As creative entrepreneurs of color, we constantly ask: How can we transform the world while self-determining? This inquiry is at the heart of Media Sutra’s founding and continues to shape our evolution. Through vision, action and reflection, we’ve formed three pillars that can uphold our creative entrepreneurship and foster self-determination.
BE CREATIVE
Film Production • Documentary • Narrative • Music Videos • Animation • Graphic Design • Events • Photography • Branding • Transformative Storytelling • Narrative Shift • Messaging
BE CREATIVE to BECOME VISIBLE.
- Be Creative means to activate imagination to vision and manifest big, bold dreams, unbound by the limitations of oppression and trauma.
- Become Visible means to embrace and take pride in sharing beautiful and powerful stories that speak to our visions, experiences, ideas, art and ancestry.
Radical Imagination
A tradition spearheaded by Black organizers and organizers of color, we rely on the power of “Radical Imagination,” which, to us, means dreaming into and working towards a future we have not experienced yet. This process is inherently creative, and takes community, time, trust and faith to practice.
“Oftentimes dreaming gets reduced to the individual process of envisioning something different. Dreams can have transformative impact, though, if we put in the work.”
Robin D.G. Kelley, Author of “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination”
OUR
CREW
Film Production
As filmmakers and storytellers of color, our work is firmly grounded in advancing social justice movements and building a solidarity economy. Documentary is a powerful medium that can activate vision, change and action. Media Sutra’s documentary films are issue and character driven, where we work with communities to boldly tell their own stories. Through innovative approaches to filmmaking, we also leverage our creativity to practice new and exciting ways of telling stories. In partnership with clients and communities, we co-create stories to realize racial, gender, economic and educational justice.
Transformative Storytelling
Our Transformative Storytelling methodology is informed by deep relationship and trust building, intentional listening, and co-creation of narratives to foster an authentic portrayal of the communities we center. Our approach places us within the story development process in order to understand ourselves and our relationship with the emerging story, allowing us to shift consciousness, better understand and relate to issue areas, people, and places featured in our stories.
Elements & Practices of Transformative Storytelling
Releasing Ego • Building Community • Understanding & Challenging Stereotypes • Building Trust • Power of Intuitive Listening • Diverse Voices • Understanding Framing & Cultural Models • Beauty & Magic
Some of Our Partners
BE STRATEGIC
Values & Vision Alignment • Cooperative Entrepreneurship • Relationship Mapping • Resource Mobilization • Transformative Investing • Redefine Risk & Return • Facilitation • Development • Strategic Planning • Training
BE STRATEGIC to BECOME SUSTAINABLE.
- Be Strategic means to turn visions into actionable plans, anticipate opportunities, transcend barriers, shift from analysis to practice and intuit breakthrough solutions.
- Become Sustainable means to tap into the power of relationships to be abundantly resourced, release urgency and grind culture, and center wellness.
Strategic Work
Our strategic work centers a reparations framework, which for us means repairing harm and returning extracted resources to Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. We practice ways of being that are values-aligned to create structures and policies that move us toward a solidarity economy. We partner with clients and communities to disrupt and dismantle white supremacy culture, replacing it with one rooted in our ancestral wisdom and fueled by our most radical imagination. We specifically focus on resource mobilization because we understand that dreams alone will not get us to freedom and justice. BIPOC communities must have ownership of the resources we need to actualize our visions. We strive to be well and build community wealth.
Solidarity Economy
In a Solidarity Economy, relationships are our greatest currency. All of our needs are met and we experience harmony when we are in right relationship with ourselves, each other and the natural world. When we center the practice of relationship building, we restore wholeness. We move in solidarity, loving, trusting and caring for each other. In solidarity, we center and protect those most at risk and we leverage resources to take increased risk for our collective thriving. Solidarity fuels a sustainable world where land, wealth and power are shared equitably.
Resource Mobilization
Resource Mobilization is not only about fundraising, it also pushes us to reclaim stolen wealth and restore right relationship to build a solidarity economy. We strive to share power across race, class, gender, and other identities. We center trust-based, relational ways of moving money to foster solidarity, not charity.
Through strategy, creative practice and healing we re-indigenize our relationship to land, wealth, and power to flow harmoniously with people and planet.
