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OURMedia 7: Identity, Inclusion, Innovation -- Alternative Communication in a Globalized World
OURMedia is coming to Africa for the first time through OM7. Like previous OURMedia conferences, OM7 is an opportunity to dialogue and strengthen initiatives around common causes with the rest of the world. In the case of OM7, the conference is also an invitation to better understand the complex and dynamic reality of Africa that informs and potentially deepens such dialogue and initiatives.
Founded in 2001, OURMedia/NUESTROSMedios is a global network with the goal of facilitating a long-term dialogue between academics, activists, practitioners and policy experts around citizens' media initiatives.
OURMedia is about building an alternative world, rooted in local knowledge, anchored in strong identities but also connected to global networks, open to ‘otherness’, diversity and inclusion.
Alternative communication for an alternative world
OURMedia 7 is built on the assumption that alternative communication – a diversity of actors, voices, themes and discourses - needs to flourish and take hold to create alternative worlds. It sees equity, community and cultural identity as the hallmarks of an alternative world.
The previous six conferences (OM1-OM6) were held in Washington, D.C., USA; Barcelona, Spain; Barranquilla, Colombia; Porto Alegre, Brazil; Bangalore, India; and Sydney, Australia.
Like the other conferences, OM7 will be shaped by the living experience of its host country and region. For Ghana and much of Africa, that experience has tended to be portrayed by the world media in terms of deprivation and destruction, or as curiosities. Yet, this vast, diverse and vibrant continent nourishes many of the values, traditions and practices that can enrich communication in an alternative world.
The design of OURMedia 7
OM7 will have three main parts: the "Conference proper", a Community Radio Symposium, and a Festival.
The Conference will include plenary sessions featuring a keynote speaker and a keynote performance on each of the sub-themes - Identity, Inclusion, Innovation - followed by thematic panels and parallel sessions across various media and issues.
Coinciding with the 10th year on-air of Radio Ada, a pioneer Community Radio station in Ghana, OM7 will integrate a Community Radio Symposium that will reflect on, critique and celebrate the role of Community Radio worldwide in relation to identity, inclusion and innovation.
The Festival will feature exhibitions that express the OURMedia 7 themes through various media and experiences. Open to the public, the Festival will be a means of connecting OURMedia 7 with the outside world and ensuring that it re-invigorates the theme and leaves an imprint among people outside of and beyond the Conference.
The 3 Sub-themes of OURMedia 7
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Identity If identity is rooted in culture, the confluence of shared understanding, practice and communication, how can and does cultural diversity – and a multiplicity of media - contribute to an alternative world? This sub-theme speaks to the multiplicity of world-views - imaginaries - waiting to be spoken out loud. In Africa in particular, but also worldwide, the knowledge and experience embedded in oral tradition and held by indigenous peoples remain powerful yet relatively unexplored and underutilized in global and national mainstream media. Whether in the global North or South, displacements of various kinds have left many grappling with, and grasping for, their sense of themselves and their values. |
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Inclusion How can and does communication contribute to the development of an alternative world that is inclusive, provides "platforms of equality" and connects and bridges different cultural and communication societies. In today's world, exclusion rather than inclusion is often the dominant experience. There are many faces to exclusion. Some of the most familiar are given generic names - poverty, gender, youth, indigenous people, minorities. Whatever the form it may take or the level at which it occurs, exclusion always reflects an imbalance in relationships. The imbalance is often maintained with force, whether overt (ranging from legislation to physical violence or armed conflict) or less immediately palpable (including, for example, traditional attitudes and beliefs). Not incidentally, fundamental to exclusion are the strictures on the Right to Communicate itself – ranging from forms of expression to the content of discourse to access to the organization of technological media. Thus, people creating their own media is core to inclusion. Often, the process requires the development of vibrant, rights-aware communities and people-centred policies and regulation. |
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Innovation How can and does communication enable innovation and the renewal of the diversity of human experience that is vital to an alternative world? Innovation happens everyday everywhere, as people try to make sense of and relate to their world. Whether identified with day-to-day or modern technology, the creative impulse is key in transforming the processes and institutions needed to create an alternative world. Transformation can only happen if communication itself - those who speak or otherwise express, those who process and the ways and platforms in which this happens - is transformed. For example, where do the new communication technologies and practices lie: will they simply be about new-ness or will they be innovative in a social sense, both promoting and embodying genuine transformation? |
Based on the sub-themes, OM7 proposes to develop six focal areas:
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oral and symbolic communication
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diversity of expression
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knowledge-generation-and-transmission
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marginalized voices, groups and cultures
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communal systems of communication
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social communication networks.
The organizing committee
The event in Ghana is being organized by the Ghana Coordinating Committee (GCC), a group that has gathered around OURMedia 7 and that brings together community radio practitioners, academicians, artists and civil society and media advocates. These include, among others, the Ghana Community Radio Network (GCRN), the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), the School of Communication Studies and the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, and Participatory Development Associates. This core group is being expanded with other partners from the African region and elsewhere and works with the OURMedia 7 International Working Group.
The GCC see themselves as facilitators and are desirous that the very process of organizing OURMedia 7 should, in keeping with the theme, be as inclusive as possible.