Gulf Island Film and Television School (GIFTS) is a community-based new media school founded 15 years ago by a group of documentary and commercial filmmakers on the site of a former logging camp on the island of Galiano in British Columbia, Canada. This article presents insights derived from a component of a larger research project investigating community-based new media education centers. Specifically, the authors address these two questions from their time spent investigating GIFTS: (1) What can be learned about art, and especially new media teaching and learning, from alternative sites like GIFTS?; and (2) What possibilities for a democratic and socially just arts curriculum and pedagogy can be learned from a place like GIFTS? It is not enough to merely teach ideas about democracy; they must be embodied in the art curricula and pedagogies. Places such as GIFTS offer insights into possibilities for structuring curricular and pedagogical experiences that use new media and foster democratic practice--communication, collaboration, and collective problem solving. Additionally, the authors argue that as new media practice, especially filmmaking and video arts, becomes more common in art classrooms, K-12 art educators can draw from the curricula and pedagogies from places like GIFTS. (Contains 1 endnote.)