Building a Bigger Choir
By Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress
In our April 2022 blog, “Turning Our Gaze Within,” published just a few months after we launched Color Congress, we wrote about the necessity to turn our attention to the ecosystem of people of color (POC) led and serving organizations in the documentary field that had been long neglected, under-funded, and largely unsupported by the broader field, despite the outsized role these organizations have played in steadfastly serving filmmakers and audiences of color no matter which way the political winds blow. This is why our north star, we explained, would be a sharp focus on building and strengthening the POC documentary ecosystem against the various forces that diminish or threaten it.
At the time of our launch the documentary sector was embroiled in a sea of change. Organizations were navigating new norms built for a remote workplace culture, efforts to unionize, and many historically white-led organizations were ushering in their first leaders of color in response to a nationwide reckoning on racial justice. We watched these important efforts, which we understood to be painstaking, emotionally taxing, but necessary work. We asserted that building the future we want to see would require dual efforts–reforming existing structures and building new infrastructures as well. With many organizations focused on important field reforms we decided to “pour our attention, energy, and resources into the spaces that are already equitable, that are already values aligned, that are already committed to strengthening the power of people of color in the field.”
We also knew that the ecosystem of POC-led documentary organizations we aimed to serve were weighted down by underinvestment, which often resulted in leaders who had little capacity and resources to engage in fieldwide advocacy or solidarity. We learned that the bulk of our member organizations were founded by leaders who identify as women, and filmmakers, and who often hold full-time jobs in addition to helming these documentary organizations. Many did not have the resources or time to attend watercooler events in our field, nor were they explicitly invited. And because many member organizations are identity-based or focused on specific regions, they did not by and large know one another when we began meeting as a membership. We understood that learning how to trust one another (despite capitalistic pressures to hold a competitive stance) and ultimately to make collective decisions, and speak with one voice, would take time.
When asked why we would “preach to the choir” at a time of great instability in the documentary field we would respond that good choirs aren’t made overnight. Our membership included bold leaders and organizations, but soloists don’t make a choir — practice does. We have spent the last three years in rehearsals and training, getting to know one another’s voices, caring for our instruments, understanding how our voices coalesce and why they sometimes do not. We needed time to align melodies so that we could eventually make music together.
We’re proud to say that –3 years later– this ecosystem is now more connected across geography and identity. We have poured resources into both member (and some non-member) organizations in the field:
Over $4 million dollars in unrestricted organizational grants
Over $800k in organizational development and technical assistance
50 paid licenses to a fundraising database and CRM
Over $600k to address a member-led intervention in film distribution
We have directed all of these resources in order to stabilize this ecosystem and provide these organizations with some spaciousness to engage in collective work. We’ve begun to build a culture of trust, and we’re fostering relationships of care and accountability to one another. This was possible because we insisted on turning our attention to this ecosystem, gathering regularly in closed-door meetings with a care team on hand, creating low-stakes opportunities to collaborate, and learning to be a community together.
Today, we face a different set of existential threats that go far beyond inequities in the documentary industry. We sounded the alarm in a report published in March 2024 wherein we outlined the twin threats our membership face–of invisibility to the documentary field and to philanthropy, and hyper-visibility as identity-based organizations at a time when race-conscious grantmaking and service provision were under intense scrutiny. In that report, we invited colleagues to join us in conversation about how to prepare for an increasingly hostile climate for our membership. Over the last year we’ve met regularly with a group of funders and industry peers to assess the various threats to the field and formulate ways to respond. And we are in conversation with a number of documentary film and civil society organizations nationally and globally.
Fostering these new relationships is a move away from the internal-facing posture our now 3.5 year old organization launched with. As our membership is growing stronger in solidarity with each other, and the threats now come from a rising authoritarian government that is hostile to the communities that make up our membership, this new outward-facing stance matches the scale of the threats.
In the months and years to come we will be leaning more explicitly into partnership with documentary, journalism, and civil society and social movement organizations in the U.S. The increasing threats to press freedom, rising censorship and surveillance, federal defunding of the arts and humanities, the rise of tech consolidation and unregulated AI, will fundamentally weaken the film sector and curtail the ability for all filmmakers regardless of background to make socially engaged nonfiction work. In order to address these threats we must form new coalitions.
And while we are naturally focused on the erosion of rights in our backyard, we understand that the challenges we face are not ours alone. Rising xenophobia as a result of migration due to climate change, authoritarianism, and extractive economies that benefit the billionaire class and make life untenable for working families– are all global concerns. And though our intervention remains national in scope, our membership already reflects the global majority, with many organizations that serve diasporas and work across borders. By building global partnerships and alliances, we learn from our peers who face — or have faced — similar challenges, we strengthen our analysis of these challenges, and we are more prepared to ensure documentary remains a powerful tool for popular education and social change.
In our August 2022 essay, The Evolution of Impact: The Future of Social Change and Nonfiction Storytelling, we suggested that social change is not produced by a single film or impact campaign — it requires deep engagement over time. We believe durable change “is premised on relationships and trust and community. It requires repeated encounters with people and ideas that are pointing in a new direction. We should use film to spark new understanding among audiences that are already in community with others who have a commitment to the intended change. Because when people have the opportunity to turn new ideas over and examine them in-relationship, that is a more reliable and sustainable way to ensure those ideas become more and more embodied.”
Now that we’ve built a strong and growing membership of organizations committed to this vision, and in relationship with each other, we are ready to partner with peers and allies in this country and abroad who share our vision for a more just future.
Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress co-direct the Color Congress, an ecosystem-builder that resources, supports, connects, and champions organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the United States and US islands.
