Haiti Earthquake Report Via Amateur Radio

[Video and Text taken from K3VictorRadio's Youtube channel - Uploaded 15th January 2010]

“When telephones, internet, and power are cut off, Amateur Radio fills vital communications needs. Fred Moore of Florida, callsign W3ZU provides a radio/telephone patch for Jean-Robert Gaillard, callsign HH2JR, of Port au Prince. Audio captured by Brian Crow. Images (c) their respective owners.”

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GOD Bless all of you in Haiti.  My prayers are with you all.

Rastafari

Shawn, UK
x

The need to stay connected – self-portrait (William Blake’s critique of Newton)

William Blake critiqued Issac Newton in the claim that scientific enquiry for its own sake was a folly that saw the scientist ignore the beauty of the world for the sake of an equation.  Blake saw all the answers he needed in the world around him in nature’s beauty and in his imagination, rather than seek the need to pin down the beauty of the world via mathematical equations.  The worldviews of Blake and Newton could not have been further apart, though in truth they were probably more alike than Blake cared to admit.  They knew the world contained a truth that they could capture and represent; Blake through visuals and text, Newton through calculus.  They were both in pursuit of the representation of the Earth’s patterns of existence, its poetry.

Blake’s grievance however was what he saw as the scientific community’s denial of the answers provided in the world’s innate spirituality.  He used Newton as a symbol of science’s new direction, and in his painting of Newton showed how the scientist had become disconnected from the luxurious world around him.

I make no secret of the fact that I started to research community media after working as a facilitator/practitioner in it for 11 years, and I basically needed to get off the treadmill for a while and analyse what it was I was doing, and not just keeping on doing it all the time with no reflection.  The relentless pursuit of ‘workshop’ ground me down.  I still run occasional workshops and media projects, but as my bones get tired, old and weary, the thought of staying at home writing instead is appealing I have to admit.  I also now have children of my own, so have developed the selfish need to spend the evenings and weekends with my own offspring, rather than primarily with other people’s.  (I know….it takes a village to raise a child…. etc!).

Working in academic research the journey towards becoming a parody of Blake’s rendition of Newton could only be a few paces away.  I make the following image as a self-manifesto of the need to stay grounded, related and connected.  To keep in touch with the poetry of the world, and to not get blinded by the pursuit of research for it own sake, with no discernable use or purpose.

Postscript:  Newton’s ideas have turned out to be extremely useful centuries after his (so-called) blinkered world view.  Looks like I needn’t worry after all.  Just do and be damned!!!!

Peace

3rd Cinema Screening Room #1: Women’s Voices

This film was made with female prisoners in the UK.  Originally commissioned for a conference on the issue of women in prison, the work was deemed too powerful for the prison service and they tried to stop it being shown.  Their decision was not honoured and it was shown anyway and caused much debate.  The women prisoners who gave their voices to this film were fully in support of the screening as they felt it was one of the few times their stories had been heard and taken seriously.

 

Produced by Louise Lynas, Directed and Edited by Chris Barnett, Camera by Tom Swindell.  A Firstborn Creatives production.

Essentially non-narrative, (containing fragments of story rather than an overarching narrative arc), this film defies the conventions of traditional documentary and drama, although it contains elements of both.  The film plays both to the arthouse and also to conventional cinema, creating a ‘mood’ piece which lets the rich audio fragment narratives drive the slower visual metaphors. According to Wayne (2001):

“The great advantage of Third Cinema is that while it is politically oppositional to dominant cinema, it doesn’t seek, at the level of form and cinematic language, to reinvent cinema from scratch…; nor does it adopt a position of pure opposition on the question of form (it is too interested in communication for that).” (page 10)

Although visually stunning, there is an implicit understanding in this film that the images are but mere vehicles for the voices to be heard.  Without the visuals, with eyes closed, the film still works.  Though the visuals provide a strong visual aesthetic which allows an accessible reading.  It is designed to capture the attention of the viewer, to make you empathise with the voices that are in fact the real visual content.  Visual in that they force the audience to visualise the faces and lives of the anonymous speakers.

