YouthLAB (Listening Across Borders) is a unique summer institute that brought together 23 young people from Chicago and Barbados in a virtual contact zone to create a collaborative online cinema project on the living legacies of slavery. Mindy Faber is the Director of YouthLAB (www.youthlab.net), Matt Schick is the Web Developer, Mela Berger is the Barbados Facilitator and Mary Trimble is the Evaluator. YouthLAB is a project of Open Youth Networks (www.openyouthnetworks). It is made possible by grants from the McCormick Tribune Foundation and individual contributors.

The Pre-YouthLAB Digital Training Institute took place at the Caribbean Institute for Culture and Healing Arts in Barbados from July 9th-13th . Mindy Faber and Mela Berger were joined by Youth member, Zane Scheuerlein and Dr. Pedro Welch, Professor of History from the University of the West Indies. The catalyst for this youth investigative citizen journalism work is the mark of the 200th anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. (This event has been marked by a series of events throughout the Caribbean, Britain and parts of the US.)

Participants in YouthLAB explore the question: Do you believe that the legacy of slavery explains the racism, culture or inequalities of today?” They will conduct this investigation in their own communities and contexts and will share their perspectives and research through online citizen journalism and participatory media practices. This opulent mix of new digital communication methods include:(google maps mashups, blogs, podcasts, on line chats, high resolution video streaming through Democracy.tv and a range of new peer-to-peer social networking and digital sharing technologies [Facebook, WordPress, Flickr, Creative Commons])