WHYY Media Labs Program

Interested in a WHYY Media Lab for your school?

The application window for new Media Labs for the 2025-2026 school year has closed. Schools in the Philadelphia region, South Jersey, and Delaware are welcome to apply. New applications will be accepted in early 2026.

 

WHYY has empowered more than 25,000 media students in 67 schools and at the WHYY Public Media Commons with hands-on media arts instruction.

WHYY’s Media Labs is a media instruction partnership with the School District of Philadelphia and schools across the Philadelphia region and Camden. The program places WHYY Media Labs instructors in elementary, middle, and high schools to bring project-based, media arts integrated technical support and learning opportunities to classrooms during the school day and to co-run after-school documentary or news workshops with teachers. Instructors also train educators in media production, enhancing academic engagement and integrating STEM across subjects.

WHYY Media Labs students tell stories about issues that matter to them. Participating students learn video and audio production, critical thinking, STEM education skills, problem solving, research, develop a strong sense of self-efficacy and are better prepared for a wide variety of workplaces. Students also learn valuable life skills like how to work in teams, how to plan projects, and how to solve difficult problems. Now, through our Pathways to Media Careers program, WHYY is connecting students to jobs and career opportunities in the media industry.

To see some of the content produced in WHYY’s Media Labs, please check out the student blog or the WHYY Education YouTube page. 

An annual independent assessment conducted by The Division of Teaching and Learning at PHMC consistently shows that WHYY Media Labs nurtures vital academic and life skills that will prepare students for future educational and career success. In addition to this annual assessment, WHYY Media Labs has also called on Research for Action to examine the impact of WHYY’s Media Labs program on student engagement and academic outcomes in five Philadelphia schools. Research for Action analyzed student engagement outcomes for a cohort of School District of Philadelphia students who completed one year of the WHYY Media Labs program during the 2023-24 school year, comparing them with the performances of non-Media Labs students with similar profiles. Some key differences emerged, including evidence of improved student engagement outcomes among participants. These key impact findings include:

• Improved Attendance: Media Labs students attended 2 more days of school on average than peers.
• Higher Attendance Rates: Participants had a 90.9% attendance rate vs. 89.8% for nonparticipants—surpassing the chronic absenteeism threshold.
• Academic Gains:
  • Media Labs students averaged a 3.03 GPA vs. 2.92 for nonparticipants.
  • After-school participants saw statistically significant gains in math and science.

Students and teachers can also gain access to these youth media opportunities through media classes and field trips at WHYY Studios. Visit this page to learn more about WHYY Youth Media resources and program offerings.

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WHYY’s Media Lab program was made possible by a lead grant from the William Penn Foundation.

Additional grants have been awarded for this project from the following funders to-date:

• The Lenfest Foundation
• The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
• National Endowment for the Arts
• The Pennsylvania Department of Education
• Horner Foundation
• Hamilton Family Foundation
• Leo Model Foundation
• The McLean Contributionship
• WSFS Community Foundation
• Pincus Family Foundation
• Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation
• Philadelphia Cultural Alliance
• Philadelphia Cultural Fund Youth Arts Enrichment Program
• Chubb
• American Airlines
• Connelly Foundation
• Rotary Foundation of Philadelphia
• The Philadelphia Foundation
• NBC Universal
• Weiss Markets
• BNY Mellon
• M&T Bank
• Bank of America
• GSK
• Best Buy Foundation
• Apgar Black Foundation
• Margaret G. Jacobs Charitable Trust,
• Danielle Rose Paikin Foundation
• The Tuttleman Family Foundation
• Zeldin Family Foundation
• Grateful Deeds
• The Patricia Kind Family Foundation
• The David Fund
• State of PA
• Lynne Silvestro
• Maxine Stotland
• Jerome Schwartz
• Robert Locke
• Cissy Claypool
• Robert Carlino