Burning Responsibility: Young Lives and Media Projects

Just over a month ago I attended the funeral of a 24 year old young man who tragically took his own life. His death and its circumstances shook the whole community, especially his peers.  12 years ago I was teaching him how to edit – me working as a facilitator on a community media project, working with colleagues I still work with today.  About 5 years after that he worked as a music producer on another community media project we were running.  We managed to bring him in to be involved after realizing he was ‘not around much’ lately. His sister had become heavily involved in the media project, and we kept asking how he was.  A couple of years after that, after spending some time ‘away’, he started to get involved with a weekly media club we ran, again it was great to see him sharing his talents – he was a natural editor and music producer, but he never boasted.  He was a very humble guy.

Why am I writing about this?  One of the reasons is to remember, to acknowledge, and the continual need to realize.  At his funeral two video youth workers gave speeches about his life.  Everyone who knew him knew of his skills, but as a laid back guy no one realized the urgency of that need for him in his life, or how vulnerable he was.

I am also writing this as I know I was also once a bit like that 24 year old, but my epiphany came earlier and in a less chaotic manner.  At the age of 19 I had a moment of depression and realized I needed to do something more constructive with my life.  On Christmas Eve I decided to apply to college and study media production.  I haven’t looked back since, I dare not, as I fear turning into salt like Lot’s wife.

Media and creativity was my lifeline, and true to the ‘wounded healer’ archetype I have gone on to work with other young people who seek creative ambitions possibly for similar reasons.  I am of course oversimplifying the past 20 years, but this distilled interpretation is still valid. 

I don’t want to go to any more funerals like this, though I also know I cannot save anyone, and that would be an arrogant claim and thought.  I can continue to work with others to try and provide opportunities for young people and spaces for their skills to be nurtured and witnessed, and from a pastoral perspective their emotional needs to be supported also.  Ultimately however I also know my own limitations, and realize I am no longer the best person to be working in intense youth community contexts any more, as vulnerable young people need time, attention and continuity from facilitators that I know I can no longer personally provide.  This is not a grumble however, as mentioned before, I know my limitations.  There are better (and younger) community media youth workers than me, but I can continue to help create the projects to put them in place.

So with the year ahead and the challenges for young people with regards; cuts to the community sector for arts funding; raising university tuition fees; harsher penalties for being unemployed; and all the other general stuff of life that makes being a young person today like swimming against the adult tide – to young people all I can say is if you have a talent, then don’t hide it, bring it to the surface.  Work towards getting your talents recognized and pursue your ambitions with all your heart, as that will generally make you happy.

When all said and done, the 24 year old young man took his own life because he was not happy.  So do whatever makes you happy, share your ideas with other people and find good people to work with, and keep on doing it.  It’s the difference between participating, and not participating, in your own life destiny.  If this sounds like a gross oversimplification, maybe that is what is required.

At the funeral his uncle spoke in a heartfelt way about how people should not be whispering and criticising the family and friends of the deceased, as God forbid the same can happen to anyone.  He advised rather to spend time with family and friends, to make sure in this busy hectic world we are not missing vital signs.  He is so right.

A related musical interlude, listen to the lyrics (and read them below) of ‘The Fire’ by The Roots featuring John Legend.  Inspiring stuff!  Keep your heads up, no matter what!

The Fire Lyrics – The Roots feat. John Legend

[John Legend]
Ohhhh, the fire, the fire
Ohhhh, the fire, the fire

[Chorus: John Legend]
There’s something in your heart
and it’s in your eyes
It’s the fire, inside you
Let it burn
You don’t say good luck
You say don’t give up
It’s the fire, inside you
Let it burn

[Black Thought]
Yeah, and if I’m ever at the crossroads
and start feeling mixed signals like Morse code
My soul start to grow colder than the North Pole
I try to focus on the hole of where the torch goes
In the tradition of these legendary sports pros
As far as I can see, I’ve made it to the threshold
Lord knows I’ve waited for this a lifetime
And I’m an icon when I let my light shine
Shine bright as an example of a champion
Taking the advantage, never copping out or cancelling
Burn like a chariot, learn how to carry it
Maverick, always above and beyond average
Fuel to the flame that I train with and travel with
Something in my eyes say I’m so close to having the prize
I realise I’m supposed to reach for the skies
Never let somebody try to tell you otherwise

http://www.elyricsworld.com/the_fire_lyrics_the_roots.html

[Chorus]

[Black Thought]
One love, one game, one desire
One flame, one bonfire, let it burn higher
I never show signs of fatigue or turn tired
cause I’m the definition of tragedy turned triumph
It’s David and Goliath, I made it to the eye of
the storm, feeling torn like they fed me to the lions
Before my time start to wind down like the Mayans
I show ‘em how I got the grind down like a science
It sounds like a riot on hush, it’s so quiet
The only thing I hear is my heart, I’m inspired
by the challenge that I find myself standing eye to eye with
Then move like a wise warrior and not a coward
You can’t escape the history that you was meant to make
That’s why the highest victory is what I’m meant to take
You came to celebrate, I came to sever great
I hate losing, I refuse to make the same mistake

