Travelling back from Liverpool, I’ve been preparing a presentation to give to the Belong Community of Practice Network, about the role and purpose of community media. What I hope to communicate is the need to include community media in the social and community regeneration process that is being championed by the new Labour Government. The question that comes to my mind, though, is there enough will within to civic sector and the independent and community media sector to work together and form alliances that can shape the discussion, and achieve tangible and credible outcomes.
Labour are not being explicit about structural change for media at this point. Given that one of the last Bills to go through the last Parliament was the Media Act, I doubt there will be much appetite for whole-scale change. This does not mean that the media ecosystem will remain static, as technology, social needs and the capacity of different levels of government are reconfigured to suit the policy priorities of the Starmer Government.
I attended a couple of events where Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport spoke about her passion and priorities for government. She was upfront about refreshing the link between civic society and government. Many of the delegate I chatted with and listened to in the fringe events, spoke about the ongoing challenges of working in a comprehensive manner across government departments. They reported the same issue that I’ve experienced, where civil servants kept people in silos, when what was most needed was an inter-departmental discussion that encompassed a range of interconnected issues.
Lisa Nandy has spoken passionately about supporting arts and culture in a way that ensures that everyone neighbourhood and town has access to high quality creative and cultural activities. The government, according to Nandy, has moved quickly to review the National Curriculum to ensure that music and the arts are available to children in all areas, and not just to those fortunate to be able to afford additional tuition.
As a starting point, this shift in priorities, indicates a willingness to redefine the purposefulness of creative education that supports cultural democracy by making arts and creative engagement opportunities more broadly available. There was also an indication from the Secretary of State that the building-blocks of improved arts and culture participation would be place-based, and would be developed as assets for the community to use and develop, rather than as something that is provided for them from the top down.
While there was no explicit mention of media policy being driven by the same approaches, Nandy did reiterate that the BBC might be ‘mutualised’, i.e. developed as a co-operative that operates on behalf of the people who use its services, with more engagement and input from citizens who are able to hold the BBC accountable in a mutual process of engagement and support.
It’s not clear where the role of community media fits within these political priorities, but there does seem to be scope to engage with the government and for civic-media and community-driven forms of communication to have their voices heard in these debates. We should not underestimate the power of the large media corporations, who enjoy a lot of freedom in the marketplace, but it is reassuring to hear ministers, such as Chris Bryant, and MPs who have specialist interest in these area, to take their responsibility to listen and engage with the civil-society sector more generally.
A lot of the discussion at events in the conference focussed on the use and introduction of AI and digital services. It was good to hear Arqiva speak about the need to protect the broadcast media infrastructure, such as DTV and Radio, because of the risk to the critical infrastructure and the need to protect those who may fall behind and be overlooked in the rush to move all services online.
There is a door to be pushed at by Broadcast 2040, the collation of broadcast and civil society organisation, who can do much more to foster dialogue with government about the need to maintain social resilience by maintaining capacity for free-to-air media services, both television and radio.
The role of AI was also discussed in relation to news services, and the imbalance of power between the news content producers, and the aggregation and distribution platforms, who exert high-levels of control over what their systems scrape from published news media, and how little control the UK government has to mitigate the ‘content-grab’ that has led to the collapse of local news provision. Sandwiched between the EU and the USA, the capacity of local and independent news services to maintain the integrity of their content, and not to have it ripped-off by the global technology companies of challenging.
Overall, while media did not figure highly in the mix of conversations at the conference, the interconnected issues might just align benignly to enable an alliance of groups civic society groups to come together to foster a dialogue with the government about the public purpose of media and news across the UK. The best advice given for engaging with ministers and MPs was to keep and engagement succinct, address the interests of the MP, and emphasise the social purpose of the engagement.
I’ve noted five themes for this engagement:
- Social Cohesion – how do communities identify, discuss and encourage civic action based on their needs and priorities?
- Cultural Democracy – not everyone wants to work in the ‘creative industries’, many people just want to give something back to their neighbourhood or community.
- Common Experience & Identity – we’ve given over our culture to transnational and global media and information platforms that don’t have roots or local engagement in places and communities.
- Social Resilience – as society deals with changes and challenges, the capacity of communities to understand and learn from experience is limited is information is narrowly defined. Community media is 10% media, 90% community development.
- Social Value – to recognised the circular return of media, adding to local capacity and enriching local life through discussions, storytelling, entertainment, news, information, arts, creativity.
Lets see if we can take these discussions forward.