Game designer and writer Bonnie Harris-Lowe offers advice for young creators about how to impact the world.
Bonnie Harris-Lowe is a game designer and writer. In their appearance on the Project Tempest Podcast, Bonnie offered advice for young creators about how to impact the world.
This occurs at 1:02 of the original podcast and has been lightly edited for clarity.
When I was in undergrad I had to do an internship so I volunteered at a local majority black high school for this programme they had called Come Around My Way. It was like a documentary filmmaking programme. I was only there for the fall semester and then they finished up their projects in the spring semester.
In the fall we were doing a lot of really experimental stuff, and these kids wanted to do dancing videos, do photography projects, and stream video games, all of the things. [But when] I went to their showcase the following spring, their documentaries were much more about living in the rough area of town, and seeing their friends die, things like that. Things that America is addicted to as far as the image of black people, these long suffering individuals.
It just broke my heart that this was the direction it went into, because the person I was working with at the mentorship programme warned me in advance, that is kinda how it goes. Because the people who are funding this programme, that’s the kind of content they want to see.
I think about those kids, and I think about all of the creativity and all of the dreams they had, and how they were just not afforded the space to explore that. It makes me really sad. I want my career to be a signal for other black kids from South Carolina that they can do this too. It's not impossible to break out of the mold of what the rest of this country thinks we should be like.
Follow Bonnie on twitter, LinkedIn, and check out their Mixed Reviews blog. Listen to the full podcast conversation on all major audio services.
The Project Tempest Podcast is where creators from around the globe talk with author C J Halbard about their journeys, struggles, and inspirations.