[John Legend]
Ohhhh, the fire, the fire
Ohhhh, the fire, the fire

[Chorus]

[John Legend]
Ohhhh, the fire inside you
The fire inside you
The fire inside you
The fire inside you

PhD Thesis – BEYOND PROJECT: An Ethnographic Study in Community Media Education

ABSTRACT

BEYOND PROJECT: An Ethnographic Study in Community Media
by Shawn Naphtali Sobers

Research Question
“According to facilitators, participators and trainees of community media educational activity, what are the prime motivations of involvement, and what impacts and areas of sustainability result from the sector’s instances of pedagogy?”

Thesis Summary
The author of this thesis is active as a practitioner working within the area of community media education activity: the focus area of this research.  This research links practice to theory to address the central research question.  It employs methodologies informed by post-colonial theories including auto-ethnography and critical pedagogy to discuss the research findings in context of wider literature drawn from the disciplines of community media, community arts, media education, educational psychology, informal education, anthropology and cultural studies.

Community Media activities operate in a fragmented landscape of practice, making the notions of impact and sustainability problematic issues to negotiate, and presents difficulties with identifying related evidence.  This research presents extensive qualitative ethnographic investigation into the impacts and sustainability in the lives of facilitators, participants and trainees who have been involved in such projects for a minimum of four years.  This research evidences the prime motivations of why these stakeholders got involved with the projects from the very beginning, and maps these findings against the impacts and cultural sustainability as articulated, gaining an insight into both the pedagogic journey of the individuals, and the pedagogic qualities of the media projects.

This study employs a methodology that favours the stakeholders to speak for themselves, presenting individuals articulating what the impacts were on their own lives directly, thus matching the methodology of the study with the principles of the community media sector itself: to enable individuals to represent themselves.  At specific instances throughout this thesis the author will be referred to in the first person, due to the adopted additional methodology of autoethnography, which links analytical interpretation with personal exploration. 

Download pdf of full thesis – click here.

Channels of activity and emphasis of thought in Community Media (a methodology of mapping)

Since 2004, whenever I have given a paper at a conference about community media I have shown a table on powerpoint, (see the first table below).  I would go on to explain how this table informed my definition of the sector – which is according to the main areas of emphasis of activity by practitioners.

 My description and definition of community media states that the channels of activity are according to the main motivation of the action, ranging from;

-  the community stations that have no overt political agenda;
- the media activists using technology as a tool for political and social campaigns;
- media education with a media industry agenda;
- and educational projects that use technology as a tool to aid transferable skills. 

This isn’t to say that there isn’t cross-over between these channels, as there definitely is and the lines are blurry.  But I feel this framework does capture the main strands of motivation in community media practice, which are then delivered in an infinite amount of variations.

(I’ve written a chapter about this in a book called ‘Understanding Community Media’ edited by Kevin Howley, to be published in November this year by Sage.)

.

.

What I have now come to realise is that this framework is not only the means for me to define and understand what happens in community media practice, it is also the hypothesis by which to map the thought processes in community media theory and participation. 

For example, for my literature review chapter I wrote up the history of the idea of Media Literacy, and I found that the different opinions on what the concept was by scholars fit into the same framework according to the main areas of emphasis (see table below). 

 .

.

I have also written up the history of community media according to what has been  mentioned in community media & arts texts, starting at the Egyptian Hieroglyphs in pre-history (Caton-Rosser, 2006: 14) through to the UK government setting up Creative Partnerships in 2001 (Harding, 2005: 14), which in some cases has tried to be to UK schools and freelance artists/media facilitators what Roosevelt’s New Deal was in 1930s USA.  (This history also contains moments such as Thomas Paine’s pamphleteering, the world’s first community radio station, the MacBride Report, the founding of Deep Dish TV, the Rodney King incident, and the use of video by the Zapatista movement and the Chiapas Video Project in Mexico, amongst many, many, many other references!)

I’m now in the middle of mapping this history according this framework, and already it seems to be making sense! 

My next task after this is to analyse and interpret the piles of text data I have got from the interviews I conducted with participants of community media projects, many of which are longitudinal studies spanning 13 years worth of reflection by participants, looking at the impact on their lives, (some were 14 years old when they first regularly attended media workshops and are now 27!).  As well as other types of analysis and interpretation, I will also map the motivations of the individuals involved according to this framework.

Obviously these thoughts are still a work in progress.  I will be writing about this more over the summer and hope to get some journal papers published about this alongside my thesis at the end of the year.  (I especially want to get my history of community media chapter published!) 

