Arts and Community Media Organizations Connect for a Positive Future

 An ambitious series of joint national initiatives by Arts Council England, the Community Media Association and the Voluntary Arts Network are supporting an exciting range of collaborative partnerships between arts and community media organisations.

 

Supported with funding from Arts Council England, the initiative has enabled a number of community media organisations and arts organisations to join forces to create four innovative new projects.

The four projects will feature in a series of roadshows promoting arts and community media organisations partnerships, including a roadshow in Sheffield on 26 January.  

This free event will include a mixture of presentations and discussions that will demonstrate real life examples of arts and community media collaboration, programming, productions and partnership. To book a place visit http://cma-roadshow-yorks-humber.eventbrite.com.

Two Valleys Radio, which is produced by Kirklees-based community media organisation Heads Together and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (HCMF) jointly presented a series of online broadcasts during the 2010 HCMF. This included the live performance of a new piece created by a group of young people working with internationally acclaimed composer Claudia Molitor, and live online 'meet the composer' sessions for schools. The broadcasts can be listened to again at http://www.twovalleysradio.co.uk/.

Haltwhistle Film Project and Prism Arts are working with a group of adults with learning disabilities at the Hensingham Day Centre in Whitehaven, Cumbria. Following a series of workshops the group will shoot and edit a number of short films about activities at the centre and around Whitehaven. The project will also see a new website created for the films to be shown on.

The Manchester Literature Festival is commissioning five poets to create new work which will recorded and broadcast by local people on ALL FMCommunity Radio as part of a six week radio production training course. The volunteers will also record interviews with the poets, and listeners will be invited to submit their own poems and read them on air.

Newlyn Arts Gallery and The Exchange is working with Penwith Community Radio to create a series of audio features documenting the gallery's programme of work by leading regional, national and international contemporary visual artists, including exhibiting artists and curators in conversation and recordings of performance pieces.

Helen Featherstone, Relationship Manager, Participation and Engagement, Arts Council England, Yorkshire, said: 'By working together, arts and community media organisations can reach new audiences, develop excellence in arts practice and develop innovative ways of working with new technologies.'

The Community Media Association champions access to making broadcast media for people and their communities to achieve lasting positive social change. The Voluntary Arts Network aims to promote participation in the arts and crafts across the UK and Republic of Ireland.