On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, Cathy Edwards, the executive director of Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS), talks about the work her organization is doing to bring about a new era for community media in Canada.
The members of CACTUS have a vision. It is a vision of community-based and community-controlled media centres in big cities and small towns across the country. These centres would not only give ordinary people access to the airwaves. They would also be hubs for providing infrastucture and training to build capacity in communities around creating all manner of media, including text, audio, and video, and using the entire range of online platforms through which such things get published, circulated, and consumed in the Internet age. They are taking a multi-pronged approach: pushing for regulatory changes, making use of thus-far unused sections of existing regulations, and working to catalyze the development of such centres in the here and now. And they even have a plan for how such community-controlled media infrascture could be sustainably funded. Edwards talks with me about the origins of CACTUS, about the evolving community broadcast media landscape in Canada, and about their plans to ensure that a broad range of ordinary people have access to the means to make all sorts of grassroots media.
To learn more about CACTUS and their work, click here.
Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada. We give you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show in general, visit its website here. You can learn about suggesting topics for future shows here.
Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Sudbury, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.
