A: CREDITS

This research and field study was made possible by the contributions of many individuals and organizations.

It was funded by Just Films of Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, with contributions from Ryerson University, IMMERSE, and MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing.

Principal Investigator, MIT Open Documentary Lab	Prof. William Uricchio
Co-Principal Investigator, Lead Researcher, Artistic Director of Co-Creation Studio at MIT ODL	Katerina Cizek
Co-Principal Investigator, Director of MIT Open Documentary Lab	Sarah Wolozin
Field Study written by	Katerina Cizek William Uricchio
Co-Authors	Juanita Anderson Maria Aqui Carter Detroit Narrative Agency Thomas Allen Harris Maori Holmes Prof. Richard Lachman Louis Massiah Cara Mertes Sara Rafsky Michèle Stephenson Amelia Winger-Bearskin Sarah Wolozin
Interviews conducted by	Katerina Cizek Sarah Wolozin Josefina Buschmann Sara Rafksy
Research	Deniz Tortum Sue Ding Sara Rafsky Josefina Buschmann Samuel Mendez Kalila Shapiro Beyza Boyacioglu
Visual Research	Josefina Buschmann Samuel Mendez
DNA Original Photography	Kashira Dowridge
Art Design / Collages / Trailer	Helios Design Lab
MIT PubPub editors/developers	Catherine Ahearn Travis Cohen
Image credits for collages/trailer	Folk Memory Project Mirror\| Mask Iyeppo Repository Priya’s Shakti
Editors	Carl Wilson Suzanne Steele, PhD
Executive Summary Editor	Jay Pitter
Reviewers (and note, all interviewees were offered a chance to review the entire draft document as well)	Prof. Richard Lachman Prof. Elizabeth Miller Kamal Sinclair Prof. Mandy Rose Sam Gregory Monique Simard Gerry Flahive Prof. Patricia Aufderheide Jessica Clarke
Special Thanks to	Cara Mertes Lauren Pabst Kathy Im Chi-hui Yang Salome Asega Barbara Powell Jessica Clark Claudia Romano Andrew Whitacre Gabriella Horvath Sarah E. Smith Prof. Charles Falzon Prof. Richard Lachman Prof. Charles Davis ill weaver paige watikins Kamal Sinclair Prof. Elizabeth Miller Sean Dixon also special thanks to: Hot Docs CPH:DOX Sundance Stories of Change Allied Media Conference MIT-CMS/W i-Docs

B: METHODS

In the interest of accountability, we acknowledge that due to institutional constraints and proximity, this study has two primary authors — a scholar and a documentarian — who are not living at the social locations reflective of where some of this work emerges from.

To begin to address these constraints, our approach to this work was designed to reflect multiple perspectives. Our research team was multidisciplinary, comprised of journalists, technologists, placemakers, researchers, and students who are concerned with the history, relevance and opportunity of collective methods. Additionally, we intentionally sought out the experti se of people from historically marginalized communities from within and outside academia. We invited co-authors to write chapters and participate in the conversations, and in one case we were invited to enter into a written community benefit agreement. Finally, we embarked on an extensive participatory reviewing and editing phase of this document.

We used a hybrid set of methods, with a first phase of exploratory, open-ended, one-on-one interviews with key practitioners and stakeholders (including a snowball methodology to help identify other potential participants/projects). We combined this approach with a second phase informed by participatory design that involved group discussions. The geographic scope of the project was significantly limited to North America although several projects and people reside elsewhere in the world. Further, many participants referenced work tied to their ancestral and diasporic communities.

Some of the questions posed in this study are based on 20 years of the team’s co-creative experience. This includes Katerina Cizek’s decade-long sojourn at the National Film Board of Canada where she worked on two long-form co-creative documentary projects which involved in-person and on-line communities, and were inter-disciplinary, as well as involving non-human systems. After Professor William Uricchio and director Sarah Wolozin invited Cizek to join the MIT Open Documentary Lab as a visiting artist in 2015, the team soon recognized a need for a hub to document, research, incubate, and support co-creative practices. Work on the Co-Creation Studio was begun with seed funding from MacArthur Foundation, with the idea and funding for this field study originating with JustFilms at the Ford Foundation.

