On the Cusp - Belonging to Ireland
This week CRAOL celebrated the series ‘On the Cusp- Belonging to Ireland’, a joint venture between 7 community stations, working with members of the Travelling, immigrant, LGBT+ and former offender communities. The event also included an award ceremony for participants in the QQi L3 media expression course that have completed their training with the stations.
The course had more than 60 participants from diverse groups across the country and placed a special emphasis on advocating for change through media. The course was run free of charge to participants, who traditionally are not represented in a meaningful way in media and was funded by The Community Foundation of Ireland.
The Community Foundation for Ireland has been a long-standing supported of Craol and strongly believes in the power of local radio to ensure that all voices, especially of those of traditionally marginalised communities are both heard and amplified in our society. The Community Foundation for Ireland has supported the work of Craol to ensure older people receive a voice in our society and are given the skills to lobby for change and now is continuing this work with Craol to ensure that other groups are also given a voice on the soundwaves.
The ‘On the cusp- Belonging to Ireland’ project, spear-headed by Craol and funded by The Community Foundation for Ireland, seeks to remove the obstacles that prevent people’s voices from reaching the airwaves on the issues that concern them. The project has facilitated the training of more than 60 people to become advocates and media-producers. These new community radio makers have gone on to produce over 7 hours of radio that tackles directly the issues concerning them and the communities they represent.
These 7 locally made radio programmes have been distilled into a nationally syndicated radio series, which will now be broadcast across the network of community radio stations, with a listenership of almost a quarter of a million people. The stations involved in this project are; Athlone Community Radio, Community Radio Youghal, Flirt FM in Galway, Liffey Sound, Near FM and Phoenix FM in Dublin and Wired FM in Limerick. The series will also be available to download or stream at Soundcloud and streamed on www.craol.ie/projects