The Movement, the civil rights history iPhone app from Ed Farm and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, is now available to download from Apple's App Store. (Courtesy, Ed Farm)

The Movement, the civil rights history iPhone app from Ed Farm and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, has moved into its next phase.

Now in a soft launch, the app is now available to download from the Apple app store.

The mobile application is a collaboration from the BCRI, Ed Farm, and digital creative brand STAY DRMN. The three organizations work with youth contributors and storytellers in the city to help them research the civil rights movement in Birmingham through interviews with historians, foot soldiers, and archival footage from the BCRI.

Using story-centered design, the contributors, also known as griot fellows, produce immersive stories on the app using videos, photographs, voiceovers, and augmented reality.

So far, the content on the app includes a list of youth storytellers, voting rights resources, and an early version of a “magic walk” or a location- based immersive tour. Once complete, the magic walks will combine photos, videos, and narration from both youth storytellers and BCRI historian Barry McNealy to take users on a self-guided, augmented reality tour of stops on the Birmingham civil rights trail, including the A.G. Gaston Motel, Kelly Ingram Park, the BCRI, and St. Paul United Methodist Church.

The app also contains one short film, or immersive story called “The Disinherited Children of God.” Directed and narrated by rapper, artist, and writer David Welch II-- also known as David the Gr8--the story details the “Project C Confrontation,” of the civil rights movement in Birmingham and features an interview with Janice Wesley Kelsey, one of the children who marched in the 1963 Children’s Crusade.

The film, which is also available on Youtube, premiered to the public during a sneak peek of the app on the inaugural Fred Shuttlesworth Day in March.

An upcoming immersive story written and directed by griot fellow Lorraine Shackleford will concentrate on LGBTQ rights and activists in the civil rights movement. Shackleford spent the past few months interviewing foot soldiers and elders in order to understand the intersection of LGBTQ identity and social justice.

“A lot of my questions have been centered around what it means to be Black and gay at the same time, and what it means to be Black and gay within an organizing space (as well as) internalized homophobia within the civil rights movement or within modern day movement building,” Shackleford told AL.com in March.

One of her main goals, she said, was to examine homophobia and bigotry within spaces dedicated to liberation.

“Liberation is kind of an absolute. You can’t partially liberate a people. And so, I think it’s mainly about focusing on intersectionality,” said Shackleford.

Shackleford gave a sneak peek of her immersive story during the BCRI’s screening of “Brother Outsider,” the PBS documentary about civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who was openly gay.

The team behind The Movement app gave demonstrations and premiered an immersive video during the inaugural Fred Shuttlesworth Day events at the BCRI (from left) Sarah Jones, Lorraine Shackleford, David Welch II, Philippe Celestin, Erika Abrams, and Brittany Hollis (Shauna Stuart| AL.com)

The Movement also has plans to produce stories about the life and death of Bonita Carter, and the political rise of Richard Arrington, Jr, the first Black mayor of Birmingham.

Since 2021, the team behind The Movement has been working to create the app’s first series of immersive stories. The team is also soliciting user feedback, as well as ensuring footsoldiers and historians review the app’s content for accuracy and authenticity. The Movement relies on a group of advisors called guides to source content and relationships, including community leaders T. Marie King and Elijah Davis, as well as BCRI educators and historians Barry McNealy and Charles Woods.

“We’re pretty much trying to bring authenticity to these stories,” Welch told AL.com in October.

Some movies about the civil rights movement, said Welch, focus more on ahistorical drama rather than facts. The app’s mission is to include the voices and opinions of people who lived through Alabama’s social justice movements of the 1950s and 1960s, and tell those stories through the next generation of storytellers who will inherit the state.

“We’re doing the work necessary so that people like me can say ‘That’s accurate. That’s fair,’” said Welch. “And if I was related to someone (who was in) the movement, I’m glad there’s somebody telling that story from an authentic place. I’d be glad that someone is using my family’s name and my family’s event in a way that is honorable and authentic and not exploitation.”

Marshall Pollard, the Chief Executive Officer of STAY DRMN, says people are deeply connected with the stories that make Birmingham the Magic City, from the rise of the steel industry to the movements for social justice.

“There is an idea around a campaign of collecting stories of magic, but with the opportunity that Ed Farm, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and Apple have created, it’s more than just a campaign. It’s a movement. It’s a chance to say ‘what if there was technology that allowed us to connect and to capture these stories?’” Pollard told AL.com in an interview last fall. “So, what started as a documentary process has now turned into an application that’s leveraging a lot of people across the city, mostly our young people.”

Public demonstrations of The Movement started rolling out last year, including a presentation of the app at the Alabama Collective speaker series during the week of the Magic City Classic. Last month, the team continued the presentations at Ed Farm’s inaugural education summit.

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