Memorandum submitted by Community
TV Trust
DEFINITION OF
TERMS
Community media
| Non-profit, local, volunteer support, radio/TV/multimedia; bespoke definition from CTVT explains this form of media as a 3-way mix of Web-Event-TV (Southwark Template).
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| CTVT | Community TV Trust, registered charity No 1081912 founded by Chris Haydon in 1998 following a career in broadcast television; also benefited from BITC (Business In The Community) identifying pro bono legal support that continues to this day—originally from DJFreeman, latterly from Olswang.
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| Southwark.TV | Open-access web-based venture in community Media; website has passed 500 pages created by more than 50 partner schools and groups; URL is www.southwark.tv
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| SOUTHWARK HOUR | Title of two series of local TV programmes produced in 2005 by CTVT. SOUTHWARK HOUR is a one-hour discussion format with films and film inserts produced by local people. The 10 programmes were broadcast on Community Channel, with many repeats. There was no budget.
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| Southwark Template | CTVT definition of community media based on the experience of creating and growing "Southwark.TV" with CTVT affirming "WEB" (website) and "EVENT" (local screenings/festivals) and "TV" occasional productions for TV broadcast being the key elements that constitute C21st community media.
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PUBLIC SERVICE
MEDIA CONTENT
INQUIRY
I am director of a specialist media charity, Community TV
Trust [www.communitytvtrust.org], who are creators of a unique
model of open access community media: "Southwark.TV"
[www.southwark.tv]. Currently I am pursuing the national rollout
of this model.
The Ofcom/PSP proposal appeals to me a good deal as you will
see from an attached letter to Steve Perkins at Ofcom last year.
It led to my having two meetings with him and colleague John Glover
of which one was to discuss the Southwark.TV model and the second
was to view a selection of the media produced over the last four
years by the range of schools and community groups (more than
50) who are contracted partners in the project.
Community TV Trust is currently unfunded but has sustained
the venture, expanding it and learning how to drive it and grow
it in different directions over time. This has shaped the Southwark
Template, a clear definition of community media.
THE LOTTERY
OF FUNDRAISING,
A SHIFT IN
POLICY
How often will one invest research time, writing time, budgeting
time, energy and money in a lottery? For the community/charity
sector, the answer is "Every time you put a bid together".
I was warned at the outset along this path that I would end up
spending 75% of my time chasing funds rather than the goals I
had identified. I used not to believe this to be true.
Grant aiding non-commercial projects is grand and useful
and often utterly necessary. What might one do however with the
support and reassurance of a fee structure that flowed from a
recognition that one's product was valued? In the case of community
media it appears that a shift in thinking and in Government policy
is needed. CTVT welcomes this Inquiry.
This paper will contend that the many and varied attributes
of community media as comprised by "Southwark.TV" and
the Southwark Template will suggest that policy leading to financial
underpinning for the broadband community media market would be
of unarguable value.
In 20 words, here is a definition of this campaign
Community media venture "Southwark.TV", web-based,
unique, models community/individual growth. National rollout will
realise its vast, multifaceted potential.
What is my motivation in making this submission to CMS Committee?
The aim is simply to build my vision for which I need several
million pounds. When I set out on my career in TV, British television
was an elitist world of three channels—in some ways it still
is elitist, but access has been revolutionised by technology,
and technology has given rise to growth and opportunity in community
media. I am appalled sometimes at the quality of material broadcast
on mainstream media. Not all of it of course, but the infatuation
with celebrity rages on, as does the tendency towards negativity.
News is seduced by the availability of pictures, by celebrity,
by "shock and awe", by death, killing, violence and
tragedy. It's a mad world.
Time is needed to enhance prevailing culture, but technology
has shown the way forward in its enabling of community media.
So I come to the CMS. Much is now in place.
I have been amazed at the powers wrapped up in community
media. There are so many. I recall pondering on the subject in
the late 1990s: if you discard Money and Audience Size, the pillars
of broadcast TV, I thought, what is left ? The answer: Everything,
starting with personal transformation. For at the heart of all
the work of Community TV Trust lies Self Esteem. From that
life flows. With that, the individual can take on challenges and
see her/himself making headway. Through community media and the
Southwark.TV model I have come to see that one does not teach,
one facilitates learning, perhaps "soft" learning but
learning nonetheless. For many their engagement with a local media
project, a few training workshops, the making of a short film,
has been a first significant step towards a more vital life, more
engaged, more aware.