The team sought to take positive measures to arrive at a field study that is reflective, as much as possible, of a wide range of worthy work, of politically challenging content, and actionable tools. This field study sought to:

Document historical and contemporary co-creation projects;
Identify risks and tensions as well as practical approaches;
Co-define co-creation practice and principles;
Highlight types of co-creation occurring across media disciplines and adjacent fields; and
Showcase exceptional projects.

Most importantly, this worked is shaped by many. Author and place-maker Jay Pitter guided the MIT symposium, and contributed invaluable key questions as well as a framework for the Executive Summary. Further, this report includes chapters that highlight the first-person voices of the Detroit Narrative Agency (DNA), Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Louis Massiah, and an extended excerpt from a conversation between Thomas All a n Harris, Michèle Stephenson, Maori Holmes, Maria Agui Carter, and Juanita Anderson. The report also features papers and Spotlights (case studies) written by Sarah Wolozin, Dr. Richard Lachman, and Sara Rafsky. The report is polyvocal in that it is primarily built of direct quotes from over 100 interviews and discussions .

Approach

This field study is based on individual interviews, group discussions, focus groups, a literature review, and the development of a project database. We also held a larger convening, which included facilitated breakout sessions. We conducted formal, open-ended interviews with 99 individuals, and 10 group discussions and/or focus groups, involving 71 people (some were had also been interviewed individually), between July 2017 and Dec 2018. A total of 160 individuals participated in the study. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded according to themes. The draft manuscript was also peer-reviewed and made accessible for review to all participants quoted in the study.

In the first phase of the study, we conducted individual interviews, reviewed literature and projects, and held group discussions with projects identified as case studies.

The participants in this phase were identified as key informants (via a snowball methodology) and as diverse experts in co-creative methodologies. We sought diverse participants in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and educational background. The participants were drawn mostly from the U.S. and Canada although some interviewees reside elsewhere. These transcripts were coded to identify key themes and to distill recommendations.

During this phase, we also undertook a co-design and co-research process with DNA who invited us to participate in a community benefits agreement process (for details, see Appendices for the agreement). This agreement spelled out the terms of how we would co-design research questions, how together we would conduct group interviews, as well as outlining an approval process with all participants for all images and words used in the final document. On DNA’s request we adapted the MIT consent forms. We also identified the terms of how the budget would be allocated, who would be involved in our workshops, and how money would be spent while the MIT team was in Detroit (for example, prioritizing Black-owned suppliers, hotels, caterers). Our work together resulted in three group interviews, two photo sessions, and two multi-day mentoring workshops to support the development of the DNA films. Under this agreement and budget, we invited renowned filmmakers Lisa Jackson and Michèle Stephenson to join us, to give master classes, screenings, and to mentor filmmaking teams in Detroit. The budget also covered the travel and accommodation for DNA’s filmmakers to come to the MIT Symposium in September 2018 to participate and present the work.

In the second phase of the study, we assembled small focus groups at six larger industry convenings to review the key themes identified from the individual interviews. We also held a larger convening, Collective Wisdom, at MIT in September 2018, where we held 12 facilitated breakout discussions. These conversations were documented by facilitators and summarized by Dr. Richard Lachman. Additionally, we held a group discussion facilitated by Jay Pitter to close a conversation about Co-Creation and Racial Justice that emerged at the convening.

During our review phase, we asked 20 people to review the document, and offered all participants who we quoted to have access to the draft for their comments and review. All participants signed informed consent forms, and the research team also signed a community benefits agreement with Detroit Narrative Agency, to outline the terms of the research.

