Our creative labs, festivals and workshops are an opportunity to celebrate local, regional and international visual heritage and learn how to break away from established colonial gazes while learning visual heritage to tell personal visual stories effectively.
The labs consist of two elements: inspiration and action: working, editing and developing your own work as a participant. The labs are led by Laura Beltrán Villamizar (NPR/Native) in collaboration with additional facilitators that change based upon location.
Inspiration: Native wants connect its storytellers in a space where we can discuss creative ways to approach stories, develop ideas on how to reclaim spaces that are not representative of us and learn the best practices on how to use technology, audio and video to communicate stories effectively. Understanding photography as a colonial practice, along with its power dynamics, will be the basis of this lab.
Action: Native wants participants to see their work printed and not only on screen. Young photographers have hardly ever edited or seen their work in print, so working with prints is a crucial aspect of the workshop.
We actively work with everyone's images by providing feedback on how to edit stories and why. We will discuss local and regional narratives and what works best for different audiences. The Action element invites participants to look at each other’s work and critically learn how to read and elaborate visual stories.
Other topics often covered in our workshops include: race and representation, photography as a colonial practice, how to work with editors and pitch stories effectively, grant and contest best practices, as well as the importance of personal voice.
Workshop and Exhibition at Grün Berlin | Berlin, Germany | June 2020
In collaboration with Grün Berlin, Native presents a workshop for two student classes alongside an exhibit exploring the work of six Latin American Native photographers under the theme of a "Changing Environment".
Exhibition at Grün Berlin | Berlin, Germany | August 2019
In collaboration with Grün Berlin, this exhibit explored how territory can be explained as a physical line, a spiritual space or a mental state, while the environment touches on notions of climate and our relation to how it's changing. Both themes, territory and environment, were taken to infinite interpretations.Women’s Media Leadership Bootcamp | Naivasha, Kenya | January 2019
In collaboration with the International Women’s Media Foundation and WAN-IFRA. Sarah Waiswa and Alison Baskerville joined as co-facilitators.
Creative Lab | Lagos, Nigeria | August 2018
In collaboration with African Artists’ Foundation, Blink and the International Women’s Media Foundation.
Native Documentary Photo Festival | Quito, Ecuador | March 2017
In collaboration with the International Women’s Media Foundation and Colegio de Comunicación y Artes Contemporáneas del Universidad San Francisco de Quito