UAB hosts Media and Film Open House during Arts Week

UAB put its Media Commons on display Thursday, April 9, opening the Heritage Hall space from 4 to 6 p.m. for a free Media and Film Open House that was aimed at current students, faculty and staff, and prospective students. For anyone trying to get a real look at how film and media function inside the university, this was the access point: not a brochure pitch, but a chance to see the rooms, tools and academic pathways that sit behind UAB’s production work.

The timing mattered. The open house landed inside Arts Week, which ran from March 30 through April 9 and was billed by UAB as a celebration of student and faculty creativity presented by the College of Arts and Sciences. UAB invited students, faculty, staff, alumni and the broader community to attend events on campus and in the community, and the Media and Film Open House fit that public-facing push neatly. UAB also described a similar Arts Week session as a place to learn about the Media and Film Programs while faculty discussed courses and resources and students shared their work.

What made the open house useful was the Media Commons itself. UAB says the space supports faculty and students who build media and film production into their courses, with access to production equipment for checkout, multimedia hardware and software for post-production, and dedicated spaces including the Media Lab, Media Classroom and Media Studio. UAB also says the Commons helps students and faculty create documentary films and record oral histories, which gives the program a practical, community-based feel that goes beyond a standard classroom minor.

That roots the event in a longer UAB strategy. The university says the Media Studies Program was co-founded in 2003 by Michele Forman to connect students with community issues in Greater Birmingham through new media technologies. The Media Studies minor leans into documentary film, film history, oral history, ethnography, community studies and media theory, while the Film minor is a 21-hour interdisciplinary program that requires coursework from at least three disciplines. That mix makes UAB’s film track feel less like a silo and more like a pipeline that overlaps with history, communication and community storytelling.

The Department of Communication Studies widens that pipeline even further, with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication and mass media. In a city like Birmingham, where independent film depends on people who can shoot, edit, report, produce and organize, an open house like this does more than recruit students. It gives them a working entry into the equipment, instruction and production culture that can feed Alabama’s next wave of crew and storytellers.