Our plan
As a small rural area, the methamphetamine epidemic was hitting our community hard. We had little resources to handle big city drug issues. We needed community awareness quickly and not from the vantage point of fear: we wanted to educate. We decided to go big and bold; mixing entertainment with education, and our community’s talent with digital technology. We wanted to gather the facts from all the experts, hear from all the agencies affected and by the people themselves: A holistic approach to the problem. What were their stories? How does this whole methamphetamine problem fit into our country’s overall addiction problem? What is it that is driving us to this insanely toxic drug? What do we need, what can we do and where do we find hope? We wanted to connect as many local people together as possible, focus on the talent of our community and make a stand. We wanted to show this through the creative process.
What we did
As an independent filmmaker and youth program developer, I researched methamphetamine and interviewed local and state experts in the fields of law enforcement, public health, toxic waste, social services, the court system, and addiction, plus addicts and families. I wrote a short movie script and connected with two local high schools to find students who wanted to be in the movie: to learn. We received help with our movie from the local police, schools, hospital, probation department, social services and the local paper wrote articles about our progress. We showed the finished movie in local middle and high school health classes, the local jail and in community awareness meetings. To continue educating, we wrote a rap song and a local high school student recorded it. We filmed that as a music video and cut in footage from our community movie. Updated information about methamphetamine was available, so we expanded out interviews. We wrote a stage play about all the issues of drug addiction with methamphetamine as the center focus. Local elementary, middle and high school students were part of the stage play, including some who received community service credit for taking part. The cast grew to include several teachers who are also community actors, professional actors, as well as a film and TV actor. We filmed the stage play and added interviews with cast members and made a local documentary. The teachers showed the documentary in their classes at school, we put it on our local cable access channel and have it available at local video stores. All the pieces of our project went up onto Youtube for sharing and we published our script, stage play and lesson plans for replication.
Our results
Our use of the Media Arts as learning and teaching tools, "The Movie Making Process", was nominated by the state of Wisconsin as its most promising AODA prevention program for 2008. As developers, we were sent to the Regional Science-To-Service Academy to develop an evidence-based evaluation plan for application to the National Institute of Health as a model program. The “Meth Movie” was replicated in three other states by: 1) A high school Media Arts class, 2) A middle school filmmaker, and 3) A youth program that learned to use moviemaking computer software as they were filming their movie. Another school is using a collage of monologues as part of a Forensics competition. Our music video placed in a State film festival and we are using our filmed version of the Addiction monologue to raise awareness and show the red flags of addiction in general. While we did not have the capability of collecting statistics of methamphetamine related crimes before and after our educational campaign, just about everyone in the community has seen or heard of “The Meth Movie.” Kids still talk of their participation and several of the high school students used it as an example of community involvement for college entry applications. Teachers still show the movie and documentary in science and health classes and we are working on getting a grant to develop a comprehensive Media Arts program in the community. We didn’t just create art for “art’s sake.” We used the artistic process to create content that could be used to educate a vast number of people, in various ways, over a considerable length of time. More information is on our website: www.taprootinc.com
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