“In 1999, the World Bank conducted a survey amongst 60,000 people living on less than a dollar a day.
When asked what they felt would make the greatest difference to their lives, the number one answer, above even food and shelter, was access to a voice.”
Source –
Participatory Video
Helen Goulden, as is her habit, hits the nail on the head in a short post called “Equity of Access, Equity of Content”.
“With the government increasingly paying attention to the ‘digital divide’; the growing gap between those you have access and exploit new technologies and those who don’t (either because they don’t see the need, or don’t have access to skills and equipment), and the emergence of local and community TV, it strikes me we need to pay attention not just to attempting to provide skills and access but also equitable access to rich media content production.”
And she points to Participatory Video and Our Video as ones to watch.
Would be interesting to see what Lloyd “Podcast” “Noah” Davis thought about it all, when he’s not off hunting nurturing and caring for snowmen.
Piers, welcome back – all the best bloggers had a bit of no-posting time earlier this year.
I have to take issue with the link to my site. All right-thinking people know that hunting snowmen is a cruel and barbaric activity that has no place in our modern, civilised, Web2.0 world. I would hate for anyone to read your post and think that I or m’esteemed colleague Ms Davies would ever take part in such anachronistic shenanigans. What we were doing is the opposite of what those evil snowman-hunters do (I shudders at the thought of them) – we went after snow and out of it, we (well Debbie, mostly, a you can see in the video) created a snowman, where no snowman had stood before. I’d hoped that when we have met you had seen more humanity in me than your cruel comments suggest. I now pray that this prejudice hasn’t stopped you from watching Episode 2, Desperately Seeking Harvey because you imagine it’s about deliberately puzzling a monkey for our own amusement or Episode 3, Let them eat cake! because it might involve some mild avian abuse (we checked it out with the RSPB for god’s sake!) (btw I see that I may only use HTML tags here for style so I can’t link to the movies which can be found, folks, at http://www.allthisandbrainstoo.co.uk
But you also wondered what I thought of this particpatory video lark. I think it’s fantabulotastic! As I said last week at Blogging4Business (pauses to polish nails on lapel, before absently admiring them and smiling to self) this technology puts POWER in the hands of PEOPLE with PASSION (you know how I love my plosives). And I think that’s got to be a good thing. My most grandiose expectation of these developments is that they help us, in this country, to talk seriously about freedom of speech – since there are people with passion that I’d personally rather didn’t have power…and no doubt vice versa.
Sorry, should have blogged this rather than rambling on in your comments.
Dammit, sir, you’re right. It wasn’t hunting. My apologies, it was careless, and I’ve edited made the required changes. It turns my stomach that I might have besmirched either your own or Ms. Davies’ good names.
Couldn’t make it to the Blogging4Business, but I like the Power, People, Passion trinity. Does make me wonder slightly about the extremes, though, and what happens when fundamentalists (of any flavour) have more passion than lily-livered liberals …