The Alexia Fall Workshop

About The Alexia Fall Workshop

The Fall Workshop was founded in 1999 by the faculty of the Visual Communications department of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. In 2023, the name was changed to The Alexia Fall Workshop to more closely connect the workshop to The Alexia, a granting organization at Newhouse that supports professional and student visual storytellers worldwide who produce projects that inform, foster cultural understanding and inspire meaningful change.

The workshop takes place over four days each fall and brings top visual professionals from around the world to join Newhouse professors as they push students to identify, observe and artfully communicate the core of who we are. Students use photography, video, audio and words to hone their craft of exceptional storytelling while engaging in the community and the world around them. The workshop has existed in various iterations, from holding the entire event on-site at a nearby community, to holding it completely on campus, to, more recently, employing a hybrid approach.

The program kicks off on a Thursday evening as coaches and their student teams get to know one another. All day Friday, students work on their projects in the community, and Saturday is a production day with an early evening presentation by a professional visual storyteller courtesy of the workshop’s sponsor, Nikon.The event wraps on Sunday with a public viewing and awards.

The Alexia and now The Alexia Fall Workshop are named in memory of photojournalism student Alexia Tsairis, one of 35 Syracuse University students who died in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, while on their way home from a semester abroad.