From the Margins to the Cutting Edge: Community Media and Empowerment

Edited by Peter M. Lewis and Susan Jones, 2006

“A voice for the voiceless”—that is how community radio has often been described. This book is about the training needed for the effective use of community radio by social groups whose voices and opinions are rarely head in mainstream media. Such training includes Internet and computer skills, but bridging the “digital divide” is not simply a technical matter. Those whose opinions are rarely given a hearing may have forgotten, or never learned, how to express them. The self-confidence that can come from the radio or Internet experience helps people see that change is possible, in themselves as well as in the world around them.

Two projects in six European countries, funded as part of the EU’s Socrates Adult Education Program, generated the activities covered in this book. They include Web site creation, digital audio editing, live broadcasting of local events, the creation of local sound archives for music, webcasting, community radio training for refugees and asylum seekers, and Internet course for mothers and daughters, and the creation of aural archives in an Italian village. Introductory chapters set the historical and theoretical context for the community radio tradition that underpinned the training and discuss the connection between access and participation and the local level and the demands for a voice for civil society at the global level.

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