SURFERS' INDEX
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Jim Chalmers-Gow is planning new Sharing Our Future Community Theatre workshops in Burnt Islands in January, 2006. Read a workshop description - and more to come.
The 14 year oddessy of Ryakuga's patent application for Newspaper-in-a-Box has finally reached port : ) The purpose of the patent is not to restrict access - or profit taking - rather it is to further legitimize participatory, grassroots community media processes.
Ivan Emke and Jennifer Butler were in Twillingate the week of October 11 with the portable Ryakuga FM radio station 104.7 FM. We will soon be developing a web site on the Twillingate project. Stay tuned.
Listen to Jim Wellman's views on the closure of the Newfoundland and Labrador cod fishery. This audio clip has been produced as the first Ryakuga Podcast.
Try the sound of Beyond Our Culture - a Ryakuga simulcast brought to you from the Baltic International Development Agency and Netcorps Canada World Youth. Don't you love the music?
All About Ryakuga 2005.
During November, 2005, we began using Skype as a communication tool for networking between Burnt Islands, Stephenville and Corner Brook. Skype now has conferencing capacity and the ability to interact with ordinary telephones. More to come.
Jim Chalmers-Gow facilitated a Community Theatre workshop with Sharing Our Future Youth 2005 in Corner Brook on October 22, 2005. Jim has scheduled more workshops in Burnt Islands on December 10. His co-facilitator will be Patsi Chalmers-Gow. Patsi was a Sharing Our Future coordinator in Lark Harbour.
On October 15, 2005, Sharing Our Future Youth 2005 travelled to Stephenville for a Community Video workshop with Ryakuga director Don Murphy. This workshop was a new development for Ryakuga because we asked first for video footage from the community which we analyzed and then designed the workshop around the analysis. Stay tuned : )
Work continues on the participatory evaluation of New Technologies in Five Coastal Settings, a University of Victoria participatory research project. We videotaped more interviews in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland during the summer. During the fall the research team (but not Ryakuga) revisited the communities and collected comments after screenings. These comments are being assembled as directions for editing the video. Also local musicians have provided a sound track for the video report. The research team will videotape an introduction at the University of Victoria in January, 2006.
In October, Ivan Emke and Jennifer Butler took FM Radio 104.7 to Big Lessons from Small Places: A Forum on Governance in Rural North America and the North Atlantic Rim.
Burnt Islands began its community radio project in September, 2005. Two interns were hired to make it happen. Ryakuga is providing support in studio design and ordering equipment. Workshops will begin after the studio is built and new equipment installed.
In August, we began new experiments with webcam software which we haven't really utilized since 1998.
During the summer of 2005, Ryakuga lost two more servers - the community server and the streaming server - as well as the Real Video server. Work is ongoing but it will take time to regain our capacity.
Also in July, we initiated discussions with Jim Chalmers-Gow of Sir Wilfred Grenfell for community theatre workshops for the Burnt Islands group.
July 19/22, 2005, was the week of Burnt Islands Come Home celebrations and Sharing Our Future Youth 2005 were on-air for a 104.7 FM radio special event. Burnt Islands has actually obtained its own community radio licence and discussions have been ongoing this year to establish a local station.
Each community media workshop in Burnt Islands is designed to be juxtaposed with a public event. The July 6/7 workshop designed posters for the community.
On May 28/29, 2005, Sharing Our Future Youth 2005 produced their first live community television event during a Community Reporting workshop.
May 1, 2005, was the publication date for the first issue of the Benito Broadcast Herald and the return of Newspaper-in-a-Box. Ivan Emke and the New Rural Economy research project supported this initiative.
The third consecutive Sharing Our Future Community Media Youth project began in Burnt Islands, Newfoundland, in April, 2005. Vicki Harris returned as the new coordinator.
In February, 2005, Ryakuga presented to the 2005 summit of the Strategic Use of Information and Communications Technology for Communities. It was a project of Ryakuga and the Victoria FreeNet. Gareth Shearman was in sunny Vancouver and Fred Campbell was in a Newfoundland snow storm with internet phone and software video conferencing. Gareth had a DVD and photo slideshow prepared by Ryakuga. As a first try at grassroots remote presentations, it worked well. (The second attempt at the Austin conference of the American Community Networks association wasn't so successful.)
