In case you missed the conversation last week with ACM members about concerns about re-opening and challenges of operating under Covid-19,
here’s a link to the video. Feel free to share it with your staff and board as you are thinking about re-opening.
Here’s a list of topics that came up in conversation:
· How to edit at home and navigate software licenses
· Navigating complexities of health protocol when opening up
· Employee health and safety
· Navigating major digital divide issues
· Taking training courses - OSHA and infection tracing
· Legal liability of operating a potential health hazard space
· Monitoring what libraries, museums and community centers are doing
· Challenge of expectations of services that can be provided
· Figuring out teaching online courses
· “Blended” internship experiences
· Zoom meetings with producers and community engagement
· Longer equipment check-out & return periods
· Questions about how we handle summer camps
· Questions about how we handle graduations?
· How we don’t lose “Personal touch and community culture”
· How are we leveraging PEG resources to support others who don’t have as stable revenues?
· How do we do work during this moment to accentuate community access media’s value in communities?
Several organizations are compiling guidelines for their re-opening, and ACM will try to collect and compile what we can in the coming weeks. Please share your ideas and approaches and questions to other members on the ACM Listserv! And if you are NOT on the Listserv, please sign up (or sign up your staff and Board if you are an Organization Member).
Antoine Haywood
And speaking of Antoine Haywood, he will begin a summer internship at ACM in June helping us survey the country in an Access Count that will document where PEG community media exists across the US.
We’ll be partnering with organizations across the country to try reach channels that may not have relationships with ACM, and will be publishing results in the Fall in a new Community Media Directory. You can see a preview of how the work will look here.
Hometown Award Winners
If you are a Hometown Award winner, be on the lookout for a press kit coming out this week to help you publicize your award. Announcements are embargoed until Monday, June 1, but we want to make sure you tell the world about your success and publicize the HMAs! Stay tuned!
Mike Wassenaar
President & CEO
The Alliance for Community Media