Join us to expand the conversation about consumerism, consumption, commercialism and more as we screen a 6:30pm showing of Consuming Kids followed by a guest panel of Q&A with yours truly (Amy Jussel) & other parent education leaders!

Parents, youth, school teachers and care providers, join in the conversation and take away hands-on media literacy tips and activities to use in your own work with children.

We’ll talk about how kids can become media literate using fun-filled art projects with music, magazines, markers and more to ‘create’ a brand and learn how they’re being ‘targeted’ by marketers and how to deconstruct the messages with critical thinking skills so necessary in the media/marketing world today!

Learn about label lingo, name generation, how ads appeal to kids with color, sound, endorsements and heroes to shield themselves with knowledge and help their peers do the same.

Depending on the group size, we may even go online to demo how we train kids as powerful ‘CIA agents’ (cyber info advocates!) to explore their favorite sites and play hide and seek with the commercial messages embedded throughout the digital arena, and ‘design their own cereal box’ online.

Reference sites we use are DigitalAds.org, interactive pbskids site “Don’t Buy It” the FTC “You Are Here” consumer site and the new FTC government media literacy offering: Admongo.gov

Eager to meet you all…And remember, you can email me directly:

Amy at ShapingYouth dot org…Or contact me on Twitter: @ShapingYouth!

We are asking all attendees to RSVP HERE on Brave New Theaters for headcount…Please do so, as it will help our organizing immensely!

Meanwhile, we're excited to kick off 2011 with 11 films in monthly rotation to uncork colossal conversations with a different theme each month. We're starting the year off right with the power of play over purchase. It's fun. FREE. And full of ideas you can use year round.

Advance promo for Teen Dating Violence Awareness month in February:

HipHop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes by filmmaker Byron Hurt

HOSTED BY: Shaping Youth.