We collected and analyzed secondary data, including the development of a database of 261 organizations and projects, and developed a reading l ist of 222 publi cations. As additional research output, we also created visualizations, interactive tools to further explore study data and findings such as associated terms, and the database of projects. We will continue to publish longer selections from the interviews we conducted, and will open our publications for moderated reader comments as a means of continuing the conversations.

As there is no determined definition of the field’s boundaries, and no widely accepted characterization of participants in the field, it was impossible to conduct a random selection of individuals. Therefore, as with any non-random sample, our findings should not be assumed to be representative of the entire field.

C: LIST of Individual Interviews

First Name	Last Name	Affiliation	Date of Interview
Carmen	Aguilar y Wedge	Co-founder, Experience Designer, Creative Director, Hyphen Labs	Oct 18 2018
Memo	Akten	Computational Artist and Researcher	Feb 5 2018
Afua	Akua	Musician, Media Artist; Third World Newsreel, Board Member	Dec 27 2017
Christopher	Allen	UnionDocs Founder, Executive Artistic Director	Sept 29 2017
Macky	Alston	Documentary Filmmaker	via email, 2018
Shirin	Anlen	Narrative Technologist	May 17, 2018
Salome	Asega	Visual Artist and Researcher; Ford Foundation Creativity and Free Expression Technology Fellow	June 18 2018
Joseph	Ayerle	Artist, Photographer, Filmmaker, Author	via email, August 2018
Ashley	Baccus-Clark Sanders	Co-founder, Creative Director, Hyphen Labs; speculative neuroscientist	Oct 18 2018
Sarah	Bassett	Director of Urbanism and Founder at Peoples Culture; Artist, Fireflies	July 18 2018
Emily	Bell	Founding Director, Tow Centre for Journalism	Aug 22 2018
David	Bowen	Artist	Aug 24 2018
Jessica	Brillhart	Immersive Director, writer, and theorist	May 25 2018
Malachy	Browne	Senior Story Producer, The New York Times	Oct 31 2017
Paolo	Cardini	Associate Professor of industrial design, Rhode Island School of Design	Nov 30 2017
Vincent	Carelli	Founder and Director, Video nas Aldeias; Documentary Filmmaker	Nov 3 2017
Sougwen	Chung	Artist and technologist; Resident at New Museum, Google, Bell Labs	Oct 24 2018
Jessica	Clark	Founder/Director, Dot Connector Studio	Oct 10 2017
Matthew	Claudel	Architect, Designer, Urban planner, Technologist	Oct 6 2017
Toby	Coffey	Head of Digital Development, National Theatre	May 19 2018
Simon	Colton	Professor of Computational Creativity at Goldsmiths College, University of London	Sept 7 2018
David	Cope	Musician, AI composer	Aug 22 2018
Sasha	Costanza-Chock	Associate Professor of Civic Media, MIT; cofounder, Research Action Design	March 23 2018
Heather	Croall	Director and CEO at Adelaide Fringe	Oct 24 2017
Gina	Czarnecki	Artist, Consultant and Founding Director, The Koffin Company Ltd.	May 15 2018
Andre	Deak	Specialist in new languages & innovation at Liquid Media Lab; Professor at ESPM	Oct 10 2017
Stephanie	Dinkins	Transdisciplinary AI Artist	Aug 9 2018
Fred	Dust	Former Partner at IDEO, Designer, Author	Jan 25 2018
Ernest	Edmonds	Multidisciplinary artist and computer scientist	Aug 15 2018
Yasmin	Eleyat	Co-Founder and CMO, Scatter	July 13 2018
Gerry	Flahive	Writer, Producer Consultant, Owner at Modern Story	Dec 20 2017
Sam	Ford	Director of Cultural Intelligence, Simon &Schuster	Oct 30 2017
Jonathan	Franz	Lead producer, Director of Photography, Edge of the Knife	Sept 13 2017
Jennifer	Gabrys	Chair in Media, Culture, and Environment, University of Cambridge	Aug 17 2018
Babitha	George	Partner, Quicksand	Nov 15 2017
Jennifer	Gradecki	Artist-theorist; Assistant Professor at Northeastern University	Aug 24 2018
Sam	Gregory	Program director of Witness	Sept 26 2017
Alexandra	Halkin	Director, Americas Media Initiative; Co-founder Chiapas Media Project	Nov 22 2017
Domhnaill	Hernon	VP, Head of Experiments in Art and Technology at Nokia Bell Labs	Aug 17 2018
WhiteFeather	Hunter	Artist/Researcher working with biological systems	Aug 22 2018
Tabitha	Jackson	Director of the Documentary Film Program at Sundance Institute	Oct 16 2017
Lisa	Jackson	Filmmaker	Jan 26, 2018
Anandana	Kapur	Filmmaker and social scientist	Oct 24 2017
Heather	Kelley	Media artist and video game designer	Aug 20 2018
Judy	Kibinge	Filmmaker, Founder of East African Documentary Film Fund (DOCUBOX)	via email, April 2018
Ingrid	Kopp	Co-Director, Electric South	Sept 29 2017
Julia	Kumari Drapkin	CEO and Founder, ISeeChange	June 21 2018
Agnieszka	Kurant	Conceptual Interdisciplinary Artist	July 18 2018
