Editorial Article on Guelph Seminar of the Glocal Classroom

The Editorial article by Professor Oscar Hemer is a reflection of his experience at the May 22-23, 2014 Guelph Seminar of the Glocal Classroom and our experience after this event at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presentation in Fergus, Ontario on May 25th.

EXTRACT from Oscar Hemer's Editorial "Canadian Divides":

My visit to Fergus was the conclusion of a two-day ComDev seminar at the University of Guelph, organized by Helen Hambly Odame as part of the Glocal Classroom project (of which more in a special issue of  Glocal Times to be published in 2015). The seminar’s theme was Communication for Environmental and Social Change, with the focus specifically on rural and remote areas – which in Canada comprise the large part of the land. Two out of five households have no access to the Internet in a country where most of the huge territory lies beyond “the last mile” of telecommunications. These areas also happen to be where most of the Aboriginal population lives.

The dual image of urban cosmopolitan affluence on the one hand, and rural isolation and poverty on the other, is truly striking. Yet, the urban-rural divide is a misleading dichotomy, and to override it is a prime concern for ComDev academics and practitioners in Canada, as demonstrated by many of the participatory communication projects presented at the seminar. Michael Gurstein, editor of Journal of Community Informatics talked of the importance of re-appropriation, to turn the perspective around to the user’s perspective, as in the First Mile project which reverses the metaphor of “the last mile”. From the user’s point of view it is of course the first mile. The latest issue of the Journal is dedicated to this project which, in contrast to an industry driven solely by technology itself and the prospects for profit, tries to articulate user-defined needs.

Another striking feature is the prominence of community radio, as in the Ryakuga project, and participatory video, as in the work of film-makers Reena Kukreja and Shirley Thompson.

Community development by means of participatory video – and the emerging new genre “interactive web documentary” – will be one of the themes of the upcoming Voice and Matter Festival to be held in Roskilde and Malmö in September2014. They are also in focus in this issue of Glocal Times, the 20th since the journal started (as a webmag) in 2005.

For more information please contact Helen Hambly Odame at hhambly@uoguelph.ca.