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.)

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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). 

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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

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.

FAQ of Community Media: A case study

Understandably, for people who don’t know the community media sector exists at all, it can often be difficult to get their head around exactly what community media is, and how such organisations operate.  And even after being in existence now for 9 years working as a company, (Firstborn Studios - formerly known as Firstborn Creatives), it still isn’t always easy answering these queries in a concise way.

Here are some frequently asked questions, perceptions and misconceptions about community media in relation to Firstborn that I will explore below.  If you have any others please feel free to add them in your comments.  Sorry that it will also sound like an advert for Firstborn.  Hopefully it is also informative about the activities of a tiny aspect of this community media sector.  Lots of other organisations are out there also doing amazing work in this field.  The following views are mine only and don’t necessarily reflect all the views at Firstborn.  (Maybe they do, but I can’t speak for them!)

Q: Isn’t community media just another name for community radio?

A: No it isn’t.  Community Radio is a large part of the sector, but not the only part.  We are not a community radio station, and we are not a community television station either.  We work primarily in video but also interactive, animation, graphics, photograpy and other visual digital media, working in a participatorary way with groups of partcipants, young and elders.

Q: But if you’re not a community television station, how does your work get seen?

A: Various ways.  We mostly produce work for certain audiences, such as care workers, educators, etc.  So rather than making films for the sake of making it, we would ensire that the end product is being used in some way afterwards, in addition to the process being a positive experience for those taking part.  We sometimes distribute DVDs free in different places as moving image magazines.  We also arrange screening events and specific spaces where work is being used, discussed, used in conferences, informing policy to MPs, whatever and wherever it will inject a different ‘voice’ into the ear of the audiences.  We do very little work now that is about making films for films sake.  For us the media in not the message.  The medium is the process and the message is the end result.  Both elements are important and vital to a rich participatorary creative experience.

A: Is all you do train people how to use cameras and how to edit.

Q: No, not at all.  Take a look at some of the educational work we have done.  10% technical training + 90% intellectual engagement = 100% new skills and transferable experience.  We do believe that there are very real cross-curricular gains to be had by taking part in participatorary media projects in the short, medium and long term for participants involved.  Not only if they wanted to work in the media industry, but even if they want to do something completely different with their lives.  Community media is about 90% community and 10% media.  The full educational gains are there in spades, deeper than only mere training.

 

 

Q: What is it that makes you different than a “normal” production company?

A: Tricky question.  We do produce direct commissioned work that is not working in a ‘workshopped’ participatorary way with individuals, but we still make sure that the only work we take on has social interest of some kind.  We won’t do work that is plainly corporate with no social/community gain, or abour issues that we feel are contrary to the wishes of the communities that we serve.  It would be easier to show you rather than try to describe it in words.

 

Q: Isn’t all community media work about bad quality sound and dodgy camera work?

A: Thankfully those days are now long gone!  Just look at the quality of any of these videos for proof of that.  Whether it’s working with a group of primary school children on a video project, or producing a documentary for television broadcast, we feel high production values are key to everyone involved being proud of their achievements and gaining value in the wider world.  Very often community media products that have bad quality audio and picture get politely patronised by the audiences, who allow the bad quality due to it being made by a bunch of cute kids.  I think everyone and anyone who has working in community media & arts will have been guilty of that at some point in their career I’m sure!  Well we are really striving for a parity of quality in process, product and meaning, to ensure the experience has value from a 360 degree angle, and not only if you are the grandparents of the young producer involved.

Q: Do you only work with young people?

A: Even though a lot of our work has been with young people, especially the participatorary workshop projects we have done, we don’t work exclusively with young people.  For example we also work with senior citizens groups, museums & heritage sector and also the health & well being sector.  Here’s some examples of the latter.

 

Q: Aren’t all community media people anarchists and want to smash the state and see all mainstream media institutions like the BBC closed down?

A: No not at all.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We see we play a valid role in creating and encouraging platforms for different ‘voices’ that are not aired on/in mainstream media, but we see our role as a compliment to mass media, and also a compliment to mainstream education.  Not anti either of them.  An alternative to them in certain instances – (e.g. to hear a different opinion in the media, and a different way of learning outside the classroom), but we work closely with mainstream media and formal education institutions and we always will.  We see them as vital co-players in building an equal civil society, and acknowledge they have their role to play, within certain constraints and limitations, and we have ours.  The anarchist side of community media is just one element of this sector, but like community radio, there are many many different aspects that not everyone working in it draws on.  The anarchist radical media agenda of wanting a more democratic media and a fairer society are values that a lot of us working in less overtly political areas of community media also share, but we just choose to do our work in different ways with different motivations and agendas on our sleeves.  A more free and open acces mass media would be great for all, but I don’t personally applaud the closing down of all these newspapers that are falling victim to the free online news culture and blog revolution.  Mass media has its uses also.  (This is too much to get into here.  Maybe some other time!)

Q: Uhm..I’ve got a few more questions but I’d better stop here as otherwise you’ll be going on all day!!!

A: Yes, that’s a good idea.  Good chatting with you.  Get your people to call my people and we’ll do lunch.  Mwah! Mwah!