Description

JMC:2400 (3 credits)

Iowa Stories & Lived Experiences (ISLE) is an intensive multimedia workshop offered in the summer that gives students real-world experience in collaborative journalism. The immersive format of the workshop allows students to focus their energy on one project while producing portfolio-quality work. During the first half of the workshop, students are embedded in a select Iowa community to document its stories and explore its connection to a central theme. The second half of the workshop is spent in production and post-production as students edit, collect data and build upon their visual storytelling skills to create a multimedia project. The workshop incorporates photography, video, audio, emerging media, and data visualizations–culminating in a final screening of student work. Students admitted by application only. 

What's it like?

Listen to reflections from students who participated in the 2025 ISLE workshop. The project explored the cultural, economic, and political currents that shape the lives of African immigrants in Eastern Iowa.

Student Work

ISLE-poster

Found in Translation

2025 Workshop

This inaugural workshop focused on exploring the cultural, economic, and political currents that shape the lives of African immigrants in Eastern Iowa. The completed project premiered at FilmScene in Iowa City in partnership with the African Festival of Arts and Culture.

Muscatine

Navigating Change Across Generations

2026 Workshop

What endures, what adapts, and what must be reinterpreted to survive? We'll explore multigenerational stories that connect past and present, showing how today’s residents reinterpret what they’ve inherited.

Awards: Found in Translation (2025)

Hearst

Hearst Journalism Awards

2nd place in the Multimedia Team Enterprise Story Competition of the 2025-2026 Hearst Journalism Awards Program.

AEJMC-Festival-of-VIM

AEJMC Visual & Interactive Media

Bronze winner for student multimedia at the 2026 AEJMC Festival of Visual & Interactive Media.

journalism-institute

Journalism Institute

Honorable mention in the Pamela Tobey Award for Excellence in Visual Storytelling from the National Press Club Journalism Institute.

CPOY

College Photographer of the Year

Award of Excellence in Multimedia: Online Storytelling at the 80th competition of College Photographer of the Year.

Questions?

Alex Scott

Alex Scott

Assistant Professor

alex-scott@uiowa.edu
W339 Adler Journalism Building

Kevin Ripka

Kevin Ripka

Associate Professor of Instruction

kevin-ripka@uiowa.edu
W341 Adler Journalism Building