Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Discussion Notes Part 2: Alyce Myatt

The next panelist is Alyce Myatt (from Baltimore), who has been involved with public service media for many years, especially independant media and arts and their interaction with PBS and other outlets. She brings us back into the realm of the U.S.

She started with a feeling that we're reliving the media arts center movement, as a workforce development strategy. There's an opportunity to recognize that we have patterns in developing interest networks that we should learn from. Alyce started her career in Boston. Her recent work has been with the Center for Digital Democracy - because she says it all comes down to democracy. "We know that media has the power to shape what we think, how we act and how we interact or choose not to interact." So she started her work in creative development, then moved into media funding, but now she's looking at it from a broader perspective. She stressed that it is all about "forming allies" - it's important to work collectively, to ensure that not only media matters but everyone continues to have the opportunity to "make a living." She's been working to "deconstruct the fog" to understand all of the landscape of media making. In particular, she thinks we should all be "taking to the streets" and start with focusing on whether we are able to use the media to understand what's happening in the world.

The Center's recent caucuses all over the country have focused on 1. infrastructure, 2. governance, 3. sustainability, 4. the role of media in society , and 5. movement building. These events strove to incorporate all sorts of voices, like that of June Giovanni (office of communications in the UK).

Alyce also suggested that there are legislative policies and corporate interests that are determining our public media environment. Our citizens have a limited idea of what public media is - it's not just PEG access and PBS, but it also is broadband and wireless access. She ended with the thought that she's been asking a lot of questions without having any answers and she challenged the audience to provide some. She also added that part of the problem is there needs to be support for both production and distribution of media.

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