Email: [email protected]
Phone number: 778 861 7374
Your Location: Gastown, Vancouver
Company or Affiliation: Gen Why Media
Website: www.genwhymedia.ca
Other contact info: [email protected] (Tara Mahoney)
Your Awesome Shit: see attachment
Fiona Rayher, Co-founder and Artistic Director of Gen Why Media ( http://www.genwhymedia.ca/ ), is inspired by democracy through collaborative and community based media. Gen Why Media is a progressive media, documentary film and events production company. The Gen Why Media Project ( http://genwhymediaproject.com/ ) is an interdisciplinary creative endeavor that uses media, dialogue, art, workshops and events in public space to tactically engage young people in new forms of civic participation. Our aim is to adjust, annotate, and re-imagine the potential for community engagement in the post-industrial urban landscape. The project (and production company) is based in the hypothesis that forming community networks around creative collaboration will generate a willingness among young people to become more involved in shaping the fabric and direction of their city, province, country and planet.
Inspired by the pessimism that plagues mainstream media, Fiona and her colleague, Tara Mahoney, aspire to use media as a positive cultural unifier. They are determined to engage their generation in peer-production in order to build a narrative that is illustrative of the amazing and underrepresented zeitgeist of global youth culture.
Fiona is also very involved with TEDx events – once a speaker at TEDxVancouver & TEDxMileZero, and once a core organizer of TEDxGeorgiaStrait – which focused on new energy technologies. In addition, she sits on the advisory committee for Fresh Media, an organization that re-imagines media and journalism in Canada. She loves being on the organizing team for Remixology events – and overall collaboration with Open Media.
With a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Communications from Simon Fraser University, Fiona has been involved with social justice activism for several years – working in orphanages in Mexico City and living with communities affected by Canadian Mining Companies in Guatemala. She has also studied at Focal Point Photography School and Pull Focus Documentary Film School.
Most recently, Fiona has worked with Development and Peace (CCODP) in Toronto and the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) in Vancouver. She has made three documentaries and hopes to pursue new media production as a means to create community and positive changes in the world today. She is currently working on a documentary called Fractured Land, a film about the natural gas industry in northern BC, following the life of a First Nations law student.