Behind the Story: The Founding of MediaLab

At the end of the 2026 school year, the Marketing Communications team partnered with rising senior Ryder to explore the idea of creating a student group focused on photography, video, and social media. That conversation led to the launch of MediaLab, co-founded by four student leaders in collaboration with Marketing Communications. More than 25 students applied to join, and members are now working together on projects that tell the stories of Pacific Ridge School.

For co-leader Ryder ’27, MediaLab is an opportunity to explore creative ideas, learn alongside peers, and tell the stories that make Pacific Ridge unique:

There’s a special kind of optimism in naming a project file “final.” Usually, there are at least three more versions coming. Before long, you have “final_final” and “final_ACTUALLYFINAL,” which somehow still needs one small change. Creative work has a way of giving you another idea just when you think you’re done.

To give students at Pacific Ridge a place to explore those ideas, I joined the founding leadership in partnership with the Marketing Communications office this year to create MediaLab. Our goal was to create an opportunity for students to express their creative side through media and marketing while helping tell the stories at our school. We experience Pacific Ridge every day, and we have our own ideas about what’s worth sharing. We wanted to give students a way to take that perspective and make something with it.

One of my favorite things about MediaLab is that there isn’t just one way to be involved. You might like taking photos, editing videos, writing, or coming up with ideas. You might want to interview people, or you might strongly prefer to stay on the other side of the camera. Personally, I think anyone willing to be interviewed deserves some credit. The second someone presses record, answering “What’s your favorite class?” can become a very difficult question.

I want to encourage students to apply even if they don’t necessarily have the experience. If they're interested, this is a group to explore ideas, get mentorship, and learn together. An idea doesn’t need to be completely figured out before someone shares it. Sometimes, talking it through with other people is how it becomes something worth making. I hope students gain confidence by seeing what they can create with a little support and room to try.

Helping start MediaLab has also made me think about what being a student leader means to me. I want to help other students get their ideas off the ground and give them room to take projects in directions I wouldn’t have thought of. Seeing someone get excited about an idea and take the lead on making it happen is a big part of what I hope this program encourages.

Through our work, I hope we can capture more of what being a student at Pacific Ridge actually feels like. That could mean showing the preparation behind a performance, following a class project from the first attempt to the finished product, or highlighting someone doing something interesting that most of campus hasn’t heard about yet. We’re around those moments every day, and we have an opportunity to help others see them too.

Long after I graduate, I hope students I’ve never met will be bringing their own ideas to MediaLab and taking it places I couldn't have imagined. By then, it might look very different from the program we started. It would mean new students had found something worth adding, changing, and making their own. As long as that keeps happening, there will always be another version ahead.

Stay up to date with what our MediaLab is creating!