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.

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

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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

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 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

 

 

Art World / Community Media World

I read with interest on BBC News that David Hockney (at 72 years old is regarded as one of the UK’s greatest living artists) is using his iPhone to create artwork, and that this may now be a new departure for him.  It started when he drew a picture on his iPhone and then emailed to 12 people straight away.  That instant production and unmediated distribution has inspired him to bring mobile technology into his main work.  How he will choose to exhibit this will be interesting to see, as the unmediated personal nature may be compromised in a public domain, possibly lost alongside Walter Benjamin’s elusive ‘aura’ – the unique element that “shrinks” from a piece of art when it is technologically/mechanically reproduced.  When the artwork becomes a reproduction, removed from the “realm of tradition” of the act of making.

The Art World and Community Media have been related but strained bedfellows since the days of creation of both entities.  Caton-Rosser (2006) cites Egyptian hieroglyphics and Roman parchments as the forerunners of community media, and Goldbard (2006) cites the cave paintings at Lascaux southwestern France, painted 16,000 years ago, as the starting point of community arts (which she terms ‘cultural development’). (These cultural events in history are commonly viewed as being the starting points of the fine arts, literature and civilisation itself by Historians.) One of the strands of Community Media as we know is today grew out of community arts & media arts projects in the 1970s, (the other strands grew out of political activism, journalism, media democracy campaigns, media education, and radical pedagogy movements), and ever since, the creative ‘self expression’ role of community media has always been celebrated, but has also at times sat uneasy with some of the more politicised, critical and oppositional ‘alternative’ media’ elements of community media discourse, especially when ‘self expression’ becomes about the ‘self’, esoteric, and accused of elitism.

It is extremely timely therefore that the Community Media Association are soon to announce the appointment of a new post – an Arts Coordinator, whose role it will be to consult with the community media sector across England to draw up a strategy for the greater implementation of arts in community media, and also for community media to gain a greater role in the arts world.  The promotion of the setting up of financially secure structures to produce drama for community radio, in partnerships with local theatres, is one example that springs to mind – productions that can then be syndicated across different community radio stations.

Click here to download the pdf of the research report that led to the creation of the coordinator post, ‘The Arts and Community Radio’.  The research is an exploration of the role of arts in community radio stations across England.

A large number of arts and media graduates get their first freelance employment working in the community sector, without even realising it is a sector at all.  Greater understanding and awareness of community based work at education level, right through to the major galleries, would ensure that community media isn’t only viewed as a niche activity, but as the valuable part of the creative industries that we who work in it, already know it is.

And this is not to say that embracing the arts into community media activity is a negation of the politicised, critical, oppositional and radical motivations of the ‘alternative’ media foundations.  Just read the words of Augusto Boal if you are in any doubt about the role of the arts in social change.  He is talking about the role of theatre, but the same arguments can and have been made for all forms of art, from the Situationist’s Marxist agenda through to Hip Hop’s self relience roots.  

Alongside information media – the arts are the cornerstone of how cultures represent their own stories, experiences, hopes, fears and opinions.  The Community Media sector is missing a vital pivotal trick, if it doesn’t fully exploit all the tools it has on offer.  I shall be watching David Hockney’s new work with increasing interest.

 

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 - Benjamin, W. (1936), ‘Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ Penguin Books, London. Page 9.

- Caton-Rosser, M. S. (2006), ‘ Case studies of how community media enact media literacy and activism in the public sphere’. Online Thesis – http://gradworks.umi.com/32/07/3207736.html - Page 14.

- Goldbard, A. (2006), ‘New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural development’. New Village Press. Oakland, CA. USA. Page 102