the Who

Audience

People interested in media as community-building projects; the community the lives around the featured store and their neighborhood association; San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance; any member of the general public interested in the transactions that take place within commercial spaces.

- ER

Community Involvement and Ethics

Our film will explore corner stores as community centers, while creating ethnography of the stores as a social space.  A central goal of creating this film is to portray our collaborators in an ethical, honest way. This type of methodology is based on the work around Community Based Participatory Research, which requires that we maintain open and clear communication with our service community (Bernard, 2006).  Our film will rely on our collaborations with the owner/workers of the store, the regular and irregular customers, and other members of the local area interested in working with us.

Thus far our fieldwork has largely consisted of research.  We have found two locations to use for our film, Oak Gourmet and S&W Market, in the Lower Haight/Hayes Valley neighborhoods in San Francisco.  We will provide an analytical ethnographic film that studies the relationships corner stores and their workers have to their customers, their respective neighborhoods, and the city of San Francisco.  Our film will provide an insight into the cultural and economic importance of choosing corner stores as opposed to corporately operated chain stores.

- AM

Communication and PR

In addition to this blog,  we will update with video which will chronicle the progress of our film for anyone interested.  Our project will also have a Facebook page, and we will use them both to spread the word about our work.  Our Facebook group online in which team members will share ideas and progress over the semester as well as a public Facebook page for our film in progress that we’ll leave up for publicity. Be it the people who are going to be in the film, people around the neighborhood, or people who help with our fundraisers and in the making for the film, they can easily find and access the Facebook page and keep in touch with the group.

As previously mentioned, CBPR ethics require complete transparency about research methods and tactics.  Please check out our first video on our YouTube channel.

- AM & ES