New Deal Spotlights
What did the New Deal build in your neighborhood?
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the New Deal provided jobs to millions of struggling Americans. These workers left a treasury of parks, schools, housing, infrastructure and public art that transformed the country. Today, few Americans know how these places came to be, yet millions still rely on them nine decades later—even as the very idea of government serving the common good has come under attack.
New Deal Spotlights is an online media campaign that will creatively celebrate the living physical legacy of the New Deal. The ultimate goals: raise awareness, reach younger generations and change our national discourse.
There are thousands of New Deal sites in red and blue states alike. Our producing team, in collaboration with The Living New Deal, will shine a light on these often overlooked national treasures. Their stories will be told by local people who still enjoy and rely upon them almost a century later. By exploring our nation’s past achievements during troubled times, we can begin to envision how rebuilding our country might look tomorrow.
Our Vision
Our pilot, Your Rose Garden, is a 6-minute music video about a beloved New Deal park in the San Francisco Bay Area. Next, we plan to make more shorts about other sites around the country in red states and blue states alike — but they won’t be musicals. Just as we’ll represent the diversity of types of New Deal projects, from buildings to bridges to murals and more, we’ll employ the widest range of media styles, from documentary to animation to fiction and beyond.
With a core collection of diverse videos in hand as a sample and inspiration, hosted here and on the Living New Deal website but also freely available on all internet platforms and social media, we’ll then open a nationwide call for home-grown short videos of all kinds. The best works to be added to our ever-growing showcase here, plus distributed across multiple social channels.
