How Do You Like It So Far uses pop culture to take soundings of a society in transition, exploring intersections with civic imagination and engagement, and social and political change. Henry Jenkins and Colin Maclay are your guides on this adventure.
Episode 139: Sam Ford and Sangita Shresthova: How a Kentucky City Imagines and Plans for the Future
In this episode, Sangita Shresthova, Associate Research Professor of Communication at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Sam Ford, Founding Partner and Chief Connection Officer, InnoEngine, discuss work they have been doing applying insights from the Civic Imagination Project to help address communities needs in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Bowling Green is a rapidly expanding urban center which has some of the most diverse schools and one of the largest population of refuges of Any American city. They are confronting the reality that by 2050, their population will be twice as big as it is now. How can they plan for such dramatic expansion? How can they preserve their core values as a community while also learning from the New Americans entering their ranks? This interview takes us through some of the tools – cultural,, organizational, and technical – which enabled the city to work together to anticipate ideal future developments. It illustrates how notions of Civic Imagination makes narrative development a key pillar of urban development.
Sangita Shresthova, PhD is a multilingual scholar specializing in civic participation, popular culture, and the intersections of digital media and intercultural communication. She leads a range of projects examining civic engagement in both digital and physical spaces. Shresthova’s expertise in designing and executing complex qualitative research is exemplified by her leadership in a multi-year study of youth activism in the digital age, which culminated in the publication of By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism. Shresthova’s other published works include: Is It All About the Hips?: Around the World With Bollywood Dance, We Are Civic Media, Connected Cultures: How to Parent Across Borders, Transformative Media Pedagogies, and Practicing Futures: The Civic Imagination Action Handbook. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change explore how imaginative practices and popular culture can foster creative social transformation. She is also a co-creator of the Digital Civics Toolkit, a widely recognized resource designed to support educators and community leaders in guiding youth learning in digital environments. The toolkit was named one of the “Best Edtech of 2018” and continues to be a vital resource for fostering digital literacy and civic engagement. She is currently co-editing (with Henry Jenkins) The Global Handbook of the Civic Imagination.
Shresthova has been a guest on this podcast to discuss Civic Imagination and innovative media pedagogies previously.
For more information on the Civic Imagination Project, visit their website.
To learn more about the workshops, download a PDF here.
Sam Ford is a Founding Partner of InnoEngine. He has worked on innovation approaches, engagement and storytelling strategies, and cultural intelligence initiatives with a wide range of organizations across multiple industry sectors, including consulting clients that have ranged from Lowe’s Hardware, WD-40, and the U.S. Department of State to Microsoft, University of Southern California, and WNYC. As Director of Cultural Intelligence, Ford co-created an organic growth initiative for Paramount at the book publisher it then owned, Simon & Schuster. As VP of Innovation & Engagement, he oversaw innovation projects and partnerships across subsidiary companies owned by Univision. And, as a director for NYC strategic communications firm Peppercomm, he helped lead innovative communications strategies for clients ranging from Whirlpool, TJMaxx, Food Network, and MINI to EY, Siemens, Steelcase, and Lincoln Financial and was named Digital Communicator of the Year and a Social Media MVP by PR News in 2014 and Bulldog Reporter Social Media Innovator of the Year in 2011. Early in his career, Ford helped establish and run the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium research group. He has served as a research affiliate with MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing and as a Knight News Innovation Fellow with Columbia Journalism’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, the latter of which resulted in work that received the inaugural Research Prize for Professional Relevance from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in 2018. He has published more than 25 pieces of academic research, including being co-author of the NYU Press book Spreadable Media, named one of 2013’s Best Business Books by Strategy+Business.
The opening segment featuring West Virginia workshops participants comes from Us & Them,, a podcast produced by Trey Kaye for West Virginia Public Radio, which did a special episode about the Civic Imagination Project.
Other relevant Links for this episode:
MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (MIT REAP)
