce three new machinima shorts on health/nutrition, climate change and nature/environmental care
* Continue to develop relationships with key partners, producers and sponsors for the ManorMeta series
Project Summary:
ManorMeta is an integrated multimedia series full of educational adventures designed to address serious social issues for young audiences. Our world is a collaborative space where youth can contribute their own art, music, video, podcasts and flash games to offer solutions for major crisis. In the last year of ManorMeta programming we have addressed health, poverty, displacement and genocide, water access and biomimicry in organic design through games, videos, comics and immersive experiences.
Comments
wiki tool
Sandra Dickinson
Hi Susan, I see that ManorMeta lists WIKI as one of the tech tools you will employ. Would you say more about how the wiki tool will be employed to further the project's goals?
I ask because, in my own project Selearninggames, a wiki and a blog are the primary tools for the design phase. I'm guessing that for ManorMeta, a wiki is not a primary tool. So what role do you see wiki will play? (I'm actually familiar with Amoration and ManorMeta from the Omidyar network FoodChain discussions) Anyway, I'm very interesting in learning more about how other projects are using similar tools to accomplish our different purposes.
I hope you'll take a look at my project and wiki, and let me know what you think about how I'm using the tool. Thank you.
Wikis at play
Sandra, great question! I attended the Recent Changes Camp in Portland this February to get a better handle on the future of wikis (especially media-ready wikis and 3D wikis as they relate to our work). We have one wiki that we use in our planning and teambuilding along with social blogs and photo/video communities.
We found a handful of leaders who are pioneering new works in collaborative information sharing and we are keenly interested in the MIXING of new works allowed by platforms like Creative Commons. We have been releasing our work through Creative Commons and encouraging a remix culture of our media content in hopes that our audience will continue to see their role in making work together.
Most of our current webspaces are static media sites as we work with web community leaders to design a better system that incorporates the tools and technologies we want to see together. Wikis are one vital part of that process but we also use collaborative tools like BaseCamp and social networks extensively in our work.
A handful of the collaborators you may have met on the Omidyar Network have some tremendous ideas up their sleeve and we will be working with them as much as possible to grow this work in collaboration with teams and networks of world leaders outside of our immediate circle. Our goal is not to eclipse, but to spotlight amazing new projects and groups on the horizon who are making this world a better place. We see our work with ManorMeta as that of integration, storytelling and engaging education that gives the audience many active opportunities to become participants in the story.