The women gave the filmmakers their stories like a present.  The filmmakers then have the double responsibility of representing and disseminating the women’s life stories sensitively.  The film does not seek to educate like a documentary or entertain like a drama, but simply to be listened to and reflected upon.  It challenges the audience to question and have an opinion, although the film itself does not provide any answers or suggestions, although there is no doubt with whom the sympathies of the filmmakers lies: with the prisoners.  There is little sense of hope at the end of the film, ending as uncertain as the lives of the women we heard.

 The challenge of Third Cinema and community video is how to exhibit and disseminate the work.  There are lots of great community media produced films out there that have never been screened beyond their original intended event.  For such films to have the power and influence they intended it is important that they are seen.  The audiences would ultimately decide the relevance of the films and where there was any influence and impacts to be gained, which as described in the previous post demonstrates ‘media praxis’ not media passive. Wayne suggests “it is precisely this question of the role of the audience and the nature of their engagement with the text that is central to Third Cinema” (page 11).  Community media video projects need to try and find outlets to give audiences that opportunity to see the work, otherwise the notion of media praxis remain a utopian ideal rather than an everyday sector practice.

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 References

 Wayne, M. (2001) Political Film: The dialectics of Third Cinema, Pluto Press, London

Community Media as ‘Third Cinema’

I haven’t written here much lately as I had to put all my writing energy into finishing writing my PhD, which is now done, (the viva in May, wish me luck!!!).  There are a few places I want to take my research further in the future, one of which is to develop the discourse of positioning the films made in community media educational projects as a form of ‘Third Cinema’, the independent political film tradition  1. 

Mike Wayne describes Third Cinema as “a body of theory and filmmaking practice committed to social and cultural emancipation.  This body of filmmaking is small, indeed tiny in terms of world cinema output.  Yet Third Cinema films are amongst the most exciting and challenging films ever made….It challenges both the way cinema is conventionally made (for example, it has pioneered collective and democratic production methods) and the way it is consumed.” (Wayne, 2001)

I’m sure this description will resonate with those of you who facilitate the making of films with young people and adults in participatory contexts.

I’m interested in how community media is active in the sense that, rather than only documenting and reflecting on a social situation or problem, it also seeks solutions.  Solutions are often sought through either;

1) the promotion of debate when the work is screened (in schools, community centres, on community radio, etc);

2) through the use of allegory in the actual narrative;  

3) by using the work in training situations for community workers, counsellors, teachers, police, etc, to affect change in decision makers’ attitudes towards a situation.  Community media work is often used in mediation sessions with disputing members of a community as a tool for conflict resolution.

A ‘debate active’ community media ties in with my realisation that community media educational activities are primarily a form of action research (though often without the actual research!) rather than ethnographic in intention.  At the start of my PhD I was thinking that community media is very ethnographic as the films and radio programmes shine a light on their communities, engaging in oral history, unearthing hidden stories, etc, and therefore do anthropology in their own back yards.  I now realise however that these activities are more in the vein of action research, in that they work according to a method to affect change.  They instil a pride in their communities and cultural identities, promoting hidden stories to show the communities have ‘value’, ‘depth’, and a seriousness that can inspire younger generations to take pride in their surroundings, and the people who live there, or to raise awareness and educate about a certain social issue or problem.   

The use of the term ‘action research’ is of course problematic as community media facilitators on the whole do not conduct long term research studies about what they do and the effect it might have.  (That is essentially what my PhD was.)  I guess what I am suggesting by using the term, is that community media education is ‘lived’ action research, rather than academic.  The impacts of how participants have used the projects to progress themselves are evident in life, though often not analysed.  This is where Dr Alexandra Juhasz’s positioning of the term ‘Media Praxis’ becomes useful.  It is ‘Media as Action’, not solely ‘Media as Observation’.  Hence the difference between ‘Research as Action’ (action research), and ‘Research as Observation’ (ethnography).