Thanks for reading this, any comments welcome as always.

Shawn

 

References:

Caton-Rosser, M. S. (2006), ‘ Case studies of how community media enact media literacy and activism in the public sphere’. PhD Thesis

Harding, A. (2005). Magic Moments: Collaborations between Artists and Young People. Black Dog Publishing. London, UK

Uni runs Graduate Certificate in Participatory Arts and Media Professional Practice

Here are details of a Graduate certificate course I helped to write at the University of the West of England, which is aimed at people working in community arts & media.

There are three modules, with a wide range of tutors each module;

- Participatory Arts: Practice & Context
Looks at the history of community arts & media, influential theories (e.g. Paulo Freire’s dialogic pedagogy), informal education theories, government influence and evaluation models.

- Participatory Arts: Methods & Approaches 
Explores the practice, techniques and experiences of facilitating sessions, the tensions between process and product in varying contexts, the principles of participant authorship and ownership, and policies when working with young people and vulnerable adults.  This module is also being run separately for artists dedicated to working in the field of Health & Social Care.

- Participatory Arts: Project Management 
This module explores current funding landscapes, methods of fundraising, writing applications, project planning, marketing, and the need for freelancers to be business savvy (even) when working in a community context.

The read the official description click this link or read below.

http://www.uwe.ac.uk/sca/courses/community_cpd.shtml

============================================ 

UWE launch a new accredited course for Participatory Arts and Media Practitioners on our Bower Ashton campus.

We have been working with the Community Arts/Media and Arts & Health sectors to develop a flexible training course leading to a NEW qualification in Participatory Arts & Media – the first of its kind in the UK!

The Graduate Certificate in Participatory Arts and Media Professional Practice is aimed at arts graduates (People not currently working in the sector/recent graduates are required to have some relevant experience prior to application) or those working in any art form with groups in education, healthcare or the community sectors.

Each twelve week course is designed to fit around the practitioners’ lives and work, participants can take three modules in any order over the three years to obtain the Certificate, or take just one or two of the modules for their own personal development.

Graduate Certificate module information

Take any of the following modules as separate continuing professional development courses (CPD) to update your skills without UWE credits. Or link three modules together (with credits), in any order over three academic years, to gain the NEW Qualification: Graduate Certificate – Participatory Arts & Media Professional Practice. 

   

Participatory Arts: Practice & Context
Dates: 28 September to 21 Dec 09
Day Schools: 28 Sep, 26 Oct, 23 Nov, 21 Dec 10am – 5pm approx.
Open for applications: 20 July 2009 – Closed 21 August 2009

Participatory Arts: Methods & Approaches**
Dates: 4 January to 29 March 2010
Day Schools: 4 Jan, 1 Feb, 1 Mar, 29 Mar 10am – 5pm approx.
Open for applications: 19 October 2009 – Closed 20 November 2009

Participatory Arts in Healthcare Settings: Methods & Approaches**
Dates: 9 October 2009 to 10 March 2010
Day Schools: 9 Oct, 27 Nov, 22 Jan, 10 Mar
Please contact School of Health & Social Care for further information
HSC.CPD@uwe.ac.uk

Participatory Arts: Project Management: Professional Practice 
Dates: 19 April 2010 to 12 July 2010
Day Schools: 19 Apr, 17 May, 14 Jun, 12 Jul 10am – 5pm approx.
Open for applications: 8 February 2010 – Closed 12 March 2010

** Students need to choose between the Facilitation modules, according to their interest

Applications will not be accepted before opening dates or after closing dates

Each module is twelve weeks long, with only one day per month spent on campus, limiting your need to travel and allowing you to choose when and how to study whilst carrying on working. The course uses a specially designed e-learning website for students to learn and interact with each other throughout their modules and after, creating a networking hub for practitioners.

Fees: £596 accredited, £485 unaccredited per module

See below for news on getting financial support.

   

download application form

Please send completed applications to: :

Continuing Professional Development
School of Creative Arts
UWE
Bower Ashton Campus
Kennel Lodge Road
Bristol BS3 2JT

0117 328 4810

sca.cpd@uwe.ac.uk

=====

 UPDATE from Samantha Williams, the course co-ordinator.

 

 

GREAT NEWS!

 

There is some funding available to help with the cost of taking the Graduate Certificate Participatory Arts & Media Professional Practice

 

CLICK ON THE LINK TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE FUNDING AVAILABLE

http://rbi.uwe.ac.uk/solutions/ 

 

The University of the West of England with its partners has put together a package of nearly £1m including winning almost £500,000 funding from the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) Economic Challenge Investment Fund (ECIF) to find ways of helping businesses during the current economic downturn. The ECIF was introduced earlier this year to enable the Higher Education sector to respond rapidly to the skills development and retraining needs of employers and individuals. 

  

The ESIF money is to help individuals and businesses affected by the downturn in the economy, and help them upskill and gain further training.

