GRUNDTVIG LIFELONG LEARNING PARTNERSHIP KNOWLEDGE SHARING FOR AMELIORATING COMMUNITY RADIO EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING
Partners of the project are Radio Kultura (Basque Country), SNRL (France), Radio Valleka (Spain), Sheffield Live (Britain) and nearfm (Ireland). The Key objective of the project is to build a sustainable network among European Community Radios which will facilitate the exchange of educational knowledge through tools such as internet, expert seminars and workshops. This project will focus on:
- Evaluation
- Best Practice Exchange
- Models for Programme Educational Content Improvement:
- a) civil Rights in European countries
- b) minority languages and migrants integration
- c) rural stations role in the building o identity for better quality of life
- d) Best practice in environmental education
- e) Improving school curriculum to support participative learning processes
At the beginning of the partnership, it was agreed by the partners that some of the meetings and events will be taking place as part of bigger events where members of other community radio station, education institutions and regulatory bodies would be invited to attend. This facilitates the dissemination of the project, but also the exposure of these organisations to the specific themes of the partnership. The initial meeting was hosted by the partnership coordinator, near90fm, and it took place in Dublin, and the focus of that meeting was to look at the application, decide on the shape of the meetings (either open to others or just focus on the learning partnership internal activities), dates and responsibilities for partners. It was then decided that the next two meetings will be open to participation by other groups. The second meeting was hosted by Radio Kultura, and took place in Hendaye (French Basque Country). It coincided with the 10th anniversary of another Basque Language community radio, Antxeta Irratia, and their conference on minority languages. During the events organised as part of the conference -and that were attended by all representatives of partner organisations- there were discussions around Basque Language media (printed and radio), and the experiences of partners when working with migrant communities across Europe. The events took place over two days in Hendaye (France) and Irun and San Sebastian (Spain), and these were attended by local authorities, such as the lord majors of Hendaye and Irún, journalists and radio and tv producers. The venues for the event were Hendaye’s and Irun’s town hall and the campus of the Basque National University in Ibaeta, San Sebastian. The third meeting took place 24-26 February and it was hosted by near90fm with the cooperation of the Community Radio Forum of Ireland (CRAOL) and AMARC Europe (the European branch of the Worldwide organisation for Community Broadcasters). The format was that of a European Community broadcasters Conference. The conference lasted two and a half days and during the event there were plenary discussions on adult education, diversity in media, gender participation and legislation. On the afternoon there were parallel workshops on minority languages, training and professional qualifications for staff and volunteers, legislation for community radio, Media Literacy, guidelines and codes for reporting, social networking and technology, copyright and digitalisation. Partners were also invited to visit nearfm premises and to attend the launch of Europe for Beginners radio series that took place in Europe House, in the offices of the European Parliament, on Wednesday 23rd February 2011. Our four meeting was an internal meeting in Sheffield. During the meeting we look at the calendar of meetings and we heard from two experts in Digitalisation (Pierre Boucard, SNRL) and broadcasting legislation throughout Europe (Steve Buckley, chair of Sheffield Live). We also have an opportunity to meet Jackie Deveraux, the director of Community Media Association (CMA), which represents many community media organisations across Britain. Our fifth meeting was organised by French partners, which SNRL hosted the rural community radios in Bordeaux, on 8th November, and it coincided with the 30th anniversary of the opening of the radio spectrum in France. This meeting was an opportunity to include the rural radio theme and to meet the Grundtvig national agency in France, which is based in Bordeaux. The sixth meeting took place in Madrid, hosted by Radio Vallekas. It was focused on gender issues and it involved a special four hours multilingual radio programme (Basque, English, French, Spanish) to celebrate International Women’s Day. The seventh meeting was hosted by Sheffield Live in England (23-25 May). Environmental radio producers from all the partner organisations met environmental activists based in England and established the basis for future collaboration on content production around environmental issues. The eighth meeting took place in Madrid (8-9 June) and it opened the final evaluation of the project, and distribution of tasks for final report completion. All partners, with the exception of Sheffield Live, attended this meeting.