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Local content creation: some experiences
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Savithri Subramanian
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Seema B. Nair
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Sarita Sharma
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Budikote and Seelampur initiatives reveal that local content has to be complemented by attractive packaging and by making the communication mediums accessible to the target communities. Both these initiatives transpose women from the periphery of community discourse into the centre, changing community traditions and dynamics.
Introduction
Much sociological and anthropological research has taken place on the knowledge systems of different cultures. These systems are not static, frozen stories that reflect a past situation. On the contrary, they are part of a dynamic discourse, a lively commentary on the society, on roles and relationships, on ongoing changes and conflicts and so on (Raheja and Gold, 1994). In this way, understanding oral traditions can be of great use in understanding a society and its norms and practices. Communicating through the metaphors available in local knowledge helps in initiating e debates around many social issues.
This article has looked into two such examples of local content creation in community media interventions. The case studies discussed in this paper, are experiences in local content creation that emerged from a UNESCO programme on ICTs for poverty reduction. It looks closely at two initiatives one of a community radio and the other of a community ICT centre. Depending on the socio-cultural context and needs of the community the development of content was quite different in the two.
Content: what and how is it decided?
Budikote
The cable FM radio Namma Dhwani is located in the Budikote village in Kolar district of Karnataka in southern India. The population of the village is
about 4000 and it is 14 kms away from the nearest town. There were two main reasons for initiating community radio here. Firstly, there is strong evidence of the irrelevance of available media due to issues of context and language recognised through the work done earlier by the partner organisations, VOICES and MYRADA. Secondly, the aim is to reach the poor and marginalised women who are now at the peripheries of information channels.
From the management and staff, to content development, Namma Dhwani is a community effort and responsive to the needs of the community. Table 1 shows the kinds of programmes made in Namma Dhwani from July 2003 respectively. The programme schedule is made only after much discussion with women and other community groups. As is the case with the mass media, out of all the available programmes, the live programmes were the most popular ones, especially the ones that included audience requests and feedback letters.
Ideas for the programmes mostly emerge from meetings involving staff and volunteers. After a discussion on the programmes broadcast in the past week and the responses that were generated by them; the team plans for the present week. The tasks are divided amongst the staff. Until now, the male staff has mostly made programmes on government departments, hospitals, and official concerns, while the women staff recorded more colloquial programmes.
Feedback on the programmes is collected regularly. One feedback mechanism is the interaction between the audience and the Namma Dhwani staff and volunteers. This interaction is also the source of new programme ideas. There is also a formal feedback questionnaire administered periodically. Typically the questions that are asked are do you listen to Namma Dhwani?, what do you like/what dont you like?, what kind of information do you want? The typical response is the programming is nice; I want information on health, education and agriculture. Table 2 presents an analysis of the 281 letters that came from April 2003-March 2004. Better correspondence between peoples feedback and programming content is being worked at.
Local content in Namma Dhwani is also intricately linked to local participation, necessary for social sustainability of the project. In Namma Dhwani, the community is encouraged to take time to have their own shows depending on their own interest. Be it folk music or home medicine, both very popular segments, this kind of local participation leading to content development ensures programming sustainability too.
Gradually, people in the village have begun to articulate their information needs in ways that the programming can respond to. They have also demonstrated an appreciation for the community radio. An important reason behind this is that the content is local and relates to their needs and interests.
Seethamma, 35, is a member of Deepa Self Help Group and Management Committee of Namma Dhwani. She keeps a logbook on all the programmes that Namma Dhwani cablecasts. She says, I am an illiterate and knew nothing before I attended the MYRADA (local partner organisation) trainings. Today, I can write my name and also calculate SHG (self-help group) accounts. It is skills like these that have helped us women gain some modicum of independence. I think Namma Dhwani is an opportunity for all the people in the village to develop their personalities. Why watch serials and cinema songs when we can listen to our own songs and programmes?
Seelampur
Seelampur is located in northeast Delhi, about 20 kilometres from the centre of the city. Seelampur- Zaffrabad is a slum cluster with a Muslim population
of over 98 per cent. They are predominantly Urdu and Hindustani (combination of Urdu and Hindi) speaking. The area has a high-density of population and family incomes are low. Datamation Foundations initial work in the area has helped in initiating an ICT centre here. The centre was set up at the Babool Uloom Madrasa which is a philanthropic institution and a place for Quranic learning.
This community has inherited a rich cultural heritage and some oral socio-cultural traditions of singing are quite popular. Some of the oral forms are Naat (solo vocal rendition usually both by men and women without any instrumental accompaniment in honour of the Prophet); Qawwali (group religious choir singing by men and women at the dargah, the burial place of
prophets and saints accompanied with musical instruments); Ghazal (soulful poetry on love, beauty, togetherness and separationusually very romantic; sung by both men and women with minimal musical instrument accompaniment); Sher-o-Shairi (Urdu stanzas on nature, love, socio-economic and cultural context); Natak (play enacted by both men as well as women).
