Fast track 5280 - Collyn’s story

As part of the 5280 Fast-Track Cities Task Force's anti-stigma campaign, this powerful video features Colin Lee, a 27-year-old professional in Denver, Colorado, sharing his journey of living with HIV. Diagnosed at 24, Colin's story embodies resilience, self-discovery, and personal growth. He candidly discusses navigating family relationships, building a supportive community, and embracing life despite initial fears. Colin's message is clear: an HIV diagnosis doesn't limit one's potential but offers an opportunity for self-reflection and living life to the fullest. This inspiring narrative, aimed at supporting newly HIV-diagnosed individuals of color, challenges stigma and demonstrates that life with HIV can be rich and fulfilling. As part of a comprehensive outreach campaign, this video seeks to educate, inspire, and promote understanding and acceptance for those living with HIV in Denver and beyond.

Opportunity Starts at home

From better health, to food security, to good education, housing is foundational to every aspect of well-being, building stronger communities, promoting economic growth, and providing opportunities for everyone to thrive. In 2022 we partnered with Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) to create a short documentary to support the work CCH was leading on with the Opportunity Starts at Home campaign. The goal of the campaign, is to generate widespread support for local, state, and federal policies that correct long-standing racial inequities and economic injustices by ensuring quality housing for people with low incomes. In conjunction with this longer documentary Together Creative also created shorter clips a wider advocacy campaign to be used on social media, at legislative sessions and in conjunction with one-pagers to help leverage advocacy efforts across the state.

life doesn’t stop at an hiv diagnosis

Today an HIV diagnosis is no longer a death sentence. With accessible treatment and medication individuals diagnosed with HIV can now lead long and rich lives. Sadly the stigma around HIV is still ever present and causes great emotional and physical harm to people living with HIV. This stigma can have real consequences especially for folx newly diagnosed with the virus. As part of a global campaign the 5280 Fast-Track Cities Task Force hired Together Creative to create photo and video content for a large anti-stigma and resource campaign for those living with HIV in Denver, CO. In collaboration with marketing firm Spectacle we created a series of videos and portraits to support a web, print and social based outreach campaign.

https://www.5280fast-trackcities.org/

Remembering Rodeway

This digital campaign to highlight the benefits of the non-congregate shelter model was created in partnership with The Gathering Place (TGP), which seeks to create low-barrier access to support, which helps all people access and maintain affordable housing. In 2023, the City of Denver ended TGP’s contract to operate a shelter serving women, non-binary, and trans-identified folks experiencing homelessness. For the past two years the Rodeway Shelter provided holistic and wrap-around services for the community of residents at this non-congregate shelter with transformational impact. Postive results from this model were 10x higher than that of other shelter models. The Gathering Place is committed to finding alternative solutions and funding to keep this successful model going. TGP hired the Together Creative to create this mini-doc as well other social content to increase awareness around the closure of Rodeway as well as kickstart efforts to explore further funding to open another shelter soon.

Community solutions to health disparities

In 2017, the CO Office of Health Equity (OHE) launched the Health Disparities Grant Program (HDGP). The program's goal is to provide resources and support to community-led grassroots organizations working to change inequitable systems to improve health outcomes. We supported this work by creating an interactive documentary highlighting the transformative work of three community-led organizations. The documentary includes interactive content like PDF downloads, podcasts, and photo essays.

Overdose awareness day

Together Creative worked with a diverse set of community members at Denver Health to support development and production of this project. Peer support specialists, individuals in treatment for substance use disorder and medical professionals all collaborated with our team to develop key messaging, learning points and the social context around the crisis.

HOW PEER SUPPORT SPECIALISTS BUILD CONNECTION

A team of researchers at the University of Denver's Graduate School of Social Work were looking for a way to engage a broader audience around key research findings on the relationship between peer support specialists and young people experiencing homelessness. The goal was to expand the reach of their findings beyond academia and into the hands of organizations serving unhoused youth. Historically these youth have had low engagement with service providers as services have been largely non-relational and not met these youth where they are at with their unique needs and goals, which can look different than adults who are unhoused. The opportunity for Emergent Media Collective was to create a short piece of content accessible to a diverse audience base educating them on the key findings of the research, create deeper emotional understanding around the relational importance of peer programming and move them further into the research. We knew we could best achieve these through an animated video.