Lucas	LaRochelle	Multidisciplinary Designer, Srtist, and Researcher	June 5 2018
Michelle	Latimer	Filmmaker, Actor, Director	May 3 2018
Sheila	Leddy	Executive Director, The Fledgling Fund	July 10 2018
Grace	Lee	Filmmaker	July 10
Anita	Lee	Executive Producer, English Program (Ontario Centre), National Film Board of Canada	Oct 1 2018
Wendy	Levy	Executive Director, Alliance for Media Arts + Culture; Founder/director of New Arts Axis	August 18 2017, Dec 21 2017
Jason	Lewis	University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary at Concordia University; Co-director, Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace	May 8 2018
Loira	Limball	Vice-President, Firelight Media	July 23 2018
Fei	Liu	Artist	Aug 20 2018
Cynthia	Lopez	Executive Director of New York Women in Film & Television	July 5 2018
Jennifer	MacArthur	Founder, Borderline Media, Co-Founder Impact Producers Group	Oct 17 2017
Carlos	Martinas de la Serna	Program Director, Committee to Protect Journalists	May 29 2018
Louis	Massiah	Executive Director, Scribe Video Center	Dec 20 2018
Jonathan	May	Arts Programme Manager, Creative Economy at British Council	Oct 27 2017
Lauren	McCarthy	Artist and Programmer	Aug 24 2018
Jonathan	McCormack	Artist	August 16 2018
Jigar	Mehta	Video journalist, documentary filmmaker; Co-creator of 18 Days in Egypt	Oct 12 2017
Cara	Mertes	Director, JustFilms at Ford Foundation	Via email, Dec 2018
Elizabeth	Miller	Documentary maker; Professor of Communication Studies, Concordia University	August 25, 2017
Opeyemi	Olukemi	Executive Producer, POV Spark; Vice President, Interactive at American Documentary	Nov 9 2017
Stephanie	Pareira	Director, NEW INC at New Museum of Contemporary Art	July 6 2018
Lisa	Parks	Professor of Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Jan 3 2018
Andre	Paz	Researcher and creative director of interactive documentaries; professor at UNIRIO; editorial coordinator bug404 .	Nov 3 2017
Nick	Pilarski	Artist, Fireflies	July 18 2018
Michael	Premo	Artist, Photo Journalist, FIlmmaker, Storyline	Mar 1, 2018
Helen	Pritchard	Head of Digital Arts Computing and Lecturer in Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London	Aug 24 2018
Mandy	Rose	Associate Professor, University of West England’s School of Film & Journalism; Co-director, i-Docs;Director, Digital Cultures Research Center	Sept 21 2018
Liz	Rosenthal	Founder and CEO, Power to the Pixel; Programmer, Venice Film Festival virtual reality section	Oct 24 2017
James	Rutenbeck	Filmmaker	July 19 2018
Leonie	Sandercock	Co-writer, Edge of the Knife ; Professor at the School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia	Sept 24 2017
Ellen	Schneider	Founding Director, Active Voice Lab	May 30 2018
Ana	Serrano	Chief Digital Officer, Canadian Film Center; Managing Director, IDEABOOST	June 29 2018
Monique	Simard	Former CEO of SODEC; former Director of French Programming at the National Film Board of Canada , Member of the Federal Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Pnael	March 2 2018
Kamal	Sinclair	Director, Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Lab Programs	August 23, 2017
Caroline	Sinder	Artist	Aug 22 2018
Stephen	Smith	Executive Director, University of Southern California Shoah Foundation	April 11 2018
Lina	Srivastava	Founder and Director, Creative Impact and Experience Lab; Co-founder, Regarding Humanity	June 27 2018
Ece	Tankal	Creative Director, Architect; Co-founder, Co-Captain at Hyphen Labs	Oct 18 2018
Tzara	Tristana	Danish Film Institute	Dec 18 2018
Lynette	Wallworth	Artist, Director	Aug 6 2018
Lance	Weiler	Artist; Founding Member and Director, Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University	June 29 2018
Bruno	Weis	Communications Coordinator, ISA (Instituto Socioambiental)	Nov 1 2017
Hank	Willis Thomas	Conceptual Artist	July 7 2018
Amelia	Winger-Bearskin	Director of Product, Decoded; Founding Executive Director, IDEA New Rochelle	May 23, 2018
Samim	Winiger	AI artist	Aug 22 2018
Tricia	Wong	Anthropologist	Jan 5 2018
Mengqi	Zhang	Filmmaker, dancer, The Memory Project	June 12 2018
Patricia	Zimmermann	Author, Historian, Theorist; Professor of Screen Studies, School of Communications at Ithaca College	May 24 2018
Ethan	Zuckerman	Associate Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Director, Center for Civic Media at MIT Media Lab	Nov 13 2017
Marina	Zurkow	Media Artist; Faculty member,Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University	Aug 22 2018
Cade		Project lead, Data Detox at Tactical Technology Collective	Aug 23 2018

