Fred Johnson has been producing documentary and video art since the mid seventies. Much of his work has been focused on globalization, the international arms trade, Appalachian culture, poetry, urban and public space, relationships of geography and constructed space, and communications.

Johnson's work has been broadcast on the Learning and Discovery Channels, WNET-NY, Kentucky Educational Television, BBC 2 and BBC's World Service. As a recipient of a Television Arts Fellowship from the Fulbright Commission he was sited at the BBC's Community Programme Unit in London. While there he produced Future on the Line and Death on Delivery and was subsequently commissioned to produce Hybrid City.  Cratis Williams, Living the Divided Life and Coal Black Voices are his most recent works to be broadcast. Local Voices, Local Needs, a series of advocacy video was produced in 2006 for online distribution in cooperation with the National Association of Telecommunications Officers.

Johnson is also a writer who blogs about 21C life and consciousness, and is a communication policy analyst. He has been designing and implementing media and technology education and training programs for over twenty years in a wide range of settings, from community media centers to national education initiatives and colleges. He was founding director of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Community Media and Technology Program that focuses on community engagement and collaboration. Johnson has a Masters in Communications from the University of Cincinnati.  He is a founding member of Media Working Group.

FILMOGRAPHY

Co-Producer and Director, 2010 work-in-progress, Coming to Ground, a cross-platform documentary project that will include a television series in five parts, a citizen engagement campaign, and online video and social media initiatives. Told through the voices of farmers, it explores the challenges to the new agrarians and small family farmers face in their efforts to create sustainable agriculture while grappling with climate change, increasing energy prices and the political domination of agri-business.

Executive Co-Producer, The Gender Chip Project, a cross-platform multi-media project, national citizen engagement campaign and online social media initiative, anchored with a documentary, directed by Helen De Michiel, exploring the struggles of young women entering the science, math and engineering fields, 2003-2006. Funded by the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council and the National Science Foundation; distributed by Women Make Movies, 2006 to present.

Producer/Director, Local Voices, Local Needs, a short documentary for Internet and cable distribution produced with local government officials and their attorneys, Local Needs, Local Voices, addresses the negative public interest impact of Congress’failed attempt at national telecommunications legislation in 2006; it was produced as an component to a successful campaign to stop draconian deregulation of the telecommunications industry, summer of 2006.

Faculty and Producer, Tactical Media Clinic, a collaborative experiment in project-based learning and social media undertaken by students from The Community Media and Technology Program at UMass Boston's College of Public and Community Service. The initiative featured a regional network of partners that included Boston IndyMedia, area community media centers, and Media Working Group as a core collaborator during the 2004 Democratic National Convention and the Boston Social Forum. The clinic produced four 20-minute digital mini-docs on the Democratic National Convention and the Boston Social Forum, distributed nationally on Free Speech Television and through on line social media, regionally through cable access channels, 2004.

Co-Producer and Co-Director, Coal Black Voices, a documentary on the poetry and work of the Affrilachian Poets, a movement of African-American writers and artists from Appalachia; commissioned by Kentucky Educational Television, broadcast regionally on Public Television, Fall 2001 to present. This work was done collaboratively with the Affrilachian Poets organization and has been consistently used by the poets and writers to convene community discussions on the black experience in the U.S. South and Appalachia.

Co-coordinator, Indaba, Three Days of Coal Black Voices, MWG conducted a three-day gathering of artists, students, educators, community activists, and Black churches for readings and discussion, during a period of racial tension in Cincinnati.

Producer and Director, Cratis Williams: Living The Divided Life, a documentary on the life of an Appalachian scholar, folklorist, cultural historian, and balladeer, funded by the Kentucky Arts Council, Ohio Arts Council, Kentucky Educational Television, and the Kentucky Humanities Council, broadcast on KET, regional Public Television, 2002 to present. Carried out collaboratively with the network of Appalachian Studies Centers throughout Southern Appalachia.

