What's Sanjeev Chatterjee Thinking About?

Headlines and Big Moments of the Past Year

• Over the past year I have been involved with transitioning from being involved in primarily creative endeavors to a role involving the management of physical and human resources at the Knight Center for International Media, School of Communication, University of Miami. As the founding executive director of the Center, I started in this position in 2007 with a portfolio of projects that I had initiated prior to the Center being funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. At the beginning, I was responsible for bringing those projects to fruition. Over the past two years, the Center has added staff positions, and other faculty and students at the School of Communication have launched initiatives of their own under the Knight Center banner. The Center is also responsible for the investments made over the same period in technology and physical space within the School of Communication.

• At this point in time I find myself immersed in continuing the creative work we started on by bringing attention to the global water challenge in 2003 while overseeing projects like the initiation of a global project on the challenges faced by fast growing cities of the 21st century (World Cities project), the reinvention of the traditional photo exhibit for online digital dissemination, experimentation with digital tools and their potential use by disenfranchised communities of the developing world, and connecting with entities around the world to share news and information across borders about the most pressing issues that face all of humanity today. 

  The One Water project has completed production of an international television version (48 minutes) that is narrated by award-winning actor Martin Sheen. The feature version (67 minutes) of the film has garnered many accolades around the world - there are too many to enumerate here, but a list can be found at http://onewaterthemovie.org. A partnership with San Francisco based Independent Television Service (ITVS) resulted in the creation of four films on water in four countries - India, South Africa, The Kingdom of Bahrain and Colombia. The films were packaged with our non-verbal short 1H2O (22 minutes) and nationally broadcast in each of these countries on World Water Day, March 22nd, 2009. Many events and community screenings of 1H2O were also held in small gatherings around the world on World Water Day. We have received enthusiastic responses to the film from these international screenings. Our journalism website http://www.1h2o.org is also part of the Knight Center- ITVS collaboration and now has a steady stream of international water journalism flowing in from various parts of the world. The website is edited by our Knight Chair for Cross-Cultural Communication, Joseph B. Treaster.

• The Center’s World Cities project is lead by our Knight Chair in Visual Journalism, Rich Beckman. We want to partner with universities and journalism schools around the world to generate authentic multimedia content focused on bringing attention to the most pressing issues faced by cities where these institutions are situated. We have started by providing high-level multimedia training for teachers and trainers in these institutions, with the expectation that the trainees will return to their classrooms and work with students to create multimedia stories about urban issues related to the UN Millennium Development Goals. The Knight Center is building an online content management system that will be the venue for hosting this international content. The first multimedia workshop was held in Hong Kong for teachers and trainers from all over Asia. Other similar workshops are planned for Africa, Australia, Latin America, Middle East and Europe over the next several years. Our faculty and students at the University of Miami will begin creating content for the World Cities project about Miami during the fall semester of 2009.

The Question I'm Grappling With

In the context of my above statement, what is the meaning of creative management?

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