  

If you are:

• an individual practitioner who is finding it hard to get work in the sector due to the downturn
• an individual who has been made redundant, or had contracts finished/reduced due to the downturn
• an arts organisation who has had to make cutbacks due to the economic downturn

  

then you will be eligible to apply for up to £400 per person towards this training course.

 

The maximum you can spend of this money towards each module is half of the actual cost (eg half of £596 = £298) with the remainder available to you until September 2010, towards modules taken in that time-frame.

 

If you would like to apply for the Participatory Arts course and think you may fit the criteria for funding, you need to make an application to the ESIF fund on the application form on the website link above, and then tell us (CPD course team sca.cpd@uwe.ac.uk)  you have made that application, when you submit your application for a module to us, so we can keep track of students applying for this funding.

 

I hope this proves useful for you and your networks

 

Kindest regards

 

Sam

 

 

Samantha Williams

Project Co-ordinator

Professional Skills Programme for Community Arts/Media & Creative Education Practitioners

(HERDA Higher Skills Project)

Faculty of Creative Arts

University of the West of England

Bower Ashton, Bristol BS3 2JT

 

 

Community Media as the constant entity in generational change in education, and elusive Clout and Capital.

Last night I went to an interesting seminar at the Watershed Media Centre called ‘Cultural Learning: Young people – schools – creative industries’.  It was all about the 8 month relationship the Watershed have built up with Fairfield High School, which has seen a teacher being based at the Watershed one day a week, film & TV professionals working in the school, and the students taking part in projects. 

One of the refreshing things about the event was that the residency (for want of a better term) didn’t seem to revolve around the need for the students to make short films, and no films were shown at the event, though the young people were there and talked about their experiences.  The residency was focused more on educational experiences for the students and also Continuing Professional Development for the teachers and encouraging whole school change to embrace media literacy across the whole curriculum.  This was a good balance and gave the students a rounded experience of media literacy, and not only the easy win of the seduction of production.  Dick Penny talked about the importance of schools to embrace the principles of media literacy and the need for young people to create media as well as deconstruct it to fully understand media, creating a Literacy in the fullest sense, and not only a sidelined media literacy.  These are ideas I share and have written about previously (see here for a 2005 article for the Westminster Media Forum).

At the event all the teachers were enthusiastic about the educational, social and cultural potential of media professionals working with school students.   Those of us who work in community media education know of the realities of this potential, as we have based our whole careers on it.  The teachers were advocating for a network to be established which encouraged the partnerships between cultural industries and schools, and of course I applaud that advocacy, as would all those of us who work in community media education, and over the past 10 years or so this argument has been made a number of times, by teachers and us alike.   One occasion the call has been heard for example, was when South West Screen in partnership with the Watershed funded the Media Education Hubs in circa 2002 (the one in Bristol ran out of funding circa 2005). 

With each new generation of teachers comes a new enthusiasm to work together, which is great, and the Watershed and community media education advocates become the constant agencies who fly the flag of media literacy, so the teachers want to talk and work with us, which is great, but what we don’t possess is any of the clout and capital to actually embed media literacy into the education system, despite the enthusiasm of the teachers. 

In 2005 my colleague Rob Mitchell from Firstborn Creatives gave a presentation titled ‘Getting the Head on board’, with primary school teacher Becky Davis from Oldbury Court School.  We had worked with the school for a whole academic year, not just making films but also working on Continuing Professional Development for the teachers and encouraging whole school change to embrace media literacy across the whole curriculum.  (Ironically, the venue where this talk was given was again at the Watershed!).

Rob & Becky’s talk centred on the cold fact that without the clout of the headteacher, any enthusiasm and good intentions of any individual teacher can count for nothing, rendering a powerful project as a one off event that fails to be built upon.   (Luckily at Oldbury Court the headteacher was fully on board.)  With headteacher’s power, soon follows capital, the other necessary ingredient needed for any network to work, or media literacy to be more than an idealistic academic theory and turn into an educational reality.  For all the best will in the world, the reality is that community media education organisations need funding to turn ideas into interventions.   Headteachers are the people to sell the idea to, and it was great to see the headteacher at Fairfield believing in the idea so much, that Anna the teacher is able to spend one day every week off-timetable to be based at the Watershed working alongside its staff.  For other teachers in other schools, this is like some kind of mythical holy grail. 

The powerful role of public funded organisations such as the Watershed is that they can act as an influential conduit to help build relationships between school management and media production & media education professionals, (and judging by the amount of times I’ve mentioned the Watershed’s events over the years in this article it is clear they have been trying to do this).  That was partly the aim of last night’s event, to get that conversation started, and those conversations definitely happened (although it was mostly educationalists and mainstream media professionals present, and unfortunately not actually others from community media education.  I’m sure they would have been invited though!). 

