2019 Community Media Conference

The CMA held a very successful Community Media Conference on 28th September at BBC Quay House, MediaCityUK in Salford. The theme of this year’s Conference was “We Need to Talk” to recognise that the community media sector needs to talk to Government, to funders, and to the wider media industry.

The 2019 Community Media Conference addressed a number of key themes:

• Production: radio production masterclass with Hindenburg Systems, radio presenting skills masterclass with Scruton Wyatt Media
• Small-scale digital audio broadcasting: tech, Ofcom licensing, funding
• Sustainability: Community Radio Fund, Audio Content Fund
• Discussion: inRadio in discussion with leading industry figures and recordings of the Decentered Media podcasts

We were delighted to host delegates from all corners of the UK and from the Irish Republic as well. Media presenter Mike Shaft opened the Conference and the event was closed by Paul Dennett, the City Mayor of Salford.

The conference photos are here. There’s a fantastic video of the day here from Terry Lee. There are eight amazing audio interviews recorded by Eleanor Shember-Critchley of MMU here:

• Qaiser Bari of Plus News TV
• Jay Sykes of Sunderland Uni
• Huzaifa Patel of Radio Seerah
• Andrea and Richard from Cando FM
• Rosie Parkyn of Internews
• Bridey Addison-Child from The Roundhouse
• Wesley Gerrad of Gwent Radio and
• Mike Shaft our keynote speaker.

And we have some wonderful video interviews from Pruthvi Khilosia, a student of MMU:

• Johnny Jenkins of Gateway 97.8
• Shawn Sobers of Imperial Voice Radio and
• Gloria Khamkar of Unity 101 and Bournemouth University.

On Sunday 29th September, we held a citizen journalism workshop with contributions from Clydesider magazine from Glasgow and On Our Radar, a London-based not-for-profit communications agency. These two organisations shared their tips and techniques for encouraging a wider set of volunteers to get involved with citizen journalism other than the ‘usual suspects’.

The workshop also included practical advice on improving field recordings for radio journalists and enhancing podcasts with the Headliner app. The day finished with a very useful session on how academia can work more closely with community media projects. The workshop photos are here.

Planning has already started for next year’s events!