“Reparation demands a total reorganization of the economy. The measure of the success of that reorganization is the well-being of those upon whose lands, bodies and legacies the Extractive Economy was built. And to achieve that, our movements must center the vision and leadership of those communities.”
Movement Generation’s Just Transition Zine
Our Projects
TRANSFORMATIVE INVESTING PRINCIPLES
A set of principles to guide young people with wealth to redefine “investing,” divest from Wall Street, and invest in in a solidarity economy that works for all.
Co-created in partnership with Resource Generation
PATH TO FREEDOM: A SOLIDARITY ECONOMY EXCHANGE
Path to Freedom is a Media Sutra project designed to return extracted resources to Black Women Creative Entrepreneurs who are scaling their own visions for a solidarity economy.
In partnership with the Wealth Reclamation Academy of Practitioners (WRAP)
Some of Our Strategic Clients
BE TRANSFORMATIVE
Coaching • Workshops • Retreats • Fearless, Abundant Bold • Breakdown to Breakthrough • Leadership • Embodied Practice • Trauma-informed • Facilitation • Ancestral Wisdom
BE STRATEGIC to BECOME SUSTAINABLE.
- Be Transformative means to fundamentally shift how we show up in the world through a trauma-informed approach that enables us to heal into our most Fearless Abundant and Bold selves
- Become Impactful means to fully embody our vision and values to deepen and expand our impact as architects of change.
Transformative Leadership
People are the ultimate drivers of deep and lasting change. Our transformative approach supports social justice movement leaders and creative entrepreneurs to embody the change we wish to see in the world. By using a trauma-informed approach, we ensure a holistic view of ourselves, our histories, all of our relations, and our future visions. We support people to restore wholeness by bringing our full selves into a process of healing from internalized oppression and trauma. As we break down and release what is not working and no longer serving us, we are able to reclaim basic human competencies, and are better positioned to live into a breakthrough vision that centers what we most desire and deserve. Our work is informed by the Standing in Our Power Breakdown to Breakthrough framework, which Media Sutra Principal, Taij Moteelall, co-created with over twenty women and gender resistant people of color.
Elements of our Trauma-Informed Approach
Surrendering to Ego • Spiritual Practice • Consent • Sankofa: Looking Back to Look Forward • Storytelling • Building Trust • Right Relationship • Mindset Shift • Embodied Practice • Grieving & Releasing • Visioning • Dreaming • Attention to Intuition • Healing in Community • Joyful Abundance • Gratitude • Rest, Play, Ease • Reclaiming Ancestral Wisdom • Creative Expression
Healing Justice
Created by Cara Page and the Kindred Healing Justice Collective, “Healing justice…identifies how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence, and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds.” – BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective).
“Trauma healing unlocks our creative potential. When we heal, we are able to bring our full selves into the current moment…It unlocks an incredible creative and imaginable potential…that’s what we need to think through and imagine new strategies that we haven’t before”
Prentis Hemphill
FAB Framework
FAB (Fearless, Abundant, Bold) is a coaching methodology that supports creative entrepreneurs of color to launch and sustain a profitable business doing what we love in order to thrive. By finding and or focusing on a niche (secret sauce), taking up space, and boldly asking for what we are worth, creative entrepreneurs can break out of feast or famine mode and sustainably scale our entities to impact change in the world.
Our FAB Immersion help participants to:
- Connect purpose and passion to thrive spiritually, creatively, and financially
- Transform limiting beliefs into liberating belief
- Create stories that expand our reach and base
- Strategically increase earned income, donations, & investments;
- Build a thriving tribe of co-creators
- Release burnout & grind culture to truly experience joy & fulfillment
FEARLESS
Being fearless does not mean we live and lead without fear. We simply face our fears to fear less. FEAR stands for Face Everything And Rise. When we are in relationship with our fears, we begin to fear less and less. With each step forward, we become fearless, and life becomes limitless.
ABUNDANT
Being abundant means we acknowledge there is enough for all. As we release feelings of “not enough-ness,” we shift our inner narrative from one of scarcity to one of prosperity, we call what we deserve and desire into the universe and the universe provides.
BOLD
Being bold means claiming and taking up the space we deserve so that we are seen, felt, heard and loved. All of us have authentic and inspiring stories, passions, and visions. When we are empowered to share them creatively, we build beloved communities in which we activate meaningful and impactful change.