Thus for participatory producers to consciously make a film, radio programme (etc), knowing they want the work to have an active impact on the audiences regarding their sense of self-worth as a community, and also on the behaviour of audience as individuals, is a politicised act.  This politicised community media practice and community media process sees the work residing in the realm of the larger film tradition of ‘Third Cinema’.  This again demonstrates how community media practice embodies a deep sense of history and theory that is ‘lived’, experienced and worked through, rather than consciously drawn upon and overtly realised.  The realisation of its context in history can only strengthen the work and confidence of community media facilitators.  It has long been realised in academia that community media is politicised and operates as an element of the Habermas’ notion of the Public Sphere, (Howley 2005, and Lewis 2006).  I would now like to take those ideas into the discourse of Third Cinema and methodologies such as ‘lived’ action research.

Soon on this blog I will create some ‘screening rooms’ where community media productions can be discussed in context of ideas such as Third Cinema, the Public Sphere and other notions that I feel are useful to actual community media practice (praxis).  I hope you join me.  Pass the popcorn!

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Footnote

1 – First Cinema are “dominant, mainstream” movies, and Second Cinema are ”art[house], authorial” independent films.  (Wayne, 2001, page 2)

 

References

Howley, K (2005), Community Media: People, Places and Communication Technologies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pages 19-20

Lewis, P. (2006). Community Media: Giving “a voice to the Voiceless”, in P. Lewis and S. Jones (Eds.) (2006). From the Margins to the Cutting Edge: Community Media and Empowerment. IAMCR, Hampton Press, USA. Pages 32-33

 Wayne, M. (2001) Political Film: The dialectics of Third Cinema, Pluto Press, London, page 5

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Bloggers, have you been Bill Bartmann’ed yet?

Bill Bartmann is the billionaire that massages your ego with spam.

This image was taken from Wolf Kettler’s excellent blog article about Bill’s spamming habits - see here.

I’m really glad you like my blog Bill, but if you like it so much then please leave a personal message and not one you have copied and pasted 1000 times just to improve your Google ratings and web footprint.

 

Thanks.  I love you too by the way!

Media Studies 1-0-1: Who exactly are the real idle ones here?

Question 1: Multiple choice.

WHO EXACTLY ARE THE REAL IDLE ONES IN THIS EQUATION?

A) The” protesters calling for social change”?
(As quoted in the article on page two of Bristol’s Evening Post newspaper, 19.9.09.  On the front page the paper called the protesters “Idle” to rhyme with ‘Idol’ – see what they did there??)

B) The ‘hundreds’ of people the queued for up to 10 hours to see pop “Idol” Peter Andre.
(In the article on page 4, the headline says that “thousands” were at the store to see Andre.  That’s quite a lot of people to arrive in just a few pages.  He must be popular!!!.)

C) The Evening Post Editor and “journalist” #1
(They labelled the only people who are actually doing anything active on this front page  as ‘Idle’ just to get a headline.)

D) The Evening Post Editor and “journalist” #2
(Couldn’t keep their facts straight between four pages?)

  
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Question 2: Analytical skills

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

According to the visual evidence presented, where are the moments of ‘idle’ situated?

 

 

 

 

 

Next weeks lesson:

Journalist impartiality and integrity, and the need to check your facts.

 

 

 

Understanding Community Media: New Book

I’ve never been that good at selling myself, but if I can’t promote myself on my own blog then I figure I need to just give up now!

Here are details of  new peer reviewed book called ‘Understanding Community Media’ edited by Kevin Howley.  I wrote chapter 16, titled ‘Positioning Education Within Community Media’.

As they say, it is available in all good book shops.  Enjoy!

 

Kevin Howley (ed.),  Understanding Community Media.  Thousand Oaks:
Sage, 2009. 
ISBN:  9781412959056 
USD $42.95/ UK £23.00

http://www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book232060&

http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book232060&

This text reveals the value and significance of community media in an
era of global communication.  Bringing together an international team of
scholars and practitioners, it introduces students to the emerging field
of community media studies.  Throughout, contributors explore a wide
range of media institutions, forms and practices—community radio,
participatory video, street newspapers, Independent Media Centers
(IMCs), and community informatics—from around the world.  Over thirty
original essays consider the particular and distinctive ways local
populations make use of various technologies for purposes of community
communication.  The collection provides an incisive and timely analysis
of the relationship between media and society, technology and culture,
and communication and community.

