Beyondmedia's newest program, Q'd In Media focuses on supporting queer and allied youth organizing and community building to combat homophobia in the many communities where queer youth live, learn and struggle, and make the real and complicated lives of queer youth visible to a larger public. A consistent goal and strategy throughout all Q’d In Media projects is to apply media education in innovative ways to effectively address documented problems of special concern to partnering organizations.
Beyondmedia Education is partnering with youth media producers and the Coalition for Education on Sexual Orientation (CESO) and Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to create a multi-media toolkit on issues facing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer / Questioning (LGBTQ) youth in Illinois public schools. Can LGBTQ+ Schools=Safe? focuses on sexuality-based discrimination and anti-gay violence of LGBTQ youth in Illinois schools, and shows how to start a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). The project includes a 2-part video/DVD produced by LGBTQ youth, a study guide and an interactive website with information and downloadable art, writing, and audio interviews with queer students. The toolkit will equip young people, parents, teachers, individuals, schools and agencies in Illinois to create strategies for change around the health and safety of LGBTQ students as well as provide a forum for youth to connect and express themselves. Video screenings and discussions will be held for the Illinois State Board of Education and in community organizations and schools. Youth Program staff Zaida Sanabia, who began working with Beyondmedia on homophobia in schools when she was 15, will work with other LGBTQ students to represent the issues relevant in their own lives, through their own eyes.
In the Summer of 2007 About Face Theatre, Beyondmedia Education and Howard Brown's Broadway Youth Center developed an intensive theatre and video project to address the current state of HIV amongst youth. Twenty-five LGBTQ youth and their allies met every day for two weeks at the Center on Halstead to discuss sex education, to tell their personal stories about HIV and AIDS, and learn about how to become allies for those who are HIV+. In the workshop, the participants were trained on cameras, and began to shoot a new youth oriented sex education video. The participants were also trained in the practice of theatre, and began creating the script for next year's AFYT mainstage production
Art, and its power to communicate information in a unique way, has always been central to the movement to support those of us affected by HIV and AIDS. This summer's rigorous arts program served as prevention for its participants, and as a way to reignite the fight to end HIV and AIDS. Much of our work is dedicated to separating myth from fact and undoing the miseducation the participants inherited from our culture. Old and tired myths are still being perpetuated and even safeguarded by the current abstinence-based sex education system in our country. By laying the myths to rest in this summer's workshop, we are now part of the conversation about HIV and AIDS.


Sam helps frame a shot for HIV: History in Voices