Illustrated web graphics: Gabrielle Patterson
Actívate programs branding/palette: Didier Garcia
A project of Actívate Stories
The community arts & media project produces and distributes multimedia journalism and research through a grassroots movement lens. We focus on social justice, arts/culture, civic media, social policy, democracy, and technology.
Behind the Screen
Multimedia Coordinator
Erika Ramírez-Lorenzo is a Philadelphia-based photographer, videographer, video editor, and aspiring filmmaker. Through her work, she aims to capture the stories of people, places, and their effect on one another. In 2023, she participated in the Blackstar Lab Shadow program where she was a production assistant on An Endoscopy and All That's Left. Since then, she has assisted on several short films. Her photography work has been featured twice at TILT in 2017 and 2020, and at PhotoLounge as part of their 2024 Best of the Year gallery. Currently, she is the Multimedia Communications Coordinator for Actívate Stories.
Actívate Stories is a media arts entity that produces collaborative documentaries, engages in cultural preservation, and develops creative strategies focused on art and social change. Through weaving cultural organizing and participatory processes into our work, we develop critical storytelling projects alongside artists in the Philadelphia region and beyond.
ProducerWriter, Researcher, & Community Media Videographer
Director, Actívate Stories
Melissa Beatriz is an Uruguayan American documentary filmmaker, cultural producer, and media scholar whose arts and research practice centers diverse and diasporic communities through focusing on celebratory traditions, grassroots organizing, and archival storytelling.
She is a 2025 Leeway Media Artist + Activist in Residence at the People’s Budget Office, 2025 Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow, 2022 Al Día 40 Under 40 honoree, 2019 Leeway Transformation Awardee, and 2020 Fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) Leadership Institute. Her independent media work has been supported by Scribe Video Center, ARTisPHL, Lenfest Institute for Journalism, People’s Media Fund, Velocity Fund, Doc Society: Good Pitch Local Philadelphia, Leeway Foundation, Double Exposure Scholars program, and Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Philadelphia Day Lab.Para mis abuelos & ancestros.
Abuelo: Trabajador y luchador/comunicador durante la dictadura en Uruguay.
Abuela: Madre de 8 hijos y costurera.
Grandmother: Daycare & summer camp leader, educator, school administrator.
Intro animation design & illustrated web graphics