CONTENTS

PART I. THEORETICAL ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES 
       
1. Social Solidarity and Constituency Relationships in Community Radio 
Charles Fairchild

2. Democratic Potential of Citizens’ Media Practices   
Pantelis Vatikiotis

3. Community Arts & Music, Community Media: Cultural Politics & Policy
in Britain since the 1960s     
George McKay

4. Collaborative Pipelines     
Otto Leopold Tremetzberger

5. Notes on a Theory of Community Radio        
Kevin Howley

PART II. CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
       
6. Re-Imagining National Belonging With Community Radio        
Mojca Plansak & Zala Volcic

7. Alternative Media and the Political Public Sphere in Zimbabwe       
Nkosi Ndlela

8. Toronto Street News as a Counterpublic Sphere       
Vanessa Parlette

9. Evaluating Community Informatics as a Means for Local Democratic
Renewal
Ian Goodwin

10. Mapping Communication Patterns Between Romani Media and Romani NGOs
in the Republic of Macedonia   
Shayna Plaut

PART III. CULTURAL GEOGRAPHIES 

11. Aboriginal Internet Art and the Imagination of Community   
Maria Victoria Guglietti

12. Media Interventions in Racialized Communities      
Tanja Dreher

13. Community Collaboration in Media and Arts Activism: A Case Study   
Lynette Bondarchuk & Ondine Park

14. Examining the Successes and Struggles of New Zealand’s Maori TV    
Rita Rahoi-Gilchrest

15. Itche Kadoozy, Orthodox Representation, & the Internet as Community
Media  
Matt Sienkiewicz

PART IV. COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
       
16. Positioning Education Within Community Media       
Shawn Sobers

17. Dalitbahujan Women’s Autonomous Video      
Sourayan Mookerjea

18. Coketown and Its Alternative Futures       
Philip Denning

19. Addressing Stigma and Discrimination Through Participatory Media
Planning       
Aku Kwamie

PART V. COMMUNITY MEDIA AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS   

20. Indigenous Community Radio and the Struggle for Social Justice in
Colombia       
Mario Alfonso Murillo

21. Ethnic Community Media and Social Change: A Case in the United
States 
Dandan Liu

22. A Participatory Model of Video Making: The Case of Colectivo Perfil
Urbano
Claudia Magallanes-Blanco

23. Feminist Guerrilla Video in the Twin Cities        
Brian Woodman

PART VI. COMMUNICATION POLITICS
       
24. Community Radio & Video, Social Activism, and Neoliberal Public
Policy in Chile During the Transition From Dictatorship to Neoliberal
Democracy      
Rosalind Bresnahan

25. Past, Present, and Future of the Hungarian Community Radio Movement        
Gergely Gosztonyi

26. Community Media Activists in Transnational Policy Arenas   
Stefania Milan

27. Closings and Openings: Media Restructuring and the Public Sphere   
Bernadette Barker-Plummer & Dorothy Kidd

28. The Rise of the Intranet Era       
Sascha D. Meinrath & Victor W. Pickard

PART VII. LOCAL MEDIA, GLOBAL STRUGGLES
       
29. “Asking We Walk”: The Zapatista Revolution of Speaking and Lis
tening
       
Fiona Jeffries

30. Radio Voices Without Frontiers Global Antidiscrimination Broadcast 
Elvira Truglia

31. Media Activism for Global Justice  
Anne Marie Todd

32. The Global Turn in the Alternative Media Movement  
Carlos Fontes

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Open letter to Penny Woolcock, Claire Bosworth, Allan Niblo, Blast Films, Screen WM, Channel 4, the UK Film Council, and all involved with the film 1Day

To:

Blast Films – One Day Ltd
2 Imperial Works
Perren Street
London, NW5 3ED, UK
T +44 (0)20 7267 4260
www.blastfilms.co.uk

Dear the people “responsible” for the film 1Day

I am not one of these people to complain about a film before I have seen it, (for that matter I’m not really someone to complain about films at all!), so in this letter I can only really talk about the trailer and not the whole film.

