Welcome!

This is Wade's Construction Site!

Every good site should be like Minnesota.
It should have only two seasons: 

The Kinda Stuff that 
EVERYONE puts on               The kinda stuff that
their homepage                 WADE is interested in ....
___________________________    ________________________

Intro?                             Non-profit Management & Finance

Facts & Factoids, Annual FAQ       Zen in the Art of Grantsmanship

Aaron                              Independent Media
                                   (film, video, audio, radio)

Q the Scottie with an Attitude     Getting Recognized 
                                   (what it means to be Native)

Wade's Pretty Big List             T-shirts for Scorpios 
of Pretty Good Sites

The Obligatory Bio                 Mentally Ill?
                                   (mental health care reform)

A Short Note on Style              Alabama Center for Law
                                   and Civic Education

Uh ... copyright?                  Homelessness

                                   National Coalition 
                                   Building Institute (NCBI-B'ham)

                                   The Alabama Violence Prevention
                                   Consortium and SafetyNet and 
                                   Alabama CivicNet

                                   Bozart Mountain / Jade Films

                                   General Stuff I Just Kinda Like
   click here


Intro



The Obligatory Bio

(Boring. Read the Annual FAQ instead.)


Wade Black is an independent film and video maker and a consultant on non-profit management and planning. His documentary work has been shown on PBS stations, The Disney Channel, The Learning Channel, and in national broadcast syndication. He lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama.

Black grew up in Birmingham during the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights movement, and much of his work focuses on Southern history and culture. After undergraduate work at Birmingham-Southern College and graduate studies at Florida State University, he taught English, Humanities, and Telecommunications at Alabama A&M University before becoming Executive Director of the Alabama Film-Makers Co-op in 1977. During his five years as director of the Co-op, the organization grew from a small volunteer organization into a regional public media center with a full-time staff of five, public screenings, a regional touring program, grants to regional filmmakers, and media training in the schools. The NEA Regional Media Fellowship Program was designed and piloted at the Co-op during the early 1980s.

In 1982, Black moved to Minnesota to become the Administrative Director at Film in the Cities, one of the largest media arts centers in the country with a staff of 53 and an annual budget of $1.06 million. In 1984, he left this position to return to production and teaching. Between 1984 and 1988 he worked on Belizaire the Cajun (for PBS's American Playhouse), on Harold of Orange (a Sundance Institute training project), and on American Dream (Barbara Kopple's 1991 Academy Award documentary). He also completed (with Judith Hadel) Dorothy Molter: Living in the Boundary Waters, which was broadcast on PBS stations and on The Learning Channel and is distributed by Direct Cinema Ltd of Los Angeles.

In 1986, Black accepted a position as a visiting professor at Temple University, where he taught documentary production, production management, and media studies. He was also Director of POSTPUT'88, the annual international conference on public broadcasting training. He remained at Temple until 1989 when he moved back to Alabama to resume production. Since returning to Birmingham, he has been field producer for five segments of Medal of Honor (broadcast in national syndication and on The Disney Channel) and producer/director for We Dare Defend Our Rights, a four-part series on contemporary Alabamians who have played roles in major Bill of Rights issues, funded by the U.S. Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution. He is currently working with Roberta Grossman (Los Angeles, CA) on a six-part series If I Had a Song (on the history of American songs of protest, research and script funded by CA Council on the Humanities and the Labor Heritage Foundation) and on personal projects in Alabama. These include Getting Recognized (on what it means to be Native) and Mentally Ill (on mental health care reform).

Recognition for Black's film and video work include a National Media Award (Retirement Research Foundation/MacArthur Foundation); festival awards from the Houston International Film Festival, the Herland Festival, the American Film and Video Festival, and other competitions; and screenings at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the International House of Philadelphia, Chicago Filmmakers, and other exhibition sites. Black is also a recipient of an Alabama Governor's Arts Award and the first recipient of the Alabama Filmmakers Award of the Birmingham International Educational Film Festival. In 1993, he became the first Alabamian to be selected as a WGBH Fellow in Advanced Television Production and the first Alabamian to receive development funding from the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium.

Wade Black is forty-eight years old and has one son, Aaron, age fifteen.

-----------------

Update: On July 1, 1996, I started work as Associate Director for the Alabama Center for Law & Civic Education, at the Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham. I mainly do teacher training and community education in the law, especially in the areas of mediation and conflict reduction and work with the Alabama Violence Prevention Consortium. I'm also a lead host for the Firehouse Men's Shelter, a Mass Care and Disaster Response volunteer for the Red Cross, and a local associate & trainer for the National Coalition Buiklding Institute. For info on these and other stuff that interests me, see the links above.

I'm now forty-nine. Aaron is 16 and lives in Tallahassee. I take no credit for -- and assume no blame for -- his attached web pages. #8->

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For Additional Information:
wadeblack@mindspring.com

A Short Note on Style


[preachy mode on :]

This website is being constructed very quickly, because some people need access to the information it contains. Also, I have limited access to a scanner right now, no time now to draw my own graphics, no time even to search my graphics files for usable images. Sorry.

But ... I wanna make no apologies for its text-heavy style. I'll leaven that a bit as I have time, but I've visited too many websties that are wonderful to visit - once. They're painfully slow to download, contain pointless animation that clogs up the web connection, and have more to do with aggressive cyber-techno-artistry than with useful cyber-content. Sometimes I enjoy them, often I'm very impressed by them, but rarely do I revisit them.

The content at this site will either be useful to you or it won't. If it is, you'll print it out, or you'll return when you need to. I plan to add much more, especially on grantseeking, on non-profit management, and on subjects that simply interest or entertain me. I plan to complete the links that aren't active yet, and I hope (rashly) to annotate my List of Links. If you share my interests - professional or personal - you'll have a reason to return here. Meanwhile, until I can cludge up my pages with more graphics, you'll find that the information here loads quickly, can be viewed by almost any browser, and can be printed out with minimal effort.

I don't see that as a bad thing.

[preachy mode off :]


Uh ... Copyright?


Huh? You wanna use some of my stuff? Yeah, you know it and I know it ... copyright law does not require that I put a copyright notice on everything in order for the "protection" to be good ... at least til 50 years after I die. That should be long enough for the signal honor of wondering why you would want to steal any of the stuff here. On the other hand, who's gonna catch you if you simply steal something to use it however you want?

I'm pretty generous about letting people use my stuff if they ask and are reasonable. I'm not likely to catch you if you don't ask. But if you don't ask and I catch you, I plan to retire early. #8->

So ... this site is, Uffda, you betcha ...

Copyright © 1996 L. Wade Black. All rights reserved.

I'd appreciate comments, corrections, and suggestions. I want this site to be useful, for content and for testing things as I have time.

Drop me a note at wadeblack@mindspring.com

I probably won't be able to update these pages often, at least not right now. I've started a new job, and my schedule is pretty hectic through September. Meanwhile, I will post corrections and new material on my site index page. Check there for the newest material.


This site was originally created on August 24, 1996.
This is a work in progress. More to come. #8->
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