The Ryakuga website begins 2005 in rough shape. Our streaming server has inexplicably broken down while bureaucracy has denied us access to another server maintained within a community technology centre. A university hosted our Real Videos but they seem to have shut down the service. Meanwhile, our discussion boards were hacked into and the code replaced with garbage. We have been forced to shut down all the discussion groups - a service we maintained basically free for community groups.
In October, 2004, Ivan Emke of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College and Fred Campbell travelled to Tweed, Ontario, for The Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation conference - "Building Rural Economies for the 2000s". Ryakuga participated in the facilitation and documentation of the New Rural Economy community radio broadcast (FM simulcast-webcast), Tweed Play House, October 13-16, 2004. Fred Campbell presented at the conference.
On October 5, Fred Campbell presented at the University of Guelph's Don Snowden Program for Development Communication's Celebrating Communication for Social and Environmental Change.
Ryakuga, working with the College of the North Atlantic journalism and music industry students, facilitated and documented the Strategic Social Plan community radio broadcast (FM simulcast-webcast) at the Stephenville High School, September 27, 2004.
Ryakuga is participating in the documentation and evaluation of New Technologies in Five Coastal Settings, a University of Victoria participatory research project. In September and October we travelled to the coastal communities of Grand Bruit, Burgeo, Ramea, Grey River and Francois. We prepared a short video report for an international conference in Australia.
In July, 2004, Fred Campbell returned to Canada and facilitated a community radio project in Burnt islands.
In May, 2004, we released the DVD report on Tuning in to Climate Change: An Experiment in Participatory Communications.
In August, 2003, Ryakuga director Fred Campbell accepted an international contract to teach communications. Work on the Climate Change and Burnt Islands Community Media projects was taken over by Ryakuga directors Don Murphy and Chris Cann. Ivan Emke of Memorial University facilitated a Burnt islands workshop on participatory community surveys.
The last Tuning in to Climate Change FM broadcast and webcast was be from St. John's, Newfoundland in October 2003. It was the fourth event of a Conservation Corps Newfoundland and Labrador project designed to increase public dialogue and awareness about climate change.
You can link here to archived MP4 audio files from earlier broadcasts.
Tuning in to Climate Change began in Kippens in April with subsequent events in Corner Brook (May/June) and Terra Nova National Park in August.
Click here for more on Terra Nova.
Photos of the Corner Brook event.
Link to photos of the Kippens event.
More information is available at the Conservation Corps website.
Meanwhile the Burnt Islands Sharing Our Future youth community media project is now in phase two and will continue until 2004. We welcome your comments on community communication, particularly as it relates to the sustainability of rural communities.
The first Ryakuga workshop coincided with the New Burnt Islands Beat community TV event in June.
Burnt Islands Beat
2003 Burnt Islands Community Media Workshops
Official Burnt Islands Website
The Enlarging the Circle/Engrandir le Cercle report was published online in May. Activities are still ongoing however. Merrelyn Emory of Australia facilitated a learning event for interested Newfoundlanders in June.
In Newfoundland and Labrador we experienced the worst winter, some say, in one hundred years. Enlarging the Circle/Engrandir le Cercle spanned January to March and the weather was often in control of the project. For example, the Port au Port Peninsula was completely closed down for a week in January. Snow and high winds often lead to total whiteouts and it was impossible to drive anywhere, even in town.
Nevertheless, we participated in nine special event community radio/webcast projects working with local committees. The Long Range Regional Economic Development Board field officers were invaluable - working on local committees and acting as liaison between local committees and the steering committee. We have been working in the region for a decade now and radio took us to new and exciting communities. In St. George's we were fortunate to work with the St. George's, St. Teresa's and Flat Bay Youth Organization - a group that has been on the go for 25 years (without government intervention). For the first time, a local school - St. Michael's at Stephenville Crossing - took responsibility for a full day of FM broadcasting and webcasting. Check out photos from all the community media events.
