Local Story Behind Debut of “@home” on Chicago PBS Station

Tomorrow night, a powerful new documentary will have its broadcast premiere, on Chicago’s WTTW-TV, Channel 11 (PBS), 9 p.m. Central. So, this is a great time to reflect on one of the highlights of our year: hosting the remarkable e-activist Mark Horvath for the Seattle premiere of the film about him, “@home.”

We were thrilled to bring Mark and the film’s director, Susanne Suffredin, here in May for the premiere, which kicked off another highlight of our year, the Hack to End Homelessness.

Watching the film in prep for the screening, our student Haley Jo Lewis was inspired to create an illustration about Mark. The film’s producers, the Kindling Group, liked the art so much that they used it to print t-shirts for their outreach campaign. The shirts arrived last week! Haley and our project assistant and recent SU grad, Tiana Quitugua, were happy to model the shirts; see the photo above.

Here’s the moment from May when Haley presented the artwork to Mark in person, which he tweeted about from his highly popular Twitter account (@hardlynormal):

Our students were heavily involved in Mark’s visit. Some other highlights:

• Haley wrote a moving review of @home for Firesteel in April.

• Tiana helped write the discussion guide that groups around the country have been using at screenings of the film. McKenna Haley, our former digital design assistant,  helped design the guide before she graduated in June. Download it here!

• Tiana also created a video about the Hack to End Homelessness and Mark’s visit.

We’ve heard that the film will be broadcast on PBS stations around the country in February 2015.

• Watch for more information here about future screenings.
• Host your own screening!
• Like “@home” on Facebook and follow the campaign on Twitter.
• If you’re on social media and you’re not following Mark Horvath, it’s time! Follow Mark on Twitter and Facebook, and check out his groundbreaking video site, Invisible People.

Congratulations to the @home team!