If the Committee has time, I would welcome the opportunity
to screen for its Members the range of "Southwark.TV"
media shown to Ofcom—some of which they found to be "inspiring".
What are the objectives of this campaign?
I want to spread the culture of local media making by planting
60 "Southwark.TVs" up and down the country. Media in
the form of mainstream media is enormously dominant in people's
lives but of course we are all producers now as much as
consumers. Production without focus has little value. Helping
the individual find their focus, find their voice, is how I see
this work.
Creating and managing the open access "Southwark.TV"
[www.southwark.tv] has shown me clearly what it can achieve and
how to implement this thinking as a dynamic component of local
life. It must be understood that this is beyond mainstream to
accomplish. Mainstream with its adoration of celebrity and tendency
towards negativity struggles to create any overlap "between
the media made and the life lived". In community media this
is automatic. The triangular Southwark Template clarifies this
point, defining community media as a combination of WEB-EVENT-TV.
It is when these operate in relationship one to another that the
potential of local media is complete. "Southwark.TV"
evolved this way, adding local events and TV production to the
initial website. Local television as old style "one-way street"
broadcast output covering an area three to five miles wide offers
some experience in broadcast media production and may open up
a route to employment for those keen on a career in mainstream
media. This model though offers less potential for active inclusion,
is top heavy with overhead, needing a substantial purse to pitch
for a licence... none of which is true for the digital arena,
served by broadband and increasingly by mobile telephony, offering
immediate access to the internet, to streaming media, to multimedia
production and self expression. Digital inclusion serves many
objectives: basic skills in keyboard, internet and media production
are acquired; media literacy is encouraged; self-confidence is
enhanced and self-esteem increased; social networking can shift
into focused and professional networking; for those seeking a
career in media, community media provides ideal training—two
recent "Southwark.TV" volunteers are now in full-time
work; social cohesion is reinforced and bridges are built across
racial and social divides.
The "Southwark.TV" model offers a coordinated,
multi-faceted, locally focused opportunity for building inclusiveness
into modern life where it is needed and is possible—locally.
By replicating this model across the country, the goal of Social
Inclusion is truly served.
What do I believe are my strengths and the strengths of the
campaign I am running for national rollout of the Southwark.TV
model and why?
Strengths for the purposes of this paper may be expressed
in three forms—personal, incidental, specific.
For my own strengths, I am an experienced broadcast
TV producer/director and have become a leading practitioner in
community media. Early on I saw that there was most probably nothing
I would meet in media training and the facilitating of individual
growth and community media projects that from my considerable
experience I would not know how to handle and support. There are
also nowadays plenty of twelve year olds who can unravel one's
IT problems. Having lived the experience of building "Southwark.TV"
and realising the Southwark Template, I know what I am talking
about. Partner groups and individuals will not have to reinvent
the wheel. I am in addition a trained Life Coach, a discipline
founded on the premise that one's interlocutor, the Coachee, will
know what is right for them and when; no-one else can. Engagement
is a process of what might be termed "appreciative inquiry",
one works through listening, without judgement or in some respects
thought. This way lies learning and growth and achieving.
Incidental strengths supporting the campaign are manifest:
media studies are thriving, many young people are seeking careers
in the media. Younger people are spending more time with the computers
than in front of the television. Media trainers are readily available,
in the form of graduates and established freelance professionals
in the industry. In running the Southwark project, a network of
suitable people—some running their own production companies,
some operating freelance, some amateur filmmakers—quickly
emerged to work with us delivering partner groups their media
training. Media is everywhere, even if media literacy is not.
For specific strengths in the "Southwark.TV"
model, let me cite three brief anecdotes from my time in community
media that will express something of its enormous power:
1. Last October's inaugural Southwark.TV Festival of Film
and Photography was organised for the benefit of local mental
health groups. One artist who exhibited work told me that before
attending training workshops she was unable to speak to people
but now she expresses herself freely, makes memorable films and,
she said, had even walked up to Simon Hughes MP in the street
to urge him to come and see the work.
2. I ran a project with a group of semi-excluded pupils,
one of whom was failing academically and never wrote anything,
yet inspired by the freedom and possibilities of our media work
staff could not stop her writing.
3. A group of no-nonsense middle aged women at a Bermondsey
housing estate drop-in centre had a tremendous time, picking up
cameras, trying acting and presenting, attending and directing
editing, one producing a satirical script on Council recycling
schemes that they now propose to film. These excellent women attended
the screening session of films made by a second group, all of
whom were involved in running local community groups and all coincidentally
black.