Back in February we also worked with the Burnt Islands Sharing our Future community media youth group. And, on the last day of February, we
Last November Ryakuga teamed up with Canada World Youth Netcorps to produce the RuCa Radio webcast, a few days before the Russian youth returned home.
The final report for the three year Sharing Our Future pilot project is online.
You can link from the report to a discussion board to express your opinions. The pilot project is finished but Sharing Our Future continues with community media events and the Burnt Islands youth group.
The Sharing our Future event was a training/networking/evaluation celebration at the community college in Stephenville in August, 2002.
Go to the Sharing Our Future website for photos, audio and a report on the August event.
We have archived new audio on the server, including Akua Britnum's presentation to the CUSO Atlantic annual general meeting and a Community Forum on Climate Changefrom Acadia University.
Coming soon is a presentation by the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Canada.
The server which streams the Ryakuga Real videos is down much of the time :(>
Stephenville (Nov 2/3, 2002) - The Long Range Regional Economic Development Board Program, featuring local music, community participation and youth power, was webcast as MP4 video and broadcast on 104.7 FM.
St-Jean Terre Neuve (25/26 Octobre, 2002) La communaute francophone de St-Jean Terre-Neuve celebre ses 20 ans et pour feter l'occasion nous allons tenir la premiere emission radiophonique en francais.
Montreal (11/12 Octobre, 2002) Telecommunities Canada, The Victoria Free-Net Association and Ryakuga partnered to provide video webcasting from the Global Community Networks Congress.
We focused on the plenaries for The World Summit on the Information Society: What Role for International Civil Society.
From January to July 2002 and again in February 2003, we participated in a series of workshops to provide support for the Burnt Islands Community Media project which we perceive to actually be an evolution beyond the original concept of Sharing Our Future.
More information about the workshops can be found on the Ryakuga Tutorials page.
The fifth edition of Burnt Island Beat was broadcast on local TV and as an FM simulcast with listeners from Nova Scotia, Ontario and Alberta.
More information is available about the Community Media Project. The community is a partner in Sharing Our Future. Ryakuga has been supporting the project. See the Ryakuga Tutorials.
On July 13, 2002, we webcast Blues Night - acoustic blues by Neil Bishop, Dennis Parker and Scott Goudie - from the Stephenville Theatre Festival. We have since archived Neil and Scott's CD - The Gig.
Ryakuga now has a videoconferencing room available to enhance project planning and implementation. This is an important component of our virtual project planning. It is also a major focus area for 2003.
We recently produced a CD and video of the music of Garifuna musician Joseph Castillo AKA Joe Thump. If you have VivoActive player you are listening to his music now. For high speed connections with VivoActive, link to the video.
Music from the CD, as well as lots of other new clips, can be found at the Ryakuga Internet Radio site.
On St. Patrick's Day, 2002, we webcast the Gerry Formanger Tribute concert from the Silver Dollar in Kippens, Newfoundland. You can link to photos and music.
Click here to see a slide show of the March 16, 2002, Mckay's FM Transmitter Project.
You can receive an email notification of our webcasts by visiting the Ryakuga Internet Radio site and signing on.
There is also a tutorial which explains how to download the free player and prepare for the webcast.
We archived programsand still photos from the first Stephenville broadcast (November, 2001) of our new 30 watt portable FM Radio station. That simulcast was broadcast locally on Ryakuga 104.7 FM and on the internet as well.
There are also new RealMedia video files on the Grenfell server.You may have experienced access problems which we are working to resolve. At the end of August, 2003, the server still wasn't working all the time.
VivoActive is back! Vivo is the first internet video/audio processing software we used back in '96. The company has been sold - the processing software is no longer being developed - but the free player is still available. The reason we are again experimenting with the format is that Vivo ignores firewalls. Give us feedback.
On February 1, 2002, Ryakuga webcast International Night from Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The project included webcam photos and a discussion board. We worked with students from Kenya and Jamaica.