It would be good now for all of us advocating media literacy to work together to take those conversations to the National Association of Head Teachers, and other such head teacher networks, to now get these conversations turned into strategic systems and naturalised ways of working in their schools, in partnership with the media education sector. 

I know this is easier said than done, but I have to remain optimistic that in 10 years time we can have a seminar looking at the distance travelled since media literacy became embedded in the school system.

With that ambition, I also remain optimistic that the enthusiastic teachers of today that champion media literacy, are the headteachers of tomorrow, that by then are still championing media literacy, and leading by example.

Debating process, product and progression in community media

A popular debate in community arts & media is based on the dichotomy and tensions inherent within the notions of process and product, and which state to value the most, and what ethics and emphasis are placed on each.  The liberal position (or more accurately, the centrist conservative position), is to compromise and value both elements in equal measure, which demonstrates a project that healthy in both regards.  The radicals on either wing denote the quality of process as protection of the safe environment for the participants, or the necessity of the product to instil a pride that process alone can never deliver.  

I argue that these tensions are valid, but flawed.  The foundation principles of my research is to analyse beyond the project, and therefore, beyond the product.  The process/product debate reaches a glass ceiling of ambition as it misses out the vital element that gives meaning to what product and process actually mean – progression.  Without a notion of what happens after a project, no real value can be placed on the elements in the project, as there is nothing to measure it against. 

Highlighting value in process or product alone in isolation of what comes afterwards devalues the work being done in both of those states, and fails to take notice of the actual impact that has taken place as a result of both of those states.  There is a vital consideration missed in this debate, that can only be viewed when you consider the position of the organisations that are funded to run these participatory projects.  The reason they are funded is that they have as their offer the product of participatory practice – that is to say, their product is process led production.  Process is product, and when working in a participatory way in community arts & media, and the two are not capable of being separate entities. 

The product that community media offers, to sell for funding, is the process way of working that leads to an end production of some kind.  Once a facilitator values one element over the other, they are devaluing their entire offer.  In pedagogical terms, the product is the lesson and the process is the education.  In the same spirit as B.F. Skinner’s famous quote, “education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten”, thus, the process continues long after what has been made has been produced.

Message to arts students (notes)

When I am not doing community media type work, my day job is teaching photography degree students. As with all teachers, you start to see patterns over the years in feelings and behaviour from which one can draw some ‘universal’ lessons and advice and guidance.

As head of 1st year, here are the notes for a presentation I plan to give to the new cohort in September, to give them a sense of expectations and conflicting feelings they may experience in the first year. Not sure it will be in this exact order. Will see how it looks & feels. Comments always welcome.

I admit in an anti-Friere approach to writing this, as there is an ‘us & them’ tendency in how this is written. Hopefully I have absolved myself somewhat in point 4. below.

I found these points quite easy to write for formal education students, as there is a structure that is set and repeated year after year, so ‘universal’ themes can be identified for advice and guidance. It would be more difficult, if not impossible, to write these for participants of Community Media education activity though, experiencing learning in the informal education sector – as hardly any two projects are the same, and the system and structures reinvent themselves with each new pot of funding.

Here goes: Message to 1st year art, media, photography & design students.

1.
We don’t remember you from your interviews. There is no legacy we are expecting you to build on. Now is the opportunity to reinvent yourself and be who you want to be, and not continue to be who everyone expects you to be.

2.
You all have a varied range of experiences and expertise, but you are all here for a reason and that is all that counts. Having an identical set of entry skills requirements would make for a dull class of students. Listen to each other, learn from each other and share with each other, but don’t fear or envy each other. You were all interviewed and you all arrived, like competitive sperm in the womb. Now it’s your gift to make the most of being here.

3.
You don’t know everything otherwise you wouldn’t be here, so try not to be too resistant and listen to advice and guidance, and don’t be afraid to take creative risks and work outside your comfort zone.

4.
Also we don’t know everything either otherwise we probably wouldn’t be here also. Teaching is also about co-learning, so be prepared to take ownership of your ideas and to engage in conversation and critical debate about your creative decision making.

5.
You have to work at finding answers, and also accept that there is not always necessarily a “right” answer to be found. Research is a necessary part of the creative process. When you are a professional you can do research in your head and it will be second nature, but now that you are in art school, we ask you to play the game and write it down. We have to grade you, so we need to base it on ‘evidence’. I won’t apologise for this as you will thank us the in 10 years time.

6.
This is not school. In the first year if you don’t turn up for sessions for the first 6 months or so then we will chase you down as we recognise living away from home for the first time can be a time of self discovery. But in the second year it is up to you to be the responsible adults that we first saw in you in your interview. If you need me to repeat this point, then is probably best you leave now and save your money.

7.
You will no longer be top of the class as your were in A-level. You will need to grow a thick skin and take on board criticism of your work. You will learn by doing, which is the only real way to learn arts practice at all.

