Throughout her career as a nonprofit executive, award-winning executive producer and producer/director, broadcast programmer, curator, teacher, and writer, Cara has championed the leadership role of artists in society, and worked to harness the power of cultural...
December 2021 Update from IRIS
Greetings from IRIS, a new donor collaborative working internationally at the intersection of story, impact and civic innovation. Launched this summer, we have been building the team and working with our donor partners and experts to pilot our work. We wanted to introduce you to the IRIS team and describe some of the projects underway as we build the pipeline for 2022 and beyond. If you are receiving this, you have been an inspiration for us as we create the initiative. Thank you! — TEAM IRIS
Get to know our growing team
Check on what we’ve been doing
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There are some new logos in our partners space as IRIS welcomes aboard the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) and the Open Society Foundations’ Latin America Program office.
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Together with Africa-based feminist hub Purposeful, IRIS is launching two story&impact learning cohorts of young girl- and non-binary content creators in Kenya and Sierra Leone, made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation.
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Cara accompanied Ellen Friedman and Don Gips—former ED and CEO of IRIS partners Compton and Skoll Foundations—in a conversation about storytelling and social justice with more than 45 funder-members of the Peace and Security Funders Group.
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In October, IRIS partnered with the Ford Foundation‘s Mexico/Central America office to curate expertise from across the storytelling and immersive world in our first virtual summit on story, impact and innovation for regional grantees.
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Drawing on over 10 years’ experience with Good Pitch, DocSociety’s new Climate Story Lab model was in full flight with virtual Climate Story Labs Amazonia and Central America—supported by the Ford Foundation and IRIS predecessor Moving Image Exploration—taking place in late 2021.
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Look for mesmerizing animated short “Breathe” emerging from filmmaker and pilot IRIS fellow Marc Silver as part of Amnesty International’s campaign to End Vaccine Inequality.
Stories and narratives structure people’s lives yet, for many, their meaning-making role is mysterious; their power to influence, opaque. As the information age unfolds, and change and challenges accelerate, I believe that those who deepen their work with creative expression as part of their toolkit will see more durable progress towards lives lived with justice and dignity.
— Cara Mertes, Founding Director, IRIS
Coming in 2022: IRIS research comes online
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Commissioned by IRIS Regional Lead Graci Selaimen, research organization Amoreira brings us a qualitative deep dive into indigenous people and narratives in Brazil paired with an analysis of their growing presence in—and impact on—social media, drawing on over 200 interviews.
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IRIS Narrative Lead Brett Davidson maps constellations of organizations focused on understanding and shifting the narrative around the world and especially in the Global South.
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Legal expert Peter Noorlander, author Sally Kohn, and media multi-hyphenate Dr. Mehret Mandefro dig into the safety and security needs of storytellers, narratives underpinning authoritarianism, and the power of fiction film to shift social norms.
And look for more to come later in 2022!
Barney Steel of Marshmallow Laser Feast describes his use of immersive media to physically captivate audiences during the IRIS & Ford Foundation Mexico/Central America virtual summit in October.
The power in this kind of work is in the combating of the thinking that you’re in this alone, and IRIS is a beautiful example of saying, ‘No—there is a global network of people from North to South, East to West, that are actually working every day to lift up a different narrative of what the future can look like..
— Ellen Friedman, Former Executive Director, Compton Foundation