On Dec. 5, 2001, we collaborated with FM Dos de Mayo Cultural, a rural Argentine community radio group, to broadcast a panel of the plenary session (from Buenos Aires during the second Global Community Networking congress) on internet radio using a dial up modem. The server was provided by the Victoria Community Freenet. We wrote a report for IDRC which includes recommendations on webcasting from conferences. A video about FM Dos de Mayo is also available on the site.
We are also experimenting with other global community groups - including the Victoria Free-Net - on accessible software video conferencing. In Newfoundland Ivan Emke of Grenfell and Mary Gaultois of the Community Youth Network have also participated. The Community Education Network and Communities in Schools now has its own webcam. Other Ryakuga webcams are now in France and Russia. This experiment was an important component in Enlarging the Circle/Engrandir le Cercle (2003).
The other initiative on the technology front has been setting up a special event FM station - 104.7 in western Newfoundland. Our goal is FM Internet Simulcasts and the first one was produced Nov. 28 and 29. The second simulcast was in McKays and the third in Burnt Islands.
As previously mentioned, Ryakuga webcast video/audio for the Global Community Networking Conference 2002. We presented in the Mixed Media workshop at the 2001 conference in Buenos Aires in December.
We are continuing to develop ryakuga.net - our latest internet server in Corner Brook.
The pilot project may be complete but we are continuing to build partnerships in this very interesting participatory communication concept: Sharing Our Future. In October, 2002, we simulcast FM radio and streaming audio from the Hub on Merrymeeting Road in St. John's. In October 2001, SOF met on Ramea Island; the main focus was the relationship between community communications and community economic development. The latest partners are Roncalli High School and Persona Communications - formerly known as Regional Cable. The pilot project community communications facilitators included Maxine Stewart of Ramea; Sandra Martin and Gloria Lecointre of La Grand' Terre; Mary Barter of Lourdes; Beverley Kirby and Jesse Fudge of Stephenville; Marie Rose and Val Simms Anderson of Burgeo; Patsi Chalmers Gow of Lark Harbour; Andrea King of Port aux Basques; Gary Patey of Port Saunders, and Sheila King of Burnt Islands. Marie and Val helped local youth produce a program on the Burgeo Broadcasting System. Community communications facilitator Mary Barter worked with Grade 8 kids to produce the first SOF events in Lourdes. Stephenville has set up a Community television committee chaired by Cheryl Hayden. Maxine Stewart has been working with youth volunteers on community forums, Reach for the Top and a News Telecast. All events, of course, are being broadcast on local TV. The 27 partners in this initiative include the Ramea Economic Development Corporation; Ramea Broadcasting; Burgeo Broadcasting; L'Association Regionale du Cote Ouest; Port au Port Economic Development Association; Stephenville Lions Club; Bay St. George South Area development Association; Conservation Corps Newfoundland and Labrador; Sir Wilfred Grenfell College; College of the North Atlantic; Cormack Trail School Board; Long Range Regional Economic Development Board; Communities In Schools; Newtel; Avalon Gateway Regional Economic Development Board; Fatima School of St. Brides; Town of Burnt Islands Recreation; Marine and Mountain Zone; the Community Access program of Newfoundland and Labrador; St. James School of Lark Harbour; the Humber Economic Development Corporation; Ryakuga, and the Community Education Network. The development stage was funded by lots of inkind contributions and the Office of Learning Technology.
The three year developmental stage and pilot project of Sharing Our Future began on September 1. 1999.
The Sharing Our Future steering group was also its participatory evaluation committee. Participating were Brian Foley of College of the North Atlantic; Ivan Emke of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College; Beverley Kirby of the Community Education Initiative; Tracy Snow of Communities In Schools, and Fred Campbell of Ryakuga. Dave Cooper joined the committee as well. Dave is a former program director of the Burgeo Broadcasting System and a key participant in Communication for Survival. Bruce Gilbert, executive director of Conservation Corps Newfoundland and Labrador and a former facilitator with Communication for Survival also joined the committee.
In January, 2001, we facilitated the first community communications workshop for the Burnt Islands Community Channel. This group also joined the Sharing Our Future partnership. As an inkind contribution Ryakuga has loaned equipment to Burnt Islands, Lark Harbour, Stephenville and Lourdes.
