Power and Privilege on the Road to Hollywood: Rerouting Pre-Industry Pipelines

Recent years have seen a rise in advocacy initiatives for women and people of color working in Hollywood. Film schools are more equitable than the media industries to which they serve as pipelines, but there are ways in which universities and training programs are reproducing the industries’ biases. In her talk, Miranda Banks will identify challenges and opportunities around issues of equity and access within the industries and pre-industries, arguing that media production programs are uniquely positioned to educate the next generation of media makers about creative collaboration across differences and challenge the status quo. She will discuss two interventions she has been involved in: as designer of Room at the Top, a massively multiplayer game that challenges assumptions about how we collaborate in creative environments, and as a co-founder of the initiative EDIT Media.