Welcome to the blog for The Fair Use Remix Institute, a project of Open Youth Networks which is a program of the 33 year old non-profit media arts center, Chicago Filmmakers. FURI is the 2008 YouthLAB workshop, an annual summer institute in which youth learn to use participatory media tools of the new public networks for social change and media analysis. Check out our 2007 YOUTHLAB blog (Listening Across Borders) here.

The Fair Use Remix Institute (FURI) occurs at Chicago Filmmakers from July 7-18th. In FURI, participants acquire the skills necessary to create political remix videos that quote copyrighted material as fair use practice in the process of reclaiming free speech. Using digital tools, youth will appropriate “media texts” from websites, television and election year ads, not as a form of piracy but in order to analyze, re-purpose and re-frame them based on their own issues/perspectives as urban youth.

This site not only contains our video remixes but the curriculum, resources, tutorials and toolkits explaining the strategies and goals of the workshop.

In addition to training in advanced digital editing and media tools designed and taught by two professional working artists/educators, youth will receive two full days of instruction in on copyright law, ethics of appropriation and best practices for fair use from Gordon Quinn of Kartemquin Films, a leader in the Fair Use for Documentary Film movement and Pat Aufderheide, Professor and Director of the Center for Social Media at American University in Washington D.C. They will provide the youth with “hot-off-the-presses” Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Online Video, written in collaboration with a blue ribbon committee from the Washington College of Law.

We invite teachers, schools and non-profits to use these materials to instruct youth in media literacy, remix as a communication tool and copyright law. Open Youth Networks is available to lead workshops in remix for students and educators alike. In addition, youth members of FURI are also available to present their work and explain how it constitutes examples of best practices in Fair Use.

The Fair Use Remix Institute is made possible by the generous support of the McCormick Foundation.