Producer and Director, Quality Jobs for Quality Communities, A twelve-minute documentary trigger tape, produced for the Quality Jobs Advisory Committee, University of Iowa Rural Sociology Extension and the Northwest Area Foundation, Spring 1998. The work portrayed the results of recent research and was used to convene community and group discussions for the purposes of addressing the exporting of jobs and wealth from Iowa.

Executive Co-producer, Three Valleys Town Halls and Community Conversations, live video programs produced as part of the Three Valleys Project, a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to build communication and cooperation among immigrants and ethnic minorities, and dominant populations in Washington County, Oregon. The programs featured early use of town hall style convening, coordinated with live simulcasts of bi-lingual cable channel transmissions in Spanish and English; co-produced by The Three Valleys Project and Tualatin Valley Community Access, 1997.

Producer, Cable Franchising Town Halls, two town hall forums televised live and designed to foster citizen participation in the cable regulatory process during the implementation of cable re-franchising; co-produced by the Metropolitan Area Communication Commission and Tualatin Valley Community Access, 1996.

Producer, Oregon Telecommunication Forum Teleconference, an interactive, satellite conference designed to present community media options and foster diverse participation in Oregon telecommunications planning, 1996.

Producer and Director, Metro 2040: Envisioning Our Region’s, Future, a live call-in show featuring a panel of planners and opinion leaders grappling with building participation in the visionary regional planning efforts in the Portland, Oregon metro-region, sponsored by METRO Regional Government and Tualatin Valley Community Television, 1994.

Producer and Director, Hybrid City, a documentary for the British Broadcasting Corporation portraying the social issues arising from the control and creation of urban space; transmitted on BBC 2, United Kingdom, 1992, and on the BBC World Service, 1993. Produced with Architects and Planners for Social Responsibility, and used to convene community discussions around urban planning.

Producer and Director, Future On The Line, a documentary for the British Broadcasting Corporation, transmitted on BBC 2. Depicts the critical changes in UK tele-communications policy and community use of data communications, 1990. Created with GreenNet, a British community computing network working to democratize computer communications.

Associate Producer and Co-Director, Death On Delivery, a documentary for the British Broadcasting Corporation transmitted on BBC 2, articulating the perils of government-sponsored arms trading in an era of deflating defense budgets, 1990. Narrated by actress and Minister of Parliament Glenda Jackson, Death on Delivery was produced with the Campaign Against the Arms Trade; it included a coordinated national call-in phone center and convened community conversations that resulting in raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for the Campaign.

Co-Producer and camera, From the Shadows Of Power, documentary work expressing the voices and the struggles of women in the coalfields of Appalachia, Wales, and England, co-produced and directed by Jean Donohue, funded by the Kentucky Foundation on Women, Kentucky Educational Television, Ohio Arts Council, transmitted on Kentucky Educational TV 1990. Selected for the Independent Focus Series, WNET, New York. 1991 screened at the Flaherty Documentary Seminar, 1993.

Producer and Director, Information Garden Manifesto, an experimental and playful video deconstruction of the ideology of the Information Age. This work was selected for the Ohio Media Arts touring video art program, curated by John Hanhardt then of the Whitney Museum, funded by the Ohio Arts Council, 1988. It has been used in meetings and workshops to stimulate discussion of the images and hype of the information age.

Producer and Director, After The Act, a documentary examining the implications of the passage of the Cable Communications Act of 1984. It was distributed nationally through satellite on The Learning Channel, 1985. It served as an education and outreach tool to reach community media activists and programmers throughout the US in the wake of the passage of the Cable Act of 1984.

Producer and Writer, Another Year, Another Number, a documentary on the hopes for democratic national policy in Cable TV, 1984. The work was produced in coordination with groups advocating for democratic cable regulation; it was disseminated across the US in collaboration with the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers in one of the earliest uses of public, education and government cable channels for public interest advocacy.

Producer and Director, Interactive Video Disk, joint project of the University of Cincinnati Law School faculty and Computer Assisted Learning Center, 1983. Early experiment in the use of interactive video.