About

Celebrating history, culture, and community through storytelling and art-making

Places of Power is an immersive documentary and community media project.

“Places of Power” aims to inspire participatory, community-driven, technology-enabled media arts production in communities that face cultural erasure across Philadelphia, strengthening community bonds, prompting intergenerational sharing, and preserving stories and memories among the city’s underserved communities.

Through a process of co-creation, Termite TV artists lead workshops in visual storytelling, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D Photogrammetry. Using these emerging media tools allows participants to create immersive works and experiences that amplify the sense of memory, kinship, connection, and empathy.

Community Stories are shared through on-site Augmented Reality experiences, web-based platforms, and Virtual Reality tours.

Places of Power Villa Africana Colobó and Las Parcelas is created in collaboration with Norris Square Neighborhood Project.

The Places of Power project is funded by People’s Media Fund, William Penn Foundation, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and Leeway Foundation.

Community Partners: Latino Art and Film Festival, Scribe Video Center, PhillyCAM, and Temple University.

Project Directors

Iris Brown

Iris is dedicated to the rich exchange of culture, agriculture, and food, amplifying this diasporic connection between her Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia and her hometown of Loíza. In the early 1980s, Iris Brown co-founded Grupo Motivos, bringing together Puerto Rican women from different parts of Puerto Rico, united by the desire to use their surroundings to create beautiful spaces for their children and neighbors, ultimately converting abandoned lots into award-winning gardens and ancestral education sites.

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She is the visionary force behind the Norris Square Neighborhood Project gardens, including El Batey, Las Parcelas, the Butterfly Garden, Raíces, and Villa Africana Colobó. Her culinary creations, deeply rooted in Puerto Rican traditions and the wisdom of her mother and grandmother, serve as an additional dimension of her work, shaping her into a cultural and culinary steward. Iris’s practice embodies the relationship between culture, agriculture, and food, ensuring the preservation of traditions for generations to come.

Anula Shetty

Anula is a recipient of three Media Arts Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She was twice nominated for a Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship. She received a Project Involve Fellowship from the Independent Feature Project, NY, two Independence Foundation Fellowships and a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award for her art and social change work. She currently serves on the board of The Alliance of Media Arts and Culture (formerly NAMAC).

Michael Kuetemeyer

Michael is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award and is an Associate Professor in the Film & Media Arts department at Temple University. He is a founding member and co-director of Termite TV Collective, a group of video artists whose mission is to produce, distribute and facilitate the creation of experimental and activist media.