Dear GKD List Members:
We are writing to invite your comments and suggestions on the UNESCO
consultation document, pasted in below. Do please send us your thoughts,
criticisms or questions (by 30 July).
Many thanks,
Don Slater
Peter Lewis
(London School of Economics, for UNESCO)
*
Invitation to Participate in a Stakeholder Consultation: UNESCO 'how-to'
book for Community Multimedia Centres
UNESCO is producing a practical guide on how to set up and run community
multimedia centres and other multimedia information service providers.
The book will give an account of all the basic components that make up
these service providers, the basics of how to organise and manage
day-to-day operations and will cover the most important issues that
arise in sustaining their activities.
This publication will complement a multi-media, interactive training kit
currently being developed by UNESCO and a group of stakeholders
including APC, OneWorld, Panos and AMARC. The book will also complement
UNESCO's Telecentre Cookbook and Community Radio Handbook. Both of the
new publishing projects are specifically focused on the creative and
development potential of linking the Internet to more traditional
communications technologies (especially radio), particularly within the
community media sector.
Stakeholders are asked to give their views as to:
a.. what themes and issues this book would most usefully include, and
b.. the form and style of the publication - eg, illustrations,
difficulty level and tone, additional resources that should be included
(eg, technical matters, bibliographies, etc). We have been asked by
UNESCO to coordinate this consultation as we recently carried out an
independent study of Kothmale Community Radio and Internet Project, Sri
Lanka, (funded by DfID). This involved an intensive month of qualitative
fieldwork, dealing with all aspects of the project and its community.
Our study has suggested that the following themes and/or chapters are
the most significant for multimedia communication service providers:
* Designing and locating - thinking through the design and location of a
community media centre to maximise access, fit into the community, make
best use of human and technical resources
* Technologies - assessing and choosing appropriate technologies;
costing technologies; planning and maintenance strategies for media
technologies; dealing with technological problems and disasters;
innovating and re-configuring technologies; independence and dealing
with brands, manufacturers and retailers
* Varieties of community multimedia centres - scale and range of
services provided, different aims and focuses, funding and charging
strategies, fitting services to communities
* Staff - managing different kinds of workers and supporters, their
different expectations and motivations (eg, volunteers, part-time
workers, aspiring media professionals); wages and reimbursements;
community media centre involvement as a career step; conflicting demands
of community involvement and professional training
* Skills - what skills are needed, and by whom, how are they to be
developed (eg, media specific skills, communications skills,
administrative skills); levelling the playing field of skills (issues of
gender, education, poverty, etc); dealing with issues of literacy;
dealing with language issues; the relation of community media to other
education providers
* Getting started and keeping going - a narrative of the different
stages in the life of a centre, and the kinds of problems and tasks that
need to be dealt with
* Organizing - legal and organizational structures (including management
and committee structures, advisory groups, staff meetings); divisions of
labour and establishing responsibilities; rules and constitutions;
consultation processes
* Communities, stakeholders and audiences - what is a community? What is
your community? How to analyse the main needs, social divisions,
tensions and inequalities in your locality. What role can community
media play in dealing with these issues? What impacts can they
realistically have? Setting priorities and target users. Enlisting,
motivating and organizing individuals, organizations, groups within the
community. Connecting - finding and working with other organizations
* Media and information content - what are various media good for?,
media convergence - combining new and old media (eg, internet, mobile
phones, radio and print); innovating media formats (eg, new genres like
'radio browsing' that arise from new combinations of media technology);
language issues in non-English speaking areas; organizing information
on-line, and structuring portals and websites.
* Research - methods of generating knowledge about users, the community
and the media centre; building a research culture and linking research
to planning and organizing; monitoring the centre's operation and
assessing its impact
