Community TV Trust is now an organisational member of CMFE and is participating in their first conference being held in Cyprus. A plenary session on Day One featured a panel on community media and the Arab Spring with speakers from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya (by Skype from Benghazi), Syria, Jordan. An inspiring discussion with examples of citizen journalism and social media that left one examining what community media might be. Limitless appears to be one answer.
Day Two brought Cyprus itself to the fore, an island still divided into Greek and Turkish halves, though checkpoints are now open. Nonetheless local mainstream media apparently resorts to the rhetoric of division and of ‘them & us’. By contrast one media making project had brought together children from the two sides who jointly made short animation films with the help of translators and facilitators. The illustrations of process were heartening given the normal landscape of division we had had described.
Delegates have reported on projects from countries including Cyprus, South America, USA, Bosnia, France, Austria and UK; in addition to tales of the Arab Spring, stories embraced digital storytelling, animation, television operating outside regulation in Bolivia, DAB+ linking communities in West France, academic research proposing a bi-lingual radio station uniting Cyprus (albeit the issue of juggling two languages had not been resolved) …
CMFE currently has: *90* members from *23 *European countries: *39* Individual Members and *51* Organizational Members, of which *25* are (National) Federations. Among its affiliate members it counts also individuals and organisations from Africa, Asia and North America.