On April 5, Point Park and the Center for Media Innovation (CMI) paired with the City of Pittsburgh to set up a livestream for Inclusive Innovation Week, a yearly series of events in early April dedicated to bringing light to socioeconomic topics and discussing them with young people.

While this was not Pittsburgh’s first Inclusive Innovation Week, it was its first time pairing with Point Park for part of the celebration, which included a livestream from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. that was posted on the Facebook page for the CMI.

It was the CMI’s most viewed video yet and it was shared 55 times.

Mayor Bill Peduto opened the event to thank everyone for watching and to raise awareness for the issues that people may feel uncomfortable about. The livestream was hosted by Josh Croup, produced by Croup and sophomore Allison Schubert and featured interview packages and PSAs from several different student organizations.

Also in attendance were ten students from Franklin Regional High School to witness the production that was largely put on by Point Park students.

They were brought in by Chelsea Pompeani, the Media Innovation Specialist at the CMI, who was very impressed with the work done by the students for this event.

“I just want to give a shout out to students involved,” Pompeani said. “We had Josh Croup host and we had Allison Schubert and Taylor Fife doing packages and it was a three-hour show. The students who planned this and took it into their own hands did a phenomenal job,” she said. Pompeani also noted she wasn’t the only one who took notice of the students’ hard work.

“The city was very impressed with our students and the work they’ve done with this and that’s why they want to partner with us again next year,” Pompeani said.

Nick Kasisky, a junior broadcast production and media management major, is another such student, and directed the production from the control room in the CMI.

“It was a huge honor to be a part of this type of event because so many important topics were discussed including mental health, bullying, gender equality, food insecurity, racial equality,” Kasisky said. He then explained why he thought it was important.

“It is important for people to be aware of the topics discussed and I definitely respect all the guests because they came out on a livestream and they talked about some really deep stuff,” Kasisky said.

Matt Powell, assistant professor of dance at Point Park, helped the dance department create a PSA for the livestream. The topics of all the PSA’s shown during the livestream varied in subject matter, but the dance program decided to focus on bullying.

“At Point Park our slogan for the dance department is to move beyond labels. That’s what we put on everything,” Powell said. “And so we’ve done a public service announcement called ‘We Like To Move.’”

He described the content of the public service announcement.

“We had dancers moving around and saying, ‘We like to move. We like to move. We like to move beyond labels. And we don’t tolerate bullying.’ So it’s a way to kind of use our art to get a message across that bullying isn’t okay and it’s not welcome in the dance department,” Powell said.

“Pittsburgh is a town that likes to be on the forefront of change and growth, and I think that this is a nice reflection of that,” Powell added on the subject of Pittsburgh’s consistent recognition of this week.