Hi all,

I’m Carolyn McKenzie. I work full-time in the AV department at Harvard and am taking classes toward an eventual graduate degree part-time. My background/bachelor’s degree is in studio art — specifically non-narrative film and new media, which means for me, broadly, video games and interactive digital media. In school, I made some tiny games and films which tell stories about navigating disability and queerness in the public school system. I’m interested in new modes of storytelling, specifically through interactive means, within and outside the realm of the digital.

It’s been a few years since I’ve been in school. Since then, I’ve taught some workshops and held some panel discussions here and there for kids and adults on animation and the importance of play and the absurd as a tool for social change. I’m interested in doing more of that — and doing a lot more collaborative work. I appreciate when social justice work and art are allowed to be playful and find access to folks who may feel shut out of those worlds because they lack the language or the very specific experiences which supposedly provide a ticket to entry.

I want to point to Code Liberation, who provide free and low-cost classes for women, girls, non-binary and femme-identifying people — and have kids teaching each other kids to code. I think they’re an important organization because although there are perhaps a lot of efforts being put forth to teach folks to code, CL seems to emphasize the social practice of teaching and empowering one another — and not just the skillset itself.