Harnessing and Enabling Community Enterprises Orla Flynn Head of CIT Crawford College of Art & Design November 2012

Introduction Help us achieve a best practice! The project will enable digital materials to be accessible to all citizens. Has potential to create new employment opportunities in the region. Specific interest in voluntary, community- based activities in the Cork region.

Community-based Initiatives Engage with and/or utilise audio visual tools; Are typically managed and run by volunteers and community workers; Have some support from City Council; Typically have little engagement with private sector;

Cork Regional Film Archive Established in 2007 as a voluntary organisation for the purpose of providing the citizens of Cork with an archive of the moving image. Grew from the work of a community group which established the Cork Youth International Film, Video and Arts Festival, over 30 years ago, running workshops and classes on film-making for young people.

Cork Regional Film Archive

Challenges Preserve the films made by the participants; Provide a platform for making the materials available to the wider public; Provide links to other organisations such as educational institutions or private companies, to whom such footage would be of interest; Utilise the material to stimulate tourism and international interest in the region.

Objective To digitise and archive the existing film collection and to provide a platform for interacting with the collection.

But … How best to acquire funding to enable this to happen? How best to manage the project? How best to harness the various stakeholders e.g. city council, museums, voluntary sector, educational organisation and private sector to ensure shared vision and delivery? How best to ensure the growth and sustainability of the project?

Cork Northside Folklore Project Grew from designation of Cork as City of Culture 2005 A research project from the Department of Folklore and Heritage at University College Cork Memory Map project – gathering oral testimonies from people about the places in which they lived and grew up.

Cork Northside Folklore Project

Cork Film Festival The 57 th annual Corona Cork Film Festival will be held from November 11 th to 18 th. ( How to link the festival with events in schools and private industries? Development of a fringe festival? Generating start-ups and employment?

Corona Cork Film Festival

Cork Community Television CCTv established in 2007 ( Aim is to enable communities to make, manage and broadcast television programming to reflect the interests, activities and concerns of these communities, in order to effect positive social change. Some funding, but mostly VOLUNTARY!

Cork Community Television

Potential Public engagement from a young age with digital media – and film/video in particular; Easier pathways to third level education in digital media-related areas; Improved job creation/employment possibilities via the creative industries; Sharing rich cultural heritage with visitors to the area.

Challenges and Questions Commercial engagement critical to ensure sustainability. Do these voluntary socially-based activities take place in other regions? How are they funded? How do they interact with each other and with commercial (private) sector?

Return to Core Aims and Objectives Preserve the digital artefacts developed/ gathered/made by the participants, many of whom are voluntary and community-based; Provide a platform for making the artefacts available to the wider public; Provide links to other organisations such as educational institutions or private companies, to whom such artefacts would be of interest; Utilise the artefacts to stimulate tourism and international interest in the region.

Transferability All regions have active communities, with volunteers engaged with social practices through arts, sport etc. In Cork we are particularly interested in hearing how other regions have possibly already harnessed these synergies to good advantage.

THANK YOU!