Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media for Equity and Justice, an MIT Press trade book released Nov. 1, 2022.
COLLECTIVE WISDOM BOOK
BOOK
By Katerina Cizek and William Uricchio, with co-authors Juanita Anderson, Maria Agui Carter, Detroit Narrative Agency, Thomas Allen Harris, Maori Karmael Holmes, Richard Lachman, Louis Massiah, Cara Mertes, Sara Rafsky, Michèle Stephenson, Amelia Winger-Bearskin and Sarah Wolozin.
Co-creation is everywhere: It’s how the internet was built; it generated massive prehistoric rock carvings; it powered the development of vaccines for COVID-19 in record time. Co-creation offers alternatives to the idea of the solitary author privileged by top-down media. But co-creation is easy to miss, as individuals often take credit for—and profit from—collective forms of authorship, erasing whole cultures and narratives as they do so. Collective Wisdom offers the first guide to co-creation as a concept and as a practice, from collaborative journalism to human-AI partnerships to radical, sustained practices of co-creating media within communities and with social movements. The authors explore the urgent need for co-creation across disciplines and organizations, and the latest methods for collaborating with nonhuman systems in biology and technology. Their account demonstrates that co-creation becomes wisdom only when it is grounded in equity and justice.
“Collective Wisdom provides us with a utopian possibility. Through rich references and real-life stories, the coauthors show how our futures are connected and how, if we ignore this, we will face disasters even harder to grasp and control.” – Ai Weiwei
BOOK TRAILER
A trailer for the Collective Wisdom field study and book. (48 s)
FIELD STUDY
This first-of-its-kind field study of the media industry highlights trends, opportunities, and challenges to help advance the understanding and recognition of co-created works and practices. “Collective Wisdom” brings together findings from interviews and conversations with 166 practitioners, thought leaders, and scholars, 222 readings, and 251 media projects. The MIT Press 2022 book is based on this study.
SYMPOSIUM
A three-day multi-disciplinary symposium in 2018, consisting of panels, presentations, screenings, performances, installations and breakout sessions with documentarians, community leaders, journalists, artists, designers, planners, scientists, scholars, funders, and movement builders from across the U.S. and around the world.