Blogging a Documentary: How Social Media Took Us to Africa

A little over a year ago Jay Grandin met with Danya, a friend from high school, for glass of wine and to hear about her recent MA research with a talented group of street youth in Tanzania.

By the end of the second glass of wine, they had called Jay's partner Leah Nelson and made plans to travel to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in the fall to help the youth record a hip hop album and to document the entire experience on film.

Over the next 4 months, they formed Urban Project, a grassroots non-profit organization bent on supporting youth-focused art projects in urban centers. Then they starting raising the funds they would need to make the project happen.

They used social media tools to get people talking about Urban Project and to spread the word about fundraising events and online donation options.

The result was the recording of a 6-track hip hop album. For their contributions, 18 Dar es Salaam youth were compensated with safe housing for a year and school fees.

Over the course of six weeks, Jay and Leah shot 70 hours of footage and were engaged by hundreds of followers in a real-time project blog. Jay and Leah are now embarking on the next phase of the project which is creating a feature-length documentary and a supporting web series to promote the project and spread the music out to the world!

Jay Grandin and Leah Nelson

Jay Grandin is an industrial designer [accidentally] turned video producer. Leah Nelson is a award-winning filmmaker [intentionally] turned video producer. Together they run Giant Ant Media, a small Vancouver video studio that strives to tell stories of all types in unique ways and help their clients speak, explain, or announce in video.