The Flip the Lens Mission Statement & Backstory
Flip the Lens is a platform for teens to create and share video documentaries, explore the human condition, develop interpersonal skills, and make social impact.
We offer simple but powerful courses with structured templates that learners use to create videos about themes like belonging, creativity and culture. Students submit their films to us, and if they meet the criteria we laid out, we publish the videos on the Flip the Lens YouTube channel.
Be Part of a Movement to Bring
Social Media From Me to We
Be Part of a Movement to Bring
Social Media From Me to We
Since its invention about 20 years ago, social media has fostered amazing individual self-expression and creativity. People love sharing where they’ve been, what they’ve done, and interesting content they’ve made or discovered. Our idea is to take that to the next level.
Getting Real | Starting Authentic Conversations About Being Human
Flip the Lens champions using digital media to explore meaningful, important topics and feature real, authentic human beings sharing from the heart about their life experiences. We believe the best way to connect with anyone is to ask questions, to listen, to seek to identify and not compare.
Participants in Flip the Lens courses conduct and record short video interviews with others on universal human themes of belonging, culture and creativity. These interviews are published on playlists of the Flip the Lens YouTube Channel, and form a collective body of content that documents diverse views from around the world on what it means to be human. We believe that by using a camera as a window rather than a mirror, there will be more peace and understanding in the world.
Flip the Lens celebrates our unique differences and our shared human condition. We are advocates of curiosity, listening, identification and respect. We believe everyone matters and we each have valuable life lessons to share.
Who is Flip the Lens For?
You don’t need to be a professional to be an FTL contributor!
- Are you creative? Curious?
- Are you intrigued by the human condition?
- Would you like to publish a video on YouTube?
- Do you want to create a portfolio of meaningful digital content?
- Are you looking for more authenticity in your online life?
- Do you want to make a difference in the world?
If yes, Flip the Lens is for YOU!
Meet Flip the Lens founder Meg!
Meg mentors emerging creative professionals through the People Are Culture and Flip the Lens internship program, which has hosted undergraduate and graduate students from Connecticut College, Quinnipiac University and UCONN in Connecticut; Boston University and Endicott College in Massachusetts; University of Balamand in Lebanon; Hult International Business School in Cambridge, London, Dubai and Shanghai; Richmond University in London; S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University; The Università Della Svizzera Italiana Master’s in Tourism program in Lugano Switzerland and; The National Institute of Tourism and Hospitality Management in Hyderabad, India. Interns have the opportunity to get hands-on experience in digital content creation and marketing, and build portfolios.
Meg has been engaged in telling people’s stories for more than 30 years. Her award-winning career has blended expertise in writing; editing; interviewing; public relations; and brand building. Meg has a diversified set of credentials: a corporate career as the founding member of PR departments for four major financial services firms; consulting assignments to create communications platforms/infrastructure for non-profits; a portfolio of bylines for media and corporate publications and memoirs ghostwritten for private clients; and founder of website People Are Culture.
The Flip the Lens Backstory
Flip the Lens was started in a heartfelt conversation between two everyday people who believe that any one of us can change the world if we try. In March of 2020, as Covid began to emerge around the world, Mahima was interning for Meg while getting her MBA in Tourism from University of Lugano in Switzerland. The two are from different generations and other sides of the planet; Meg was located in Boston and Mahima in India.
Yet they both realized they felt social media was making them feel even more alienated and disconnected during a scary time of isolation in the world. They perceived social media as being self-centered and superficial, and saw it leading to competitiveness, feelings of being less-than, bullying, and depression.
Out of their frustration, as well as a desire for a way to connect online that was authentic and for a platform for creating digital content that is meaningful, Flip the Lens was born. Their idea was to create a “reason” for people to turn the camera outward rather than focus on selfies. They saw an opportunity to start conversations about topics that are increasingly important in a world that needs more peace and harmony.
Together, Mahima and Meg came up with the idea for the Authentic People Project, which is an interview series on the themes of Belonging, Creativity, Culture, and a Day in the Life of a Culture Creator..
BECOME A FLIP THE LENS SUBSCRIBER
Another way to be a part of the Flip the Lens movement is as a subscriber to the FTL YouTube channel! Enjoy an ever-growing library of short films that define being human, and celebrate our unique differences and our shared humanity.
These videos celebrate our unique differences and shared humanity, reminding us that while our individual experiences may be personal, we are all members of the human race, and subject to the same range of life events and emotions.
Asking Questions + Starting Conversations = Making Connections
In journalism, the interview genre is one of the most important methods used to collect information, and present views. This format provides direct, first-person accounts of how someone thinks and feels, and what their experience has been. The interview allows people to express themselves, without an external filter or interpretation.
From podcasts like Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy to Jake Shane’s Therapuss and photo blogs like Humans of New York, people are tuning into watch and listen to each other’s lives.
Who doesn’t have a secret wish to ask a family member or a stranger a personal question about how they thought and felt?
Flip the Lens is all about starting conversations about dimensions of our human condition. By recording and sharing those, we believe we will see ourselves in each other, and connect in a profound way with all kinds of people.
Join us!