Women in this area face severe restrictions on their physical mobility, interactions and self-expression. But as said above, there are all these oral traditions in which generally women are well endowed. They are also very skilled in handwork and often extensively support the small businesses, run by the men in the households. With this initiative, the attempt is to develop in them a feeling of independence and self-sufficiency based on skills that they have possessed for long.
The local women often share in their interviews, their desire and enthusiasm in handling equipments and gaining command over ICT skills. Some of them consult their teachers and family members before recording. They have gradually integrated the oral traditional renditions into the programmes that are created for the centre. The women prefer to create the content themselves, without any supervision from the Centre Manager.
It was observed that little girls were also keen to acquire certain vocational skills while learning to handle computers. To fulfill this need, Datamation developed in-house CD based vocational skill learning packages and the participants have been actively involved in the process. The packages, with a voice-over option in both English and Hindi, include henna application and
designs, making of soft toys and rag dolls, tailoring etc. Based on their traditional skills (such as handicrafts) many new avenues are being explored to provide these girls with a means for generating independent income. Many of the girls have expressed a desire to find an independent source of income and to be able to support their families financially after coming to the centre.
Salma, a young girl who came to attend computer classes and later became the tailoring instructor at the centre says, I cant express in words the dignity that my work at this centre has given me. I came here to learn computers but realised that my tailoring and design knowledge could also be put to use. So, I became a instructor here and I now earn money to support my family.
The women attending the centre have participated in making the CDs in many different ways in conceptualisation, developing the actual content and also voice recording and preparing visuals.
The instructor for tailoring and embroidery recounts her experience, The number of students in my class keeps growing. It is difficult to instruct each one of them individually. Then, we came up with a novel idea. All my designs and instructions were copied into a CD. This CD is used by students today according to their convienence. They come to me only when they need some clarification. This has not only made things easier for me but has made my students think of the possibility of using ICTs to support their tailoring-embroidery work in future too.
A number of new ideas have been tried out at Seelampur. A young woman who had come to attend the computer classes took the initiative to start training classes for other women at the centre on Zardozi, a specialised form of embroidery done on costumes, wall hangings and so on using gold thread, stones and other embellishments. Other means for creating livelihood are being tried out constantly aggregating the knowledge and capacities of the inhabitants of Seelampur.
Savithri table 1
Table 1:
Content-wise break up of programmes
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Content-wise
Break up of Programmes
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| Content of programmes |
Number
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| Songs |
150
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| Education |
97 |
| Health |
72 |
| Entertainment |
47 |
| Agriculture |
45 |
| Law and governance |
35 |
| Others |
33 |
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Indigenous
Medicine
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28
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| Women |
26
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Savithri table 2
Table 2: A break-up
of topics of feedback letters
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| A
Break-Up Of Topics Of Feedback Letters |
| Topics |
Number of letters |
| Cinema music |
75 |
Poems
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63 |
| Local Music |
53 |
| Health |
42 |
| Criticism |
38 |
| Problem-sharing |
35 |
| Home Remedies |
18 |
| Namma Dhwani good will |
13 |
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Environment
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12 |
| Education |
9 |
| Law |
9 |
| Agriculture |
6 |
Concluding observations
Each of the two initiatives have progressed in dissimilar manners, not just because of the differences in the technologies employed, viz. radio and computers, but also because of the varying socio-economic and cultural contexts. Developing and sustaining community participation in each of these has been less of a challenge than initially anticipated primarily because of the responsiveness of the content to the needs of the community/main participating group. These initiatives also reveal that local content has to be complemented by attractive packaging and by making the communication mediums accessible to the target communities. Both these initiatives transpose women from the periphery of community discourse into the centre, changing community traditions and dynamics. The impact of such changes will continue to show many years into the future.
Building upon local traditions and knowledge has helped in increasing the popularity of these interventions and thus creating the possibility of their sustainability. Further, by using already available local knowledge resources, the interventions have also inculcated a sense of ownership amongst the community towards these initiatives.
References
Raheja, G. Gloria and A. G. Gold. (1994). Listen to the Herons Words. Reimagining Kinship and Gender in north India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Authors:
Savithri Subramanian is a research coordinator at UNESCO, India.
Seema B Nair used to work as project co-ordinator/ researcher of Namma Dhwani, VOICES, India.
Sarita Sharma is the action researcher and coordinator for the ICT initiative at Seelampur of the Datamation Foundation, New Delhi.
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