Connecting Bristol » Community Media

DC10 Project Management Consultancy - Community Capacity

November 8, 2007 Posted by Stephen Hilton in : Digital Challenge, Bristol, Community Media, Mentoring, jobs , add a comment

Birmingham City Council, on behalf of the Digital Challenge Network, is offering a 12 months consultancy contract for a Project Manager. We are looking for an effective people connector with a firm standing in Community and Voluntary (CVS) work. You should be well organised and with an understanding of how IT can enhance service delivery. The project will identify successful networks and services in 6 Local Authorities: Birmingham, Bristol, Ealing, Norfolk, Shropshire and Sunderland which aim to increase the capacity to access and deliver services on a local level through networks of volunteers and organisations.

Information on the Digital Challenge can be found on www.digitalchallenge.gov.uk/dc10

The contract value is £42k plus £5k expenses. Submission deadline is 26/11/2007 12.00 noon. For an informal discussion contact Paul Nash on 01743 252020 or Heike Schuster-James on 0121 675 8887.

For details about this contract see the Consultant Brief, the Person Specification and the Project Outline.

MySpace Calls For Reinforcements

July 27, 2007 Posted by Matt in : Bristol, Community Media, Connecting SW Conference, Connecting Bristol , 1 comment so far

The big buzz at Montage is the battle between MySpace and Facebook. It’s heating up, and MySpace at least is taking a good look at its own troops, with the news this week that MySpace has put its six-figure PR account out to tender. The services of Freud Communications, retained since 2006, are no longer required, and MySpace is looking for an agency to provide a “full gamut” of PR services, according to the site’s director of corporate communications for Europe, Chris McCafferty.

MySpace has denied that the decision to refresh their PR provision has come about due to the pressure it faces from rival Facebook, who are rapidly gaining in popularity. Whilst MySpace still receives a greater number of hits than Facebook, this month Facebook has overtaken MySpace in the number of web searches of its name.

A recent article in the Guardian would have made worrying reading for MySpace – London has overtaken Toronto to become the biggest network on Facebook, with members listed in London now numbering 790,615, which is almost a twofold increase since May. Its userbase, growing at an overall rate of 3%, is growing by 6% a week in London.

Figures for the year to June show that the three main social networking sites have all seen huge growth, with MySpace recording the biggest audience -10.76 million unique users, an increase of 149% - but Facebook are fast catching up. Its UK traffic rose from just 268,000 unique users in June 2006 to 6.01 million in June 2007 – an increase of 2,143%

On the other hand, perhaps MySpace are to be believed when they say that their decision to put the PR account out to tender was “absolutely not” a response to Facebook’s increasing popularity: see this PR faux pas.

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Waste Man

June 25, 2007 Posted by Clare in : Bristol, Community Media, Environment , add a comment

WASTE MAN, one of six films made for Bristol Natural History Consortium’s Think or Swim project to raise young people’s awareness of climate change, is part of a video competition on Scenewon.

Created by local film maker Nathan Hughes working with young film-makers from City of Bristol College, the competition closes on 30th June. To watch and vote for WASTE MAN go to - http://www.scenewon.co.uk/scene_movie.php?movie=585.

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New report by Community Media South West & Blueboard

May 25, 2007 Posted by Shawn in : Education, Digital Challenge, Community Media, Advocacy, Skills , add a comment

MAKING IT WORK:
An Enquiry into how companies in the Community Media Sector recruit and
retain skilled freelancers

Research by Ella Bissett Johnson
Edited by Shawn Sobers and Steve Gear

Synopsis

This report is a timely and original development in the analysis of social interest creative practice. It takes the debate much further than merely exploring the merits of such projects, and directly provides an analysis of the economic and skills base for this area of work – the area of community media activity within the creative industries.

According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the creative industries are now one of the fastest growing sectors in the British economy, and socially aware creative practice is now gaining a stronger profile and being taken seriously by a wide range of cultural agencies. We feel this report provides an important step in recognising not only the economic realities of these community minded organisations via case studies of the companies themselves and the freelancers they employ, but also charts the average skills contained in this community media/arts field of work, and highlights its future sustainability.

This report has been designed to be not only illuminating, but also be useful. It will be of interest to stakeholders of community based media & arts activity, including project facilitators, managers, funders and policy makers, and also for areas such as careers advice and academic fields such as media studies and social policy. Hopefully this report will provide a platform from which to make informed decisions with confidence, from which the sub-sector of community based media education activity can strategically grow and flourish.

To order from Amazon click here.

To download full report as a pdf file click here.

Research funded by ABI Associates, University of the West of England and South West Screen

Supported by Calling the Shots and Firstborn Creatives

Published by - CMSW / Blueboard - Jan 2007

www.cmsw.co.uk

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