Black Creators Offer a New Lens on History
Snapchat is helping our community celebrate Black history-makers past, present, and future with a new Lens collection created by Black creators in the Snap Lens Network!
The Black History Month collection launched in Lens Explorer brings together Lenses custom-made by seven Black creators within the Snap Lens Network.
“We selected the creators from the Snap Lens Network due to our intimate working knowledge with them on previous initiatives, and their shared passion for Snap AR technologies and community,” said Joe Darko, Head of AR Developer Relations.?
Snap asked the creators to flex their creative muscles and build new Lenses aligned with two themes:?
“We chose these themes to highlight because Black history is a transcendent concept. We didn’t want to just focus on the more widely known and classically distributed facts about the past because that would be a disservice to the interconnected nature of the collective experiences and contributions of all the Black people to come,” said Sterling De Sutter Summerville, DEI Program Manager.?
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“Black people — and therefore Black history — are not a monolith, and the vastness of our experiences are varied, impactful and expansive. It is not contained to just one period in time in one place, but our past and present circumstance is rich with innovation and promise. We thought it was important to touch on the ways in which Black people are, were and will always be a very important part of history all over the world,”? Sterling continued.?
For example, a Lens by creator Lafiya Watson Ramirez , called “Innovators ,” uses Scan to identify items in your environment that were brought to us by Black inventors.?
Another Lens by Masharzi McCann , “Limitless ,” puts the user in the middle of an surreal AR environment populated by figures who share words of wisdom from Black icons including Harriet Tubman and political scientist Dr. Samuel Dubois Cook .
Elevating the work of Black creators is critical not only to keeping education around Black History accessible and exciting, but also to ensuring equity for AR develops as an industry, said Kimberlee Archer, Director of Marketing for Snap AR.
“Beyond this collection, we have several upcoming DEI initiatives that bring the magic of AR to underrepresented communities. These initiatives will help us unearth talented Black creators and developers inspired to create unique experiences with Snap AR technologies,” she continued. “We want to be a beacon for the talent within these communities.”
To hear from the Lens creators featured in the collection, be sure to tune in to Snap’s Black History Month Twitter Spaces discussion this Thursday, February 23, at 11 a.m. PT! Join us as we chat about the creators’ professional growth in AR, and get their perspective on the impact AR is making in culture.