Audience and Distribution Strategies
Our first goal for the finished work is to distribute 5,000 copies along with training materials to stakeholder constituencies wanting to defeat policies and practices intended to criminalize the homeless and their supporters.
The associated training material is created to begin the public discourse with the finished documentary. The Issue Guide is made under the National Issues Forum, www.nifi.org and Center for Public Deliberation of University of Houston, Downtown.
Our aim is to “arm the choir” of stakeholders in the communities with information about best practices.
The major campaign is to take our film to festivals and community screenings across the United States to help raise awareness and support with reformed minded people in host cities.
We are exploring collaborations with PBS, HBO, or Showtime.
Intended Audience
Director Ben DeSoto has been photo-documenting people caught up in poverty and anti-poverty campaigners since 1980. He has been following the stories ever since, so a natural place for us to screen our film will be at a regional convention of the Coalition for the Homeless, Houston Harris County.
We will also target other groups that have social justice missions such as Healthcare for the Homeless-Houston and other institutions pushing for meaningful reforms; other public and private homeless providers; individuals that are engaged with social welfare, social justice, quality of life, and income inequality issues; and conservative social and economic groups that have not yet been convinced of the efficient and utilitarian economic benefits of fixing these issues at the roots.
Screenings will be arranged at different sites in the area where homeless people gather to share the empathy and hope that the film is designed to inspire. Service and education packets will be available at the screenings so that the audience can walk away with lists of resources and how to access them.
We will make the film available to any community organizations that want to partner with us for a community screening. We eagerly anticipate that community activist organizations will use this film to spark enlightened change in all corners of the United States.
Distribution and Marketing Strategy
We will reach out to our primary target audience through a crowd funding campaign. A $25 minimum donation will secure a Quiet Storms of Reform DVD and educational materials to organize and build community support for best practices. DVDs will be distributed to local, county, and state legislators to solicit their support in sustaining these reforms over the long run.
We will encourage legislators to screen the film and discuss the issues with their constituents.
We will reach out to other potential audiences via interviews on various regional media outlets, with a special emphasis on public broadcasting.
Audience Engagement and Social Impact
We want to “arm the choir” by providing this compelling visual narrative to activist community organizations, policy makers, and American families impacted by the experience of homelessness in order to inspire, nurture, and assist in grass-roots and national efforts to end homelessness. Our intention with this film is to spark the torches of reform and enlightenment.
The first strategy we will use to activate audiences and constituencies is to distribute 5,000 copies of the film with training materials to organizations that want to defeat municipal ordinances intended to criminalize the homeless and their supporters.
We are engaged in several organizational partnerships:
1) Our subjects:
Dr. David Buck of the InReach Program,
Judges Mike Schneider and Angela Ellis of the 315 Court,
Annise Parker and several grassroots groups (state foster care alumni and grandparents).
2) We are in close consultation with the Coalition for the Homeless, Houston/Harris County. We will work in collaboration with these and other targeted stakeholders to set up community screenings and public deliberations.
4) Center for Public Deliberation of the University of Houston
Downtown and the National Issues Forum.
5) Field researchers for Women, Poverty, Education, University of Houston, School of Social Work.
The Issue Guide is currently going through review from the National Issues Forum Institute. Created at the Center for Public Deliberation of the University of Houston Downtown. Issue guides are used in forums by a variety of organizations, groups, and individuals, and offer citizens the opportunity to join together to deliberate and make choices with others about ways to approach difficult issues and to work toward creating reasoned public judgment.
Forums range from small or large group gatherings similar to town hall meetings, to study circles held in public places or private homes on an ongoing basis.
Forums focus on issues such as health care, immigration, Social Security, or ethnic and racial tensions. The forums provide a way for people of diverse views and experiences to seek a shared understanding of the problem and to search for common ground for action. Forums are led by trained, neutral moderators, and use an issue discussion guide that frames the issue by presenting the overall problem and then three or four broad approaches to the problem. Forum participants work through the issue by considering each approach; examining what appeals to them or concerns them, and also what the costs, consequences, and trade-offs may be that would be incurred in following that approach.” - www.nifi.org.