Media Burn Launches ‘Learn With Media Burn!’ Series

Media Burn is hosting a free and open to the public screening every third Thursday, beginning August 20 from 5pm-7pm. RSVP via the organization’s Eventbrite. 

As champions of vintage video, we at Media Burn believe in the power of communal screen time to bring people together in real life, creating connections and deepening relationships.

You are thirteen years old. It’s Friday, the second week of school. Your mom gave you permission to spend the night at your friend’s house. After the last bell rings, you walk together through the hazy August afternoon light. Your toothbrush and pajama pants are shoved in the bottom of your backpack under your half-done homework and crumpled notes passed in class. At your friend’s house, you slam through the kitchen screen door, raid the pantry for Cool Ranch Doritos and gummy bears, and rampage down the stairs to the cool, dark basement. Musty rays of sunshine streaming through the windowwells illuminate just enough of the wood paneled rec room to allow your friend to find the remote. You both sink into the ancient plaid couch cushions, snarfing snacks while dissecting the gossip of the first days of the new school year over the comforting din of a favorite show’s opening credits. 

Television has always invited a more social kind of viewing—one in which the watching and the talking happen at the same time. Media Burn Archive’s  new public program creates space for that experience: watching television together not simply as an act of consumption, but as a shared social experience.

Now, more than ever, finding ways to get off screens and connect in person is vital for building community and a sense of belonging. But maybe screens are not the entire problem – maybe the isolating way we’ve become accustomed to using screens is the real issue. 

Part screening, part informal activity club, Learn With Media Burn will screen a surprise vintage educational video on the third Thursday of each month. 

“It’s not meant to be taken too seriously,” Executive Director Sara Chapman explains. “We just wanted a fun, easy way to hang out with people who are as excited to watch our favorite tapes as we are.”

Director of Development and Communications Vero Rose Smith enthusiastically agrees. “We’re trying to recreate the feeling of a 90s slumber party, with videos meant to be talked over while snarfing junky snacks, only you get to go home by a reasonable hour and sleep in your own bed!” 

So, have you ever wanted to elevate your yo-yo tricks? Interested in learning sleight of hand magic? Bored with your usual scarf styling? Looking for gentle exercises to keep fit at any age? Aching to line dance to Achey Breaky Heart? Wondering how the Internet actually works?

Learn with Media Burn!

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