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.
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
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.
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!
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.
Last July a group of us met with Kay Withers from the IPPR (Institutefor Public Policy Research) at Watershed, Bristol to feed into a reportshe was writing. We discussed how young people use digital media and thefunding that is available for community media organisations working withyoung people.
The report has now been published – it’s called “Behind the Screen: The hidden life of youth online”.
(You don’t have to register to download the report.)
We are mentioned on page 56.
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It is great this report has been published. It says a lot of important things about our area of work and will be a useful reference. One point I feel it missed though is its assessment of the ‘youth led’ agenda. Encouragingly the report acknowledged that there’s a flaw in such funding schemes as they don’t accurately reflect the need for young people’s groups to have adult input for expertise and support.
What the report stopped short of saying however, was that such funding schemes are actually (knowingly or unknowingly) designed to undermine the same support and infrastructure that nurtured the groups of confident self-determinant young people in the first place. Akin to telling school students that if they pass their GCSEs, that they will be given funds to set up their own sixth form colleges – without any input from the schools they came from, or of any acknowledgment of the roles the schools played.
I think it’s good that funding sources are putting the wants of the young people before the notional whims of the adults, that absolutely fine, but for the projects to be robust, ‘honest’ and longlasting, funders shouldn’t just dangle money with principled caveats, but rather work harder to actually build relationships between organisations and young people, in the equally principled desire to build sustainability for the young people and the people who try to support them.
Obviously all my own humble opinion of course. Feel free to disagree! LOL
10 days ago I went to the Houses of Parliament with my comrades Emma Agusita and Cathy Poole, for a seminar discussing Media Literacy, hosted Danny Alexander MP and the Associate Parliamentary Media Literacy Group. After introductions by Danny, Ian Hargreaves (Dir of Ofcom & Researcher at Cardiff Uni), and Peter Packer (Strategy Adviser to UK Film Council and UK Media Literacy Task Force), there followed presentations from young people involved in news production media projects with the BBC (School Report) and Channel 4 (Breaking the News).
The Houses of Parliament, yesterday.
Both projects and presentations were impressive, and demonstrated to the audience the great things that can happen when professional practitioners work with young people, and visa versa.
BBC’s ‘School Report’ involved 11-14 year olds from 120 schools to produce video reports about stories from their local areas and issues that effect their worldviews. This project was linked with Hackney’s City Learning Centre and Vivi Lachs, (who I first came across in 2002 at a FutureLab conference at the Watershed in Bristol named ‘Contagious Creativity’. I was immediately inspired by her back then and was pleased to see her still on the front line of media literacy education). The children talked about the video reports they produced, which ranged from Muslim children discussing their responses to feeling ‘British’, a report on the ‘true picture of Hackney’ (in response to a C4 programme naming the area the worst place to live), and the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. They also interviewed Tony Blair and had 2 days support time with BBC journalists. Helen Shreeve from BBC said their aim was for this experience to be had by EVERY 11-14 year old at least once in every school across the country.
Channel 4′s ‘Breaking the News’, as described by it’s co-ordinator Adam Gee, involved 14-16 year olds from schools and community organisations to attend C4 news briefings to get a true behind-the-scenes insight, and they came up with alternative ways of producing news stories. They also set up parallel news rooms in various schools and set up an online editor which allowed the young people to edit stories in their own way. One of the big impacts of this project was the way it made the C4 producers such as Martin Fewell, (deputy editor of Channel 4 News) think differently about their audiences, and take them out of the comfort zone of always reporting certain stories in a certain way. (Time will tell as to how this will change on screen.)
In the Q&A session with the young people, the most common responses to the question, “what impact have these projects had on you?” were;
1) Self-confidence
2) Wanting to be a journalist
3) Ability to have own voice heard
Both BBC and C4 are rolling out their projects to be taken up by schools and other groups across the country, or actually anywhere in the world as the resources are web based.
There is no doubt that these were fantastic projects, though watching the presentations I had a strange sense of de ja vu, as they (especially BBC’s School Report) was identical to our (Firstborn Creatives’) 2003 – present project Channel Zer0. (Or to see the website for Channel Zer0 in text only version rather than Flash,click here) WhatI saw in these presentations in Parliament was Channel Zer0 again, though on a much grander and gigantic scale. Please know that with these comments I’m not being a jealous playa hata as I’m applauding them on their achievements. It was slightly strange for me though as I saw before me how an institution such as the BBC could (seemingly) effortlessly mobilise in 4 months a project that we have been trying to really galvanise over 4 years. Same with the Channel 4 project which was also quite similar.
And here in lies the opportunity for a more sustainable future for both BBC’s and Channel 4′s projects, that I fear hasn’t really been grasped as yet.
Both are relying on teachers, youth workers, etc, to visit & download their online resources and replicate the projects year after year. The BBC talked about this years schools becoming mentors for the news schools. Whilst knowing the BBC I’m sure they could make this happen, but really teachers are far too busy and already swamped by initiatives for a huge number of them to take it upon themselves to deliver an online media literacy project.
Here BBC & C4 are missing the opportunity to commission community media companies across the country to take these initiatives forward in the subsequent years after this initial pilot. Helen Shreeve quite rightly said they wouldn’t be able to give the same access tob BBC journalists, etc as they did this year, but contracting smaller media companies to take this work forward would allow access to media expertise. Here it might sound like I’m touting for work for Firstborn Creatives, which I very well might be, but much bigger than that is the unique opportunity for the big institutions such as BBC & C4 work strategically with the smaller community media companies to deliver an annual project that would have national impact, and a model globally on what is achievable in the name of media literacy.
To be fair both Adam and Helen did suggest they could link with community video outfits, but the emphasis and resources definitely were steering in the direction of their online resources. For starters, they are A LOT cheaper than getting funding to commission a load of community media organisations. Finance is obviously a huge issue here. But so is the opportunity. I’ll work my hardest to at least getting it discussed at a deeper, logistical level.
