Espannol en mensaje aparte.

English:

The OURMedia Working Group is pleased to announce plans for OURMedia/NuestrosMedios 7 and OURMedia/NuestrosMedios 8 (we had two proposals of such high quality that we decided to work with both).  Soon we will circulate the call for proposals for OURMedia 7.

OURMedia/NuestrosMedios 7

OURMedia/NuestrosMedios 7: Identity, Inclusion, Innovation - Alternative Communication in a Globalized World will be held in Accra , the capital of Ghana , from 13-17 August 2008. The event will be organized by a local core group that brings together community radio practitioners, academicians, artists and civil society and media advocates, including among others, the Ghana Community Radio Network (GCRN), the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), the School of Communication Studies and the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, and Participatory Development Associates.  This core group will be expanded with other partners from the African region and work with the OURMedia 7 Working Group.

The three sub-themes - identity, inclusion, innovation - are regarded as different faces of marginalization in a world that is increasingly homogenized, exclusionary (even exploitative) and pre-packaged. OURMedia 7 builds on the assumption that alternative communication needs to flourish and take hold to create alternative worlds.  

Identity.  This sub-theme speaks to the multiplicity of world-views - imaginaries - waiting to be spoken out loud.  In Africa in particular, the knowledge and experience embedded in oral tradition remain powerful yet relatively unexplored and underutilized.  Whether in the global North or South, displacements of various kinds have left many grappling with, and grasping for, their sense of themselves and their values.  Identity is rooted in culture, the confluence of shared understanding and practice, and an alternative world can only thrive in cultural diversity.  It is impossible, to state the obvious, to "make" culture without communication.

Inclusion. In an alternative world, all are included. Yet in today's world, there are many faces to exclusion.  Some of the most familiar are given generic names - poverty, gender, youth, minorities.  Whatever the form it may take or the level at which it occurs, exclusion always reflects an imbalance in relationships.  The imbalance is often maintained with force, whether overt (ranging from legislation to physical violence or armed conflict) or less immediately palpable (including, for example, traditional attitudes and beliefs). Inclusion also always involves revising and re-naming, the first steps in empowerment.  Often, the process requires the development of vibrant, "rights-aware" communities.  Not incidentally, fundamental to exclusion are the strictures on the Right to Communicate itself – ranging from forms of expression to the content of discourse to the organization of technological media. How can alternative media help create greater 'platforms of equality'?

Innovation/improvisation/creativity.  Whether innovation or improvisation, the creative impulse is key in transforming the processes and institutions needed to create an alternative world.   In other words, how can the world be rebuilt through creative expression? Transformation can only happen if communication itself - those who speak or otherwise express, those who process and the ways and platforms in which this happens - is transformed.  Where do the new communication technologies lie:  will they simply be about new-ness or will they be innovative in a social sense, both promoting and embodying genuine transformation?

The Conference will include plenary sessions featuring a keynote speaker on each of the sub-themes Identity, Inclusion, Innovation followed by thematic panels and parallel sessions across various media and issues. Coinciding with the 10th year on-air of Radio Ada, a pioneer Community Radio station in Ghana , the Conference programme will integrate a Community Radio Symposium that will reflect on, critique and celebrate the role of Community Radio worldwide in relation to identity, inclusion and innovation.  Alongside the Conference, a Festival will feature exhibitions that express the OURMedia 7 themes through various media and experiences.  The Festival, which will be open to and mainly for the benefit of the public, will be a means of ensuring that OURMedia 7 awakens the theme and leaves an imprint in people outside of and beyond the Conference.   

 The core group in Ghana sees itself as facilitators and is desirous that the very process of organizing OURMedia 7 should be, in keeping with the theme, as inclusive as possible.

 AKWAABA (Welcome), OURMedia, to Ghana and through Ghana , to Africa !!!

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OURMedia/NuestrosMedios 8

OURMedia/NuestrosMedios 8: Enabling Our Media - Research and Action for People-based Communication

There is a tentative proposal to hold OURMedia 8 in Budapest , Hungary , in September 2009, to be confirmed or declined (depending on the host institution as well as feedback from the OURMedia network) by January 2008. The host institution would be the Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) at the Central European University . The conference is to be organized by a local core group that includes long-time OURMedia members Arne Hintz, Program Director of the CMCS, Kate Coyer, Research Fellow at CMCS and at the Annenberg School , University of Pennsylvania , and Stefania Milan, Doctoral student and researcher at the European University Institute, Florence , Italy .

The proposed theme is "Enabling Our Media - Research and Action for
People-based Communication". At its core are policy issues and an
enabling regulatory environment, but also the question of how to make
our media more sustainable, strong, creative, and innovative. Sub-themes
would include, amongst others:

*       Regulatory environments: Media diversity, freedom of
expression, intellectual property rights and global commons, spectrum
allocation, privacy and recent anti-terrorism legislation, all these
(and many more) affect the opportunities for community/alternative/citizens' media to flourish. Where are the opportunities and the threats? What should an enabling environment look like?

*       Campaigning, advocacy and change: What can be done to influence
such environments? Where is policy being made, who is intervening, with
what strategies? Who are the allies, who the opponents? What is the
media reform movement doing, the communication rights movement, the free
software movement?

*       Sustainability: How can our media become more sustainable? What
are appropriate organizational and financial models?

*       Impacts of our media: What are appropriate research methods and
cases to assess the effects of our media on democratization,
development,  empowerment?

*       Creativity and innovation: Where do we see new and inspiring
types of our media? What are media activists experimenting with? What is
happening at the intersection of arts, technology and media?

The Conference would comprise 'traditional' academic panels and paper
presentations, roundtable discussions, workshops, 'open space' sessions,
and related cultural events and project visits. One or two of the
evenings would feature public panels which present issues from the
conference to interested members of the public. Throughout the days of
the conference, a Media Laboratory would provide space for experiments
and training. Two afternoons would feature Field Trips to local
community media. The organizers emphasize the necessary connections
between academics and practitioners, involving European community media
networks, the vibrant local and regional alternative media scene, and
including a focus on art activism, new technologies and related themes.