Community Media – Seminar, Durham Miners Hall

The North East of England has an excellent network of media producers including Tyne Tees, The BBC, Newcastle Chronicle and Journal and others.

There is a need for a second tier of media which complements the established mainstream outlets but is more accessible to the community; Community Media

Newcastle Community News has established a network that gives the community a voice and is able to report on much smaller issues than mainstream media can deal with. N.C.N may not be as large as mainstream media but it is more approachable and is willing to give a voice to groups that may be of little interest to, or no have no commercial viability to mainstream media. Interestingly, N.C.N Community Media project grows in stature it has begun to attract the interest of the mainstream media it was designed to be an alternative to.

New technology is a tool for empowerment of ordinary people. The best publicised facet of this is the fact that musicians may now make their work available over the Internet and let the listening public decide on it’s merits without a record company making this decision for them.

Community Media is a way of giving a platform for all the arts including, music, drama, poetry, literature as well as being a vehicle for literacy initiatives and oral history projects. .