Well I feel that I had a good break and really enjoyed the festive season? I find it’s always good to start the New Year with the promise of brighter mornings and longer days.
Things are moving forward with Decentered Media, and I wanted to share how I’m renewing my focus on DIY media for community-focussed communications.
If the last two years of pandemic and lockdowns has taught us anything, it’s that we can’t bring about positive social change if we don’t include people in the discussions and development of ideas and practices.
Ensuring that our media is accessible and inclusive is an essential part of winning consent and support for the changes we need to see in order to meet the challenge of climate crisis, social inclusivity, widening inequality, globalisation and the technological revolution.
So I’m continuing to develop content and activities that I hope will enhance and support the work of community media makers – and to ask for your support to keep developing this work.
- Community Media Makers Zoom Drop-In – each Tuesday at 6pm, I am hosting a Zoom session, where we can gather virtually and talk about the challenges of supporting DIY and community media.
- Decentered Media Podcasts – I’m looking to engage with people who are interested in, and who support community media, so we can explore in detail the social challenges that an inclusive and representative media would benefit from.
- Community Media MOOC – I’m experimenting with and developing an online course about community media, what the principles are that underpin community media, and how we can support public conversations that are focussed on self-representation, deliberation and creative story telling.
If you are willing to support these activities, then why not make a monthly donation to help with hosting and development costs
https://www.patreon.com/decenteredmedia
If you sign-up via Patreon, you will get access to the Decentered Media Forum, the weekly Community Media Makers Zoom Drop-In, access to the Decentered Media MOOC as it is developed, and early access to online content, including podcasts and videos.
One of the advantages of being an open network of people interested in similar issues relating to community media, is that we get to share our ideas and learn from one another.
We don’t need to be experts or to have the answer to the many challenges we face, we just need to be open to discussing and considering what we can do to facilitate change.
There are so many ways that we can improve and enhance our community-focussed communications, whether it is community radio, blogging, social media posts, video, podcasting, photography, graphics, data stories, online chats, and so on.
The more we can connect with one another, though, the more we can learn and feel confident that what we do matters.
Best wishes
Rob
