Last week we were in Merthyr Tydfil, accompanied by Rob Watson of Decentered Media, and we had a wonderful couple of days – even though we were escorted from the indoor market at one point!
As part of the Creu Cyffro creative industries training programme, funded by the UK Government via its Community Renewal Fund, we were discussing community media in Merthyr and the role that podcasts might play in reducing what participants feel is a media deficit in the town and wider area.
Rob has written before on his Decentered Media blog about how trusted community media is and, as we know from Robert Putnam, areas with high levels of trust have deeper levels of social capital. To this end Rob is in the process of setting up a community interest company (which is what Grow Social Capital is) for a community radio station to serve Leicester, called Radio Lear. King Lear, or Leir, ruled from Leicester and though I didn’t know this, given the Welsh name for Leicester is Caerlŷr the penny should really have dropped sooner than it did!! Lear in this context also stands for Leicester Emergent Arts Radio. You can read more about it here.
Back to Merthyr, and we helped the participants to plan what sort of recording they wanted to make, familiarised them with the technology and had a practice before setting off to Merthyr’s indoor market to have a chat with local people about their view on the arts and culture in the town.
The misunderstanding with the market’s management arose out of an incident the week before where a national broadcaster was felt to have unsympathetically portrayed the market. It goes to show how easily trust – that word again – can be lost when places are given an exposure in the media.
We’re hoping to be back in Merthyr running the sessions again in January so email us at hello@growsocialcapital.org.uk if you’re interested.
If you’re interested in community radio and media and would like to engage with others who share the interest, you can sign up to Rob’s Patreon.
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