I have just seen the trailer for your new feature film 1Day, and felt utter disappointment and the shallowness and exploitation of what I saw.  The trailer is a cynical attempt to capitalise on the problem of the UK’s black gang culture and the spiral of violence that we are seeing in our papers every day.  Judging by the reaction of the comments so far on your trailer on youtube, it looks like you will succeed in making lots of money from the blood of the inner cities.

I may be wrong of course, and I hope I am.  This film may be a clever Trojan horse, designed to look like it is glamorising violence amongst black youth in the trailer, to actually revealing a strong message in the actual film. I hope so, but somehow I doubt it.  I won’t be paying to find out. 

I do believe that films should be allowed to entertain, and that films should not preach.  Only boring films preach.   But filmmakers also have a responsibility to be conscious of what they unleashing into the communities that are suffering from the same problems they are presenting as entertainment.  At the very least, should not such an entertainment film  also look to further the debate of what the problem actually is, thus striving at some level of originality, and not mere cliché? (As I say, I hope you prove me wrong, and that your film is original and not a stereotypical cliché!)

Your film’s publicity makes a big deal that it has been “entirely street cast”.  I would like to know more about that. 

How much of a say did the “street” actors get in shaping the script?

Was the script ‘workshopped’, or did you have it already written and you just went and cast for actors from inner city communities? 

Did you listen to their advice on what messages the film should convey? 

Did you challenge any of the authenticity of any of the bravado, hype and myth they may have shown you, in trying to impress you with their “gangsta” tales? 

What responsibility did you show back to the communities that you were drawing from?

Will the film screenings be accompanied by discussions, workshops, guns & knife crime awareness events of any kind?

What was your deep down motivation for making this film, and have you succeeded?

I am all for creative freedom and freedom of choice, and don’t believe in censorship or banning films or anything like that.  I do however believe in the responsibility of the artists in being aware of what they do, over and above the motivation of finance.  There is also a moral obligation, especially when the subjects you are dealing with affects real young lives,  to be aware how your work will be contribute to the world in which it is promoted and received.  (I notice your publicity machine is also promoting free downloadable mix tapes to promote your film.  Notice all this power at your fingertips…)  Challenging work can stimulate debate and all those things, and that is fine, but the artists also bears some responsibility in not just washing their hands like Pontius Pilate claiming to be impartial.  The artist must be brave enough to take responsibility to see what affect their work has on real lives.

There are always huge circular debates about whether films such as yours will have a negative impact on the way young people act.  The same debates can be seen about gangsta rap, the influence of the music of Marilyn Manson and other such acts, Internet porn and its impacts on misogyny, fashion & celebrity culture and how young women view themselves, etc, etc, etc.  Of course there are no simple answers to these debates, and I don’t actually believe that young audiences (black or otherwise) are as gullible or as sheep-like as critics would suggest.  There is however a sharp question to ask all of those in the dock, who find yourselves defending your work from the accusation of corrupting society.

Is your work looking to provide an original perspective on the underlying stories to try and understand these problems better, or is it simply entertainment adding to the stereotypes we see in the news every day with no pretence of intellectual critique?

Or to put it very simply, on an issue that kills hundreds of UK black youth every year that you have chosen to make money from, are you a part of the problem or part of the solution?

I shall watch what happens with your film with interest, and I just hope you prove me wrong.  I look forward to your responses to what I have asked you here, and what I have accused you of.

Yours sincerely,

Shawn Sobers

Senior Lecturer & Researcher – University of the West of England
Director – Firstborn Creatives
Council member – Community Media Association

Roxanne’s Revenge – the need to hold multinational corporations to their word!