D: LIST of Group Interviews

Date	Name		Location
Dec 11 2017	Group Interview by DNA about DNA (allied Media Projects staff)		Detroit, Michigan
	Jenny	Lee
	ill	weaver
	paige	wakins
	morgan	willis

Date	Name		Location
Dec 13 2017	Group Interview by DNA about DNA (fellows)		Detroit, Michigan
	ill	weaver
	paige	watkins
	Willie Orlando	Ford
	Bree Gant	Gant
	Alicia	Diaz

	Cierra	Burks
	Natasha	Tamate Weiss
	Atieno	Nyar Kasagam

Date	Name		Location
	Focus Group facilitated by Sarah Wolozin at		CPH: DOX, Copenhagen DK
	Daniel	Oxenhandler
	Kristian	Martini
	Suvi	Helminen

Date	Name		Location
March 22, 2018	Focus Group facilitated by William Uricchio		i-Docs, Bristol UK
	Kate	Nash
	Liz	Miller
	Brian	Winston
	Michelle	Hessell
	Mandy	Rose
	Paolo	Favero

Date	Name			Location
April 11, 2018	Focus Group facilitated by Katerina Cizek			Skoll World Forum, Oxford, UK
	Tabitha	Jackson	Sundance Institute
	Scarlett	Robertson	Sundance Institute
	Richard	Perez	Sundance Institute
	Fred	Dust	IDEO
	David	Young	Ai Designer, New School
	Megan	Chapman	Co-Founder / Co-Director, Justice & Empowerment Initiatives
	Bisola	Temitope Akinmuyiwa,	Community Paralegal, Nigeria, Justice & Empowerment Initiatives
	Topaz	Adizes	Creative Director, Skin Deep
	Judy	Kapinge	Director, Docubox
	Ellen	Schneider
	Sohini	Bhattacharya	Breakthrough
	Patti	Parson	PBS Newshour/Managing Producer
	Brett	Gaylor	Mozilla Foundation, filmmaker