8.
In a couple of months you may start to question yourself, your creative ability and your future. That is natural. Please talk to someone about this, one of your tutors or student support. Please remember that the creative process can be painful and scary, but in the interview we saw in you your ability to succeed. We do not set up anybody to fail.

9.
First year is largely about trying to support you to have the confidence so have the skill to achieve strong research as second nature. So in 2nd and 3rd year it doesn’t need as much effort but you are still producing strong results. Writing things down on paper is a life skills. If you are not confident at writing, now is as good a time as any to try and conquer this fear.

10.
Be personal with your work. Have an opinion. Read the newspaper. Understand what makes you tick, and don’t be embarrassed by it. This is important for both issue-based and non-issue based work. We don’t expect all your work to be political and save the world, but even if your work is about public toilets then we expect you to have an opinion about them.

11.
Don’t be the critic on your own shoulder. There will be enough people wanting to censor you when you leave this place. Be brave and be honest and make the work you want to make. Don’t make the work you think we want you to make. We have had our time to make work. Now is your time.

12.
Listen to your heart and not so much your head. Logic can really mess up a good creative project and trip you up at the last hurdle.

13.
Photography is difficult because it is so easy. Don’t take it for granted or underestimate its power. Any literate person can write ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’, but that does not make them Shakespeare. Likewise photography. Don’t just see things, start to look at them also.

 

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The multiple faces of Media Literacy

I attended the informative “Your Media, Your Tools” dissemination event at Leicester’s De Montfort University run by the Community Media Association (CMA) last Friday. It included a presentation by Ofcom talking about their media literacy agenda, as well as radio and video groups from across the UK showcasing the results of their involvement in CMA’s media literacy project.

It has always struck me just how slippery the term ‘media literacy’ is, with a different emphasis depending on the agenda of the person talking about it. I used to get frustrated by what I saw as a watering down of the notion, wanting the literacy aspect to acknowledged as the critical pedagogy that resides in community media activity, and that was me wearing my personal agenda on my sleeve. I now feel however it would be more useful to slow my judgement and analyse each different face of media literacy in its own right, as each interpretation of the term contains pragmatic, theoretical and/or ideological meaning for each different type of user, so that is worth looking at without undue dismissal.

In future articles I will be exploring the idea of media literacy in the nine predominant guises that I have seen it discussed within the community media sector, media education events, published research and academia. As with all identities of phenomena there is some overlap different contexts, though they will be analysed from the perspective of emphasis, and therefore argue that the identities described here are valid. Notions described in the future will be:

-  Media Literacy as media savvy
-  Media Literacy as semiotics
-  Media Literacy as creative activism
-  Media Literacy as cross-curricula engagement
-  Media Literacy as IT support
-  Media Literacy as media sector training
-  Media Literacy as process
-  Media Literacy as informed media consumption and media use

Interestingly, given this fractious identity, the actual definition of media literacy itself is, with slight variations, mostly settled in a broad consensus without too much debate. It is the interpretation of the accepted definition which is the cause of the majority of debate. Even though there is not one single definition, in loose terms it is widely acknowledged as being about;

- the right to have access to media platforms & tools;
- the need for people to be empowered to understand the media and its ever changing nuances;
- the ability to create media communications if so desired.

Some example of this are;

Ofcom’s definition is; “the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts.” They acknowlegde they are mostly concerned with media literacy as applied to digital technology and that people should be able to use the equipment to get the most out of it. (Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as IT support).

According to The Media Literacy Task Force:
“If people are to participate fully at work or in their community, or communicate effectively with family, friends and colleagues globally, or consume media intelligently they need to be media savvy. They need to understand how media works and to feel comfortable questioning what they watch and read. They need a sense of who knows or owns what, and to what extent what you see is really what you get. And, very importantly, they need to become confident in using and exploiting the possibilities of new devices and media channels.”
(Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as informed media consumption and media use / Media Literacy as semiotics / Media Literacy as IT support)

The Center for Media Literacy‘s view is: the ability to communicate competently in all media forms as well as to access, understand, analyze, evaluate and participate with powerful images, words and sounds that make up our contemporary mass media culture. Indeed, we believe these skills of media literacy are essential for both children and adults as individuals and as citizens of a democratic society.
(Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as creative activism / Media Literacy as process)

At some point in the not-to-distant future I will expand on these ideas in a case by case basis in future blog articles, and also write this up as a full academic referenced paper.

Until then, thanks for popping by. Comments always welcome.

Shawn

THE CLASS: The Critical Pedagogy of Teacher/Student relationships, and systems as oppression in schools

To download this paper as a pdf click here.

 

An analysis of the film ‘The Class’, (Entre les murs) from the perspective of critical pedagogy.  I will be extending this article into a chapter for my PhD, where I will use data from interviews I conducted with participants of community media education activity to explore the notion of critical pedagogy further within this context.  But for now, I hope you find this blog article interest.