I found this on the PostBourgie blog and wanted to share it. All about how Roxanne Shante, who shot to fame in the 80s at the age of 14 as one of the the best rappers in the world. She held her record label Warner Bros to their word that they had included in the small print of her record contract, which said they agreed to pay for her education, assuming that a young ghetto child with stars in her eyes would never come knocking for any tuition fees. Well years later, after court battles getting the Warner Bros to honour their deal – (after she was left with very little royalties from her music career as a result of the unfavourable contract terms of the deal she was locked in to) – she now has a PhD and is a respected psychologist. Inspirational!

http://postbourgie.com/2009/08/24/roxanne-shante-phd/

A Luta Continua! (The Struggle Continues!)

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Physical ‘mediators’ as corner-stones of communities

Often community media theorists (myself included) talk about community media itself as a site of the public sphere acting as an agent in the mediation of dominant cultural messages.  Talked about as Community Media projects as the site through which dominant messages are filtered and deconstructed, and then re-represented as an alternative produced message the other end of the project.  But what of the actual physical sites in communities that have been present as social glue long before the (digital) community media intervention arrived? (Think about churches, pubs, butchers, parks, banks, post offices, cafes, shops, etc.)   How do they feature as mediators for communities to filter dominant messages and meanings for the area’s citizens’?

It was these kinds of public (although male dominated) places that Jürgen Habermas  was talking about when he identified sites of of the public sphere, and I’ve been kind of forced to reflect on this recently with 2 events happening in my own life.  One is the closing down of a local pub in my home town (I don’t live there anymore), and the other is the closing down of my parents’ church that they have attended for over 40 years.

Last night I attended the closing down of a local pub that has served the African Caribbean community in Bath, England since the 1960’s, when many first came to this country, (often faced with a hostile reception by  the ‘hosts’).  Gentrification of the area is one of the reasons blamed for the pub being sold by the brewery.  Obviously not everyone in the community went to the pub, but for those that did it became an important social venue to play games together such as dominoes and pool, to listen to traditional and new music from their homelands, and also to talk to each other about the issues of the day – trade gossip, talk politics, share news.

  

There is no doubt that this pub acted as a public sphere for this community.  Consensus has been built, campaigns argued, events promoted, topical issues debated, ideas generated and whole host of other socio/political/economic and cultural ‘events’ have taken place there, (mostly positive, but always some negative things have happened as well).

With the closing of the pub this energy and platform for debate will be dissipated and dispersed, and the public spheres for the next generations growing in this area will be very different from those that have gone before.  But such changes need not always be lamented, as I feel such cultural changes can also be good for the dynamics of an area – challenging yes – but it also provides an opportunity and space for the younger generations to build their physical spaces and also to explore new territories.  There is no doubt still that the loss of the pub will be a big hole in the heart of the community.

The second similar event happening in my life is the closing of the church I attended growing up, and where my parents have been members of the congregation since the 1960s, (they went to church and never ever went to the pub!).  My family were the only black family to attend the church.  The church has been there for over 100 years serving the local Methodist worshippers and wider community.  It is now closing to be sold and turned into private living accomodation.  The church became too difficult to be used by the increasingly elderly congregation, and they are now going to merge with another church in a different area.

I must point out at this stage that my house and this church were on the opposite sides of the city to the pub and the area that is known locally as the ‘black area’.  But that said, the city of Bath is so small that it is all very close-knit anyway and no barriers where people live – as everyone knew each other anyway.  As evidence of the slippery multicultural nature of the city, see this photo of a Caribbean evening at the church held two years ago, notice the colour of the heads of the congregation listening to the steel band.

I wouldn’t say I have ever heard any really overtly radical or political firebrand sermons from the church, which Methodist history has a reputation of, but absolutely churches are sites of discussion, campaigning, socialising and trying to make sense of topical events, the same as a pub is a conduit for these activities but in a more formal way.

Both the pub and the church act as mediators and producers of messages, the same as a community media project.  Authors will be the ones with the tools or production (the ones with the most central or loudest/most persistent voices), participation is encouraged (volunteering in the church or socialising in the pub), and productions will be made (new opinions/insights formed and/or old opinions validated).  Both spheres will have the leaders, participants and audiences.

With the loss of these two institutions that everyone thought were permanent fixtures that would out live any of us, it is a timely reminder of what community media actually is and what is should be doing, and also what it may become unless projects stay relevant and empowered by the communties they serve.