Date	Name			Location
April 24, 2018	Focus Group at MIT ODL			Cambridge, Mass
	Eleanor	Whitley	Marshmallow Laser Feast
	Sandra	Rodriguez	Scholar, Artist, MIT open Documentary Lab
	Ersin	Han Ersin	Marshmallow Laser Feast
	Cindy	Bishop	Technologist, Center for Civic Media, MIT Open Documentary Lab
	Danny	Goldfield	Photographer, MIT Open Documentary Lab

	Rashin	Fahandej	Artist, MIT Open Documentary Lab
	Libby	Falck	Student, MIT CMS
	Anandana	Kapur	Artist, MIT Open Documentary Lab
	Minah	Worley	Producer, MIT Open Documentary Lab
	Carles	Sora	Artist and Scholar, MIT Open Documentary Lab
	Josefina	Buschmann	Graduate Student, MIT CMS, MIT Open Documentary Lab
	Sultan	Shariff	Graduate Student, MIT CMS

Date	Name			Location
April 30, 2018	Focus Group facilitated by Katerina Cizek			Hot Docs, Toronto Ontario
	Cara	Mertes	Just Films, Ford Foundation
	Chi-Hui	Yang	Just Films, Ford Foundation
	Assia	Boundaoui	Filmmaker
	Jay	Pitter	Placemaker, Author
	Samara	Grace	Filmmaker
	Elizabeth	Radshaw	Hot Doc Film Festival

	Lisa	Jackson	Filmmaker
	Svetla	Turnin	Cinema Politica
	Hao	Wu	Filmmaker
	Elan	Bogarin	Filmmaker
	Jonathan	Bogarin	Filmmaker
	Troy	Herion	FIlmmaker
	Claire	Aguilar	International Documentary Association
	Rashin	Fahande	Artist, Fellow at MIT Open Documentary Lab

Date	Name	Location
June 16, 2018	large focus group facilitated by Sarah Wolozin and Katerina Cizek	Allied Media Conference, Detroit

Date	Name	Location
Sept 22, 2018	Collective Wisdom Symposium Breakouts facilitated by Dr. Richard Lachman
	Facilitators
	Brett Story,	Filmmaker, Professor, Ryerson University
	Elizabeth Miller	Filmmaker, Professor, Concordia University
	Mandy Rose	Professor, Bristol University
	Assia Boundaoui	Filmmaker
	Blake Fitzpatrick,	Professor, Ryerson University
	Kathryn McKenzie	Ryerson University
	Henry Navarro	Professor, Ryerson University
	Jessica Clark	Dot Connector Studio
	Michael Premo	Filmmaker
	Josefina Buschmann	RA MIT Open Documentary Lab, Graduate Student, CMS
	Cindy Bishop	Technologist, MIt Center for Civic Media

	Rashin Fahandej	Artist, Fellow at MIT Open Documentary Lab

Date	Name		Location
Dec 14, 2018	Round Table Group Discussion designed and facilitated by Jay Pitter
	Michèle Stephenson	Filmmaker, Author, Educator
	Thomas All a n Harris	Filmmaker, Educator
	Maria Agui Carter	Filmmaker, Professor T Emerson
	Maori Holmes	Filmmaker, Curator, BlackStar Festival
	Juanita Anderson	Filmmaker, Professor, Wayne State University

Credits, Methods, List of Interviews and Group Discussions

A: CREDITS

B: METHODS

Approach

C: LIST of Individual Interviews

D: LIST of Group Interviews