Origin Story
Video still from “Liberation”
Shadow Work Media emerged from the 30-year legacy of Global Action Project (GAP), a nonprofit youth media organization based in NYC.
Our methodology and process is informed by the popular education approach and curriculum of GAP, which centered the leadership and voices of youth through intergenerational relationships, media-making, and skill-building.
At GAP, we learned that by writing, producing and directing the stories together, we find intersectional solutions to oppressive problems across communities and identities.
After GAP closed in 2020, we wanted to create an alternative structure to non-profits. We started as a democratically-run media collective that cares for and sustains one another through equal distribution of decision-making and resources. SWM's goal in the next two years is to test different revenue-generating models as a fiscal sponsored project that will lead us to a self-sustaining worker-owned cooperative.