(SPOILER ALERT!  This article reveals certain aspects of the plot of the film.  You have been warned.)

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The film ‘The Class’, in a challenging way depicts a term in an urban French school, centred predominantly around the dynamics in the classroom of François Marlin the French teacher. The entire film balances on the power relations between the teacher and his students, and the tensions that surface when the power balance shifts in either direction. The line is blurred between what either side constitutes acceptable and respectful behaviour, with peer allegiances made at crucial moments when clear lines are drawn.

 

At moments there is a seemingly equal dialogue between teacher and students. Diversions in planned lessons evolve when the students start to question assumed knowledge, accepted traditions and the ‘top down’ curriculum, and these debates are met with the teacher engaging in the dialogue and recognising the validity of some of the students points, even if this is reluctant concession. The students are uninhibited to apply reason to question hierarchies of cultural authority, such as the text book correct use of language, rightly arguing that no one actually uses such antiquated speech patterns in day to day life, and challenge the teacher to justify why they are being taught it. At moments such as these the teacher goes some way to defend the curriculum and cultural tradition, before meeting them half way to generally agree with them, but stating that they have to learn it anyway. This balance of rational cultural debate and its effect on the institutional entropy of the school threads throughout the film, with stark negotiations laid bare on how systems are maintained, what happens when systems falter, and how they are attempted to be patched up and repaired in the aftermath.

 

It is the moments when reasoned debate breaks down and descends into emotional protectionism that creates a chain of events that leads to the main areas of dramatic tension in the film, which mostly centre around the strained relationship between François and Souleymane, a student with a bad reputation across the entire school. When Souleymane is teased by a female student (Esmerelda) when he refuses to do the work set by the teacher, Souleymane responds with a verbal assault that results in the teacher throwing him out of the class. This event happens not long after Souleymane had shown surprising interest in a self portrait project where he used photography after he had refused to write with stubborn reluctance. François embraced the student’s approach and pinned the work on the wall for the whole class to see. The look of embarrassed and fragile pride on Souleymane’s face was unmistakable.

 

In a subsequent staff meeting, after Souleymane was ejected from the class, François at first tries to defend the student, but in the wave of public opinion amongst his peers he descends into conceding that he believes Souleymane has reached his academic limit and suggests there is no hope for him, failing to mention the promise he had shown in the self portrait project as even a glimmer of the student’s potential and a way to harness his interest. This denunciation of Souleymane is witnessed by Esmerelda, a student representative present in the meeting. Despite being enemies with Souleymane she tells him the happenings of the meeting demonstrating a solidarity of identity across institutional and cultural lines. The pain on François’s face is clear when he seals Souleymane’s fate with permanent exclusion, but he goes with crowd opinion in spite of personal feeling.

 

When confronted by this back in the classroom by Souleymane himself, François tries to divert the argument away from his own guilt to accuse the motives of the student reps for divulging the information, resulting in him insulting them in a verbal slur arguably more shocking than Souleymane had done earlier, which led to him being ejected. Now faced with the knowledge that his teacher sees no hope in him, Souleymane’s reckless attempt at defending his own integrity and arguing against the teacher’s verbal assault on Esmerelda sees him create a situation where again there is no choice but for François to eject him again. In terms of the institutional line, this becomes the point of no return.

 

For Paulo Freire (1972) it would be too easy to suggest that Souleymane is the sole oppressed individual in this situation. The entwined state of teacher institutional compliance and lack of student power or agency is described by Freire as the oppression they both share working/studying in the education system, which he describes as a “state of oppression that gratifies the oppressors.” (page 17). According to Freire, for the teacher to discover “himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed [the student]. Rationalizing his guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding them fast in a position of dependence, will not do. Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is identifying; it is a radical posture.” (page 26).

 

The banter François enjoys with the class in the early lessons is just that, a mere exchange of words and ideas that have no actually bearing on the power structures in the wider system. Like Johan Huizinga’s theory of the ‘magical circle’, which he describes as the boundaries of the rules of engagement when people play (1938), the classroom discussions were within the confines of the magic circle, where the dialogue appears to be democratic, but when the circle is broken the teacher is still dominant and the students passive and the system remains, swiftly repaired with the cultural patches of expectation and hierarchy. Throughout the film the boundaries of the magic circle are being tested, pushed and expanded, but ultimately nothing changes. Souleymane is never mentioned again and the system rebuilds its’ previous patterns of narrative like a well trodden tiled kitchen floor. The pattern doesn’t quite fit and something is not quite right, but it is still fully functional as a working floor, and will always remain so.