Ryakuga presents Real Streaming Video, thanks to Sharing Our Future partner, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College of Corner Brook (the server isn't working in late 2002). We have been working with Ivan Emke, chair of Social/Cultural Studies, for a few years on Listening to the Voices. Videos now on the server include Waves: The History of Participatory Grassroots Communications in Newfoundland and Labrador; Youth, the Environment and the Economy Conference: A Recipe; Petty Harbour Co-operative, and Something Old, Something New: Cultural Retrieval Project 2.
Another video is the keynote address to the Newfoundland and Labrador Environment Network - The Spirituality of Nature as presented by Father John McCarthy. Also added recently are Say No to Resettlement; Celebration; Sharing Our Voices; Communication For Survival; A Bunch of Crackies; A Tribute to BAY TV; One Love, and an audio file of the Stephenville broadcast to the 2000 Canadian Association for Community Education conference. Click the icon below to view.
Ryakuga QuickTime Radio streams from our own server in Stephenville, Newfoundland. (We have also collaborated with the Victoria Free-Net Association and used their server.) For the live webcasts, we take a broadcasting computer to the community. Ryakuga rents space from a number of Internet Service Providers as well.
We have two strategies for our own servers. One is to develop a library of print resources focusing on issues of participatory communications and development. The other is All the Voices - how we can use the internet to present the uninterpreted voices that often are not heard in the 30 second sound-bites of mass media. Click the icon below.
The Ryakuga Resource Library continues to evolve with new additions in the field of popular education; the first is the 1990 Youth for Social Justice Camp Report while the other is the report from the second Youth, the Environment and the Economy conference. Other recent papers are by Beverley Kirby and Dr. Joesph Palacio of Belize.
Added to Ryakuga Tutorials is Newspaper-in-a-Box (all these resources are copyright by the way; we can tell you from experience what it feels like to be ripped off :)>
Another new resource section on the site is Adobe PDF Downloads. The first file is Partager Notre Avenir/Sharing Our Future: Developmental Stage Report.
The CD is available. Best Practices from the Rock was launched from the Conservation Corps Newfoundland and Labrador offices in St. John's. Click the stamp to see what it's all about. The event was broadcast live on QuickTime internet radio.
While in St. John's we provided support for the Conservation Corps Newfoundland and Labrador Youth, the Environment and the Economy workshops.
Webcam stills from the YEE event.
YEE Chat Board
The fourth Youth, the Environment and the Economy conference took off in Stephenville on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, 2000. Check out the event and the chat board.The Ryakuga video on the 1998 youth conference in Stephenville is called - Youth, the Environment and the Economy: A Recipe. The intended audience for the video is quite simply people who intend to facilitate similar participatory youth conferences. The video is online at the Grenfell server. At the 1999 conference youth reporters took to the streets to discuss environmental issues and sustainable communities. This year 2000 event also included a meeting of Sharing Our Future facilitators; the Community Youth Network and a Zone 9 community television public consultation.
After the workshop preceding the youth conference, the Long Range Regional Economic Development Board kicked off Sharing Our Future in the Stephenville area with a televised annual general meeting and panel discussions of local economic issues. The board will be sponsoring a series of FM Radio Simulcast meetings.
Notice from Newfoundland Environmentalists:
Fortis Inc., a Newfoundland company, intends to build a hydroelectric dam on
the Macal River, Belize, in Central America. The dam will disturb and
destroy habitat for Scarlet Macaw, the jaguar
and the tapir.
Click here to read more about this issue and get your free Scarlet Macaw poster/petition.
Pennies for Parrots is just for kids who care about the environment. Check it out.
If you want to try out Ryakuga's QuickTime video, get your free Quicktime 6 player by clicking on the logo. Then, if you have a 100 kps plus connection (ADSL, cable or LAN) to the internet, check out Save the Scarlet Macaw - a video about why we should stop the Challilo Dam.
