[New-imc] Online form: Proposed new IMC! (IMC Mediacircus)

[mara at indymedia.be]

Submitted by: Mara Van Riet <mara at indymedia.be> on Tuesday, October 28th, 2003 @ 5:35:41 am (-0800)

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HTTP_USER_AGENT:
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Online Form Fields
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imc_name:
IMC Mediacircus

city:


state:


country:
Belgium

contact_name:
Mara Van Riet

contact_email:
mara at indymedia.be

contact_phone:


tech_name:


tech_email:


tech_phone:


supporting_groups:
All the partners we worked with last year: Rzoezie, Barako, La Braise, Scholierenparlement,Rouge Brique, Centrum West, Soyo-Veto-Anti-oorlogscomite Leuven, Jeugdhuis Meulenberg
and Get Basic, a larger media-education project in development.



issue_focus:
yes

critical_dates:
December 2003

resources:
Last year, we received some funding to organise the workshops. With this money, we were able to buy material we still use and share with indymedia.be ( EMAC multimedia – computer, a digital camera etc.) The most important resources are the skills we have to organise this workshops and to give education.We are hosted on the belgium indymedia website.


outreach:
We already are active since December 2002. We work with the contacts we build last year. We organised 10 workshops and we reached over 100 people. We still receive demands for other workshops, so people tend to contact us.
At the moment we communicate with the email list imc-belgium-circus where 63 people are subscribed, wherefrom the majority are not involved in the other indymedia-belgium lists. In this way the project is a real opening towards other people from outside the normal indymedia network.
On August 18th and on September 23 we held mediacircus meetings to discuss the future of the project. There we decided we want to continue organising workshops and media-education, but want to look for a stronger and more permanent structure.
Also, we decided to continue as an autonomous collective. We still want to continue working with and within indymedia.be, but we consider ourselves as a group with an own dynamic and goals.
This was also discussed on the General Meeting of Indymedia Belgium of September 5. We think it’s very important to share all the knowledge the different indymedia have in organising these media-workshops.
At the moment, we also organise Indymedia ateliers for people wanting to collaborate with indymedia (4 workshops from now untill january).  
We are using flyers/posters we made last year. We still have a lot left.
We contacted media-schools and are planning to organise workshops or debate with some of this schools.


introductory_statement:
In Belgium, there is a tendency towards decentralising the IMC landscape.
The mediacircus collective see this not only possible on a regional level, but also on an theme/issue level.
The mediacircus is a real existing collective working in collaboration with indymedia.be, some regional initiatives (indymedia wvl) and other projects and organisations within Belgium.
We feel there is a need for a better structure and follow up to continue these workshops. The other indymedias are focused on `making media` and it’s difficult to combine this with sharing knowledge and the organisation of workshops.
Mediacircus wants to focus on organising workshops and sharing skills for and by different people. There is need for this and we see this also can attract new volunteers for the different indymedias, but this also is very useful for other activist and people that are active in civil society.
We see ourselves as an autonomous collective, but open for collaboration with the now existing indymedia`s in Belgium and a lot of other projects within Belgium (youth, grass root action, education, NGO`s etc).
At the moment we are hosted on the Belgian indymedia website and we think that’s fine. But we want to be recognised as a collective with our own dynamic, within the current Belgian Indymedia.
We have a year of experience and in reality we already are functioning as a collective. We just want it to see it formalised.