One woman from the first group suddenly said to the gathering:
"If you had said a year ago that I would be sitting in
this room with a bunch of black people I wouldn't have believed
you. Forgive me, it's in my upbringing, Bermondsey, ya know."
The area is known for Right Wing leanings and BNP membership.
This feisty soul, a natural in front of the camera, had experienced
nothing short of a personal paradigm shift over the course of
four months. (This is a story worth comparing with the antics
of the Celebrity Big Brother household and the ludicrous reaction
of the mainstream media, print/radio/TV.)
And that is what I was indicating earlier when I referred
to Money and Audience as pillars of mainstream TV, and wondered
what might be contained within the sphere of Community Media:
I began to envisage an individual attending a series of workshops
and seeing something through to its conclusion, something that
perhaps they would never normally have done or thought of doing...
if they rolled up their sleeves, threw themselves into the experience,
and in a team helped to create something from nothing, for that
individual a personal transformation will have taken place. And
so it was for this woman, whose testimony stopped me in my tracks
and struck everyone present with its almost painful honesty, its
blazing truth in a society often too concerned with political
correctness. Not there. Not her. Turbulent soul maybe, but she
was unafraid to speak her mind which revealed itself to us as
being open to change and to the possibilities of self awareness.
I had always claimed these goals and here was a clear and
splendid example.
What are the successes of the "Southwark.TV" campaign
to date?
1. In 1998 CTVT attracted pro bono legal support
for incorporation (1999), charity registration (2000), and continuing
management ever since.
2. After four years development I located in Southwark
Education enough money to create "Southwark.TV" and
understood the importance of linking the spheres of activity and
spheres of thinking related to Community and Education.
3. In 2004 the project reached its target of 50 partner
organisations on the "Southwark.TV" website (now 500
webpages of multimedia) and from a formal Review it was clear
we had made an impact. Here are three examples:
Tony Lynes, Southwark Pensioner, said his fear of IT had been
reduced (on a scale of 1-10) from nine to three, and that without
us his Action Group would still have no website;
award-winning advanced skills teacher Phyllis Gregory of Lilian
Baylis TS was excited that we had given her pupils a voice;
local Somali resident Abdulkhadir Jibril sees "Southwark.TV"
as an integral part of his community's push for social inclusion.
We have also supported Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone groups and
a Southwark refugee artists organisation.
4. Southwark.TV Film Screenings give partner groups and
filmmakers of all ages a forum, support, kindred spirits, and
new working relationships.
5. In 2005 we produced "KNIFE", an educational
DVD on knife crime, coordinated by Southwark Police, duplicated
and distributed by the Metropolitan Police and now handled by
the Damilola Taylor Trust; in 2005 we made "SOUTHWARK HOUR",
10 one-hour TV programmes broadcast on Community Channel, thus
completing the Southwark Template.
6. In 2006 the Southwark.TV Festival of Film and Photography
was launched. This inaugural running of the Festival was dedicated
to four local mental health groups: Castle Arts, Cooltan Arts,
Creative Routes, Mental Fight Club.
7. Two talented volunteers now have jobs in the independent
production sector and show that the transition from community
into mainstream media can be made.
8. One of our newest volunteers is an ex-Army, former
homeless man, with whose energy and support we are conducting
a project partner review.
How might the CMS Committee support this programme of community
media development to achieve greater impact in the future?
I believe the CMS Committee might consider this request for
funding as an aspect of policy review, and itself lobby other
Departments with a view to creating a centralised Fund dedicated
to this multifaceted work. Those Departments one might see as
relevant are:
DCLG, DCMS, DfES, DH, DWP.
Spiritually (in the broadest sense) there is no limit to
what community media can achieve. Money is always the issue of
course—and in community media, despite its evident potential
for the good, there is very little indeed. A real bridge is needed
to cross to the money and to access those territories of influential
networking and policymaking. So for Community TV Trust
with its vibrant model of locally focused broadband media, whilst
the "vision thing" is working well, raising the money
is now top of the agenda.
To pursue the Ofcom/PSP route, one is at the mercy of the
political process. To create the Public Service Publisher, even
if Ofcom were to win the argument will presumably not be quick
to achieve.
Curiously, David Beckham could now pay for the whole scheme
by himself in around four months, so the project is modest when
set alongside its potential for generating good and being useful
to both the country and the economy.
January 2007
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