One Page Summary

During the last decade, social media has become one of the most powerful means for influencing political and social developments on local and global scales. It has been both a tool for political manipulation as well as a means to individual self-empowerment, allowing creative ways of sharing personal stories, directly participating in social and political happenings and taking influence on the perception of the world around us. It has already contributed largely to the media coverage of the refugee crisis during recent years, has shed light on many developments within it and will continue to do so. It should therefore be understood how socially engaged media content can be produced, shared, liked, spread and viewed as many times as possible.

Forelle Social Media Lab intends to build a large network of migrants, creatives and experts to exchange knowledge about the underlying framework of successful social media appearances and to produce experimental social media content. We believe this phenomenon is worth to be explored and experimented with, in order to make it useful as a tool for migrants communities.

Forelle Studio is an existing collective of creatives, all of whom are already involved in various projects dealing with the social integration of refugees in one way or another. The studio exists as a laboratory for artists and we are looking to enhance the social media aspect of it. With additional funding, we are planning to set up the Forelle Social Media Lab as an additional space for the experimental production of social media content to enhance the social integration of refugees.

We are already working closely together with organisations for migrants such as the AWO, the GeWoBag, the local ‘Quartiersmanagement’ for refugees and will be using these networks to populate our events, seminars, lectures based on the needs and desires of young refugees. The Forelle Social Media Lab intends to be an educative facility to create networks between stakeholders in the direct social work of the refugee world, experts in social media content production and creatives. We will organise lectures and seminars held Instagram influencers and vloggers. There will be workshops on story telling and experimental video production. During these workshops we will set up a YouTube channel, produce and stream a first series of 10 experimental video episodes, deal with the sharing of the content on various social media platforms and collect likes. We believe that this interdisciplinary and participatory approach of our studio will create a diverse, creative and productive environment, a place of happenings and gatherings.

Our lab aims at overcoming the physical challenges of bringing together migrants and non-migrants communities. It is not about making the effort of volunteering or attending an event but rather connecting people using nothing else than a phone. However, from the simple use of the phone camera to creating a successful youtube channel followed buy thousands of individuals, there is an important step to be taken. This is where we will intervene. We want to bring strategies and quality to these phone made videos, helping participants to narrate their story whether it is via a news channel or a personal Instagram story. We will provide assistance with setting up production workshops, experimenting with special effects or using light and sounds in order to vehicle a clear and exciting message.