WHYY Media Labs Program

Interested in a WHYY Media Lab for your school?

Submit an application for the 2023-24 school year. The application deadline is Friday, February 17. 


WHYY’s Media Labs program is a media instruction partnership with the School District of Philadelphia and other schools located in the Philadelphia region, South Jersey and Delaware. Over the course of eight years, WHYY has engaged about 20,000 students in over 55 schools throughout Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey in hands-on media arts training through the program. Now WHYY is connecting Media Labs students to jobs in the industry through the Pathways to Media Careers program. 

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. An independent assessment conducted by The Division of Teaching and Learning at PHMC showed that the program builds important academic and life skills that will serve students well in future education and career endeavors. 

A WHYY media instructor co-runs an after-school documentary or news workshop at each school with a lead teacher from the school. Together they teach students to tell stories about topics that concern them. The instructor also brings WHYY’s tried and true teacher professional development to school, training educators to use media production as a tool in their classrooms. 

Teachers trained to use media arts in the classroom through this program are better able to foster student engagement, provide richer, project-based learning and can incorporate the STEM approach across subject areas. 

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

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 and 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, Margaret Jacobs Charitable Trust, The Patricia Kind Family Foundation, The David Fund, State of PA, Lynne Silvestro, Maxine Stotland, Jerome Schwartz, Robert Locke, Cissy Claypool, and Robert Carlino. 

Want a digest of WHYY’s programs, events & stories? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Together we can reach 100% of WHYY’s fiscal year goal