 

The banter in the early lessons felt like a critical pedagogy where the students were questioning authority, where the teacher was slowly but surely coming on board with a “radical posture”, but that was just a smoke illusion. The weight of the institutional system remained the dominant paradigm through the existence of the ‘hidden curriculum’, described as the “set of values, attitudes [and] knowledge frames, which are embodied in the organisation and processes of schooling and which are implicitly conveyed to pupils.” (Jary 2005, page 267). The hidden curriculum is considered to be more powerful than the actual content of subjects taught in school, and “promotes social control and an acceptance of the school’s, and hence society’s, authority structure.” The national curriculum teaches students about literacy, numeracy and science, etc, but the hidden curriculum instils in students the importance of listening to elders, of obeying orders, of respecting authority, and of the values of manners and the need to work within existing systems in society.  Actions that are contrary to the dominant norms of the hidden curriculum are considered renegade, dangerous and subversive. Such behaviour must be either contained and controlled, like François, or eradicated from the (micro) system, like Souleymane.

 

As a community media facilitator working in both formal and informal education settings, for me the departure point for Souleymane’s future narrative is in relation to harnessing his interest in photography, and seeing where that can lead. The oppression in François manifested itself in him not being prepared to recognise or follow the spark of Souleymane’s interest as a possible route to the student’s future success. Education without hope is fostering a slave dependence. On Freire’s position on this, according to Kincheloe (2008);

“human beings can become so much more than they are now, Freire always maintained, in the spirit of this critical hope. Oppression, he understood, always reduces the oppressed understanding of historical time to a hopeless present. We are all oppressed from time to time by this hopeless presentism that tells us time and time again: ‘things will never change.’ Throughout history these hopeless moments have been followed by radical changes. Such a ‘long view’ is, of course, hard to discern in the black hole of despair. Freire’s historical hope was paralleled by a pedagogical hope shared between teachers and students.” (page 72)

 

Freire’s ‘critical pedagogy’, where the educational institution hierarchy is flattened to a plateau, where the teachers are ‘teacher-students’ and the students are ‘student-teachers’, and where both are made aware of their own oppression, presents an additional challenge to community media, more than merely working with a glimpse of a student’s creative potential. What must also crucially be considered is what type of community media intervention would it be?  Would it be; (1.) one that works with the existing system as a different pedagogical model to keep students such as Souleymane engaged in the school process, working within the paradigm of the hidden curriculum, or (2.), a more radical application of community media processes working in an informal setting, which is actively positioning education as a political activity, using photography and media as the tools of self-empowerment and social agency? Both these options are followed by the additional question, “Does it actually matter, as long as the student is set on a constructive path with a non-self-destructive future?”

 

I’ll leave this question hanging, just as the film left the audience, with the scene of the empty classroom. Full of possibilities, full of hope and idealism, but also full of tension and frustration. If there is anything that this film teaches me, it is that educators must hold onto the possibilities of hope and idealism, and use the tension and frustration to fuel and stimulate challenging and non-patronising learning experiences. That is one step towards the teacher-student / student-teacher relationship, where both are forced to think for themselves and question themselves, before they attempt to think for and question other people.

 

 

References

- Freire, P. (1972), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books, UK

- Huizinga, J. H. (1938), Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Beacon Press

- Jary, J, and Jary, D (2005), Sociology Defined and Explained, HarperCollins, Glasgow, UK

- Kincheloe, J.L, (2008), Critical pedagogy primer – Second Edition, Peter Lang Publishing, New York

 

(c) 2009 – Shawn Sobers – Firstborn Creatives / University of the West of England

MAKING IT WORK

UPDATE: Community Media South West have published a new report:

MAKING IT WORK:
An Enquiry into how companies in the Community Media Sector recruit and
retain skilled freelancersPublished by – CMSW / Blueboard – Jan 2007

Research by Ella Bissett Johnson

Edited by Shawn Sobers, and Steve Gear

Synopsis

This report is a timely and original development in the analysis of social interest creative practice. It takes the debate much further than merely exploring the merits of such projects, and directly provides an analysis of the economic and skills base for this area of work – the area of community media activity within the creative industries.

According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the creative industries are now one of the fastest growing sectors in the British economy, and socially aware creative practice is now gaining a stronger profile and being taken seriously by a wide range of cultural agencies. We feel this report provides an important step in recognising not only the economic realities of these community minded organisations via case studies of the companies themselves and the freelancers they employ, but also charts the average skills contained in this community media/arts field of work, and highlights its future sustainability.

This report has been designed to be not only illuminating, but also be useful. It will be of interest to stakeholders of community based media & arts activity, including project facilitators, managers, funders and policy makers, and also for areas such as careers advice and academic fields such as media studies and social policy. Hopefully this report will provide a platform from which to make informed decisions with confidence, from which the sub-sector of community based media education activity can strategically grow and flourish.

To order from Amazon click here.To download full report as a pdf file click here.

Research funded by ABI Associates, University of the West of England and South West Screen

Supported by Calling the Shots and Firstborn Creatives