In the summer of 2000 the youth of Harbour Deep videotaped the annual meeting of the Newfoundland and Labrador Environmental Network. Ryakuga worked with NLEN members on a Newfoundland Sustainable Communities website. The interesting point, of course, is that in 2002 the provincial government paid the people of Harbour Deep to leave their village. Retro policy or dangerous precedent?
In February and August 2001, Ryakuga participated in planning sessions for the 2002 global community networking conference in Montreal. In November, 2000, Ryakuga attended the First Global Congress on Community Networking in Barcelona, Spain. We also presented on the evolution of participatory communications (including Sharing Our Future's use of internet technology) during Alain Ambrosi's workshop on Community New Media: Experiences in Linking Radio, TV and the Internet. Much of the spirit of the event was summed up in the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Radado (?) of Seville - as quoted by Daniel Pimienta - Caminande, no hay camino, camino al andar.
Ryakuga has been a participant in the American (Central Appalachian) Festival Project. We learned a lot. Particularly memorable is the work of the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and the Community Media Initiative. Our experience also provided reaffirmation of the power and eloquence of ordinary people when talking about local important issues. Download a free Real Audio/Video player from the links on this page and click here to listen to the Cordia radio program made by youth and artists for WMMT. Nick Paget-Clark, publisher of InMotion, interviewed artists and Fred Campbell of Ryakuga.
The Appalachian Media Institute summer program produced some great videos including Higher Ground; Youth Activism in the Mountains. This is also a Real Video on the internet. Finally there's a website and discussion board for the artists, Lotts Creek Community School students and the communities.
WMMT and the Community Media Initiative have collaborated on a Prison Holiday Show which, with its simultaneous FM broadcast, internet radio and 800 call-in number, models much of what we focused on in rural Newfoundland. The show was still on the go in December, 2002.
Ryakuga collaborated on the Communities In Schools Newfoundland Learning Guides. Also The Community Education Network, The Brother T. I. Murphy Centre and Ryakuga collabprated on a manual entitled - Coalition Building for a Community Youth Network: Support Models for Healthy Youth Development. We hope to have the manual available on a website and CD.
(The prototype CIS guide is available on the web (but not the final version yet).) The sponsor is the Community Education Initiative and Ryakuga coordinated a participatory evaluation process of the program. Together we all worked on the participatory evaluation process - Sharing Our Voices - which is building tools to facilitate this program as well as help others who want to do something similar in their community. This is the fifth year of the Newfoundland program which has been on the go in Stephenville, Ramea, Port aux Basques, St. Georges, Stephenville Crossing, Codroy Valley, McKay's, La Grand' Terre, Cap-St. Georges, Piccadilly, Lourdes, Isle aux Morts and Burgeo. The prototype of tools is designed to strengthen the Newfoundland program and replicate the process in other areas of Atlantic Canada. The kit also includes a CD-ROM and web site.
The Community Education Network (formerly the Port au Port Community Education Initiative, presented at the Canadian Association of Community Education national conferences in Halifax, 1998 and in Rocky Harbour, 1999. Ryakuga assisted with both presentation and in Rocky Harbour worked with a great group of local youth in demonstrating community television as a capacity building tool. Ryakuga also participated in the 2000 presentation at Concordia University. The Stephenville broadcast component of that presentation is now available as a QuickTime radio program.
The Centre for Literacy, Montreal, published an article from Ryakuga which describes the participatory communication focus of the Community Education Initiative. If you are linking to this site from the article, you might be interested in our guide to Community Television. One small explanation, however, in 1996 we presented to the Videazimut conference at the Cajamar Institute near Sao Paulo. The late Paulo Friere was president of the institute, which is a school for workers.
The Challenge video - an hour long documentary - aired nationally on Vision TV twice last year. If you would like to see the program aired on your local cable station, contact Chris Bowers at College of the North Atlantic in Stephenville, Newfoundland.
The documentary is about the challenges faced by Jamaican and Canadian youth as they encounter the realities of intercultural exchange. For us, the story began in the summer of 1998 in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia and in the hills of Trelawney, Jamaica. The video is directed by Tim Knight.
The 1999 participants in Stephenville made a video which included clips from their cultural show. We included clips from this video in the documentary.
