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It already feels like Autumn-Winter with wet, white skies and wind; back to school weather. At Athena Media we’ve just finished our report on the economic landscape of broadcasting for the BAI which dominated the Summer months and we’re beginning to face the long haul into our documentary edits. Our series on An Opera for Carlow is going out every month on In Tempo, on RTÉ Lyric fm, with episode 3 due up later this month. But if you missed them live you can catch them on the podcasts (just check out the news story on www.athenamedia.ie and it brings you directly to the podcasts). We’ve been using audioboo quite a bit this Summer and love it as a tool. We’ve also been introducing friends, colleagues and associates to it as its an easy to use audioblogging tool which has an iPhone app. We’re planning another podcasting workshop day in early October (October 1st in fact) so Niall or Linda have all the details on 01 4885851. We’ve been impressed with the growing interest in online content and podcasting and its great to see so much happening on this front in Ireland.
We’ve also been volunteering with Fighting Words, the creative writing centre near Croke Park, and we’d encourage anyone to have a look and check it out on www.fightingwords.ie. Its an amazing initiative, started by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love, and we’re looking forward to being there for Culture Night on September 24th.
Other extra-curricular activities include helping some of the Your Country Your Call proposals which have been short-listed and we’re delighted to see the two people we mentored, Peter Kavanagh (solar energy and windfarms) and Neil Leyden (the media hub) are both in the final five. There are two final winners and we really hope both Peter and Neil can make it as they are strong and inspiring ideas.
For September I’d love to draw your attention to two things happening which have nothing to do with us but which we think are worth the journey. One is Ross Whittaker’s documentary ‘Blind man walking’ about our friend and colleague Mark Pollock, which goes out on RTE TV tonight Monday September 6th (please watch if you can) and secondly Pauline Bewick’s exhibition - Bewick at 75 - which is in the Taylor Gallery in Dublin. Pauline who celebrated her 75th birthday on Sept 4th is an amazing and inspiring woman whose work and life is packed with colour, energy and beauty. Again don’t pass through Dublin without checking it out. Its free to see her lovely work and she is giving a public lecture on the morning of the 18th.
So inspiring content to get your Autumn into gear and add to the list another one from us - Home Grown, our series presented and produced by Ella McSweeney on Today with PK every Tuesday morning thorughout September.

Amazing to re-visit Berlin twenty years after unification in October 1990. Then we were a group of young journalists from all around the world sharing one year together on the Journalist in Europe programme (now sadly gone). We were based in Paris for one glorious year and our first group venture together was to Berlin to experience the political and social story just twelve months after the wall came down and to coincide with the unification ceremony at the Reichstag. Now we returned as just two of that group, Pia Diaz from Chile and myself, to see what twenty years had achieved. Then some people talked about the possibility that Berlin would once again become the major city in Europe, would re-gain its status at the political capital of Germany and could potentially be one of the most dynamic cities in the world. It seems difficult to imagine as we, like others, chipped away at the huge chunks of wall that still divided the city and walked through empty, no-man’s land between east and west Berlin. Today the city is a mix of the most creative elements of new architecture in Potsdam Plaza and the re-invention of the old glory of Berlin in Museum Island. The once empty wastelands beyond the Brandenburg Gate have become tourist attractions with more museums on offer (including one very strange one for the old DDR) than any city visit can accommodate. But more significantly the dynamic energy of the city is real with thousands of young people from across the world coming to it to live and experience Europe in a way that Paris used to appeal. Berlin seems more cosmopolitan, more open, more relaxed than either London or Paris. In old east Berlin the once Jewish quarter has been re-built but with respect to its tragic past and while Berliners will still say the old lines of division exist, in that east Berliners stay east and west stay west, now it seems more a concept of habit than anything else.
The canal and river Spree bridges tour is three hours long but a view of Berlin from the water is vital as you get a sense of the weaving past and present; the divisions and aspirations of the city. And the new Norman Foster designed Reichstag tower captures beautiful the old and new. A transparent democracy is what they say it symbolises; this parliament with a glass tower roof that people can wall through and see power in action.

It seems we’re so busy rushing into life we sometimes forget the things we knew for sure as a small child. Like our complete confidence in capturing the heat of a summer flower with a pencil and crayons. Just up the hills from Kilorglin in Co Kerry, in the idyllic setting of Carragh Lake and mountains, Pauline Bewick, one of Ireland’s most loved artists, lives amid a cluster of flowers and artist studios. Her life’s work is exhibited in the Seven Ages collection currently in Kilorglin Civic Offices and Library. Her drawings from childhood mark her seven decades and show her rich, instinctive talent flourish through the years and works like a visual autobiography. She is one of the most alive and youthful people about and now in her 75 years she still works daily and has a new exhibition due shortly which will showcase some of her recent work from China. In this week with the Irish Times marking the contribution of women in Ireland lets celebrate women like Pauline who have followed their dream, their art, their passion and made a profound difference in their world and ensured that women’s voices, stories and lives are now part of the fabric of our culture and social life. Anyone in Kilorglin or Waterford can visit Seven Ages and trace Pauline’s incredible life story. And watch out for the new collection which promises a whole new phase in the Bewick visual narrative and style to inspire and provoke.

It has been an incredible few days. A volcano closes our skies and forces us to sit back and consider some of the assumptions we base our busy, scheduled lives upon and then in true human nature within 24 hours of airplanes being back in the skies we seem to have forgotten it all and erased that moment of pause from our minds. In the rush to get back to normal (which everyone wants, particularly the airlines) perhaps there are a couple of things we can take with us from that force of nature. In many ways the events of ash week underscores one of the fundamental truths of our human lives - the need to be flexible, adapt and change, in order to survive. We go through live denying our fragility in the hope that if we deny it we may be safe. Yet embracing our fragility and the inherent fluidity of everything around us is at the basis of resilience. Our world is not permanent, our lives are mere moments in the arc of nature and we are not always in control. News reporters (like RTÉ special correspondent) describing passengers as experiencing ‘a long ordeal of hell’ after just three days waiting for a flight out of New York airport seem not just to lack any sense of perspective but equally any sense of man’s relationship to the world. The ‘trauma’ of western passengers waiting for flights in cities like Rome, Barcelona and New York, filled our TV and radio programmes while the stories of developing world farmers who had to destroy their crops, unable to get them into European markets, was less interesting.
Hell is relative. We had flights to Krakow booked for some months on Friday just as the airlines were getting back to normal. Once the flight was confirmed we decided to go. The visit was a chance to re-connect with friends who had been history students in UCD many years ago and make a visit to one of the most dramatic places of human history, the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Krakow was itself in deep national mourning after the funeral of the President and his wife, killed in the plane crash on route to honour another national tragedy the massacre of over 10,000 Polish soldiers by the Soivets during WW2. At Auschwitz nothing you know from history can really prepare you for the sense of horror at the reality and scale, the minute detail, of the Nazi’s genocide. All the techniques of master project management, business efficiency and cost effectiveness turned to the use of human beings as tortured slaves in a vast war machine. Yet that extremity is part of mankind and we distance ourselves from understanding it at the peril of repeating it. Leaving the camp I bought and began re-reading Primo Levi’s account of life there ‘If this is a man’. The Italian chemist was one of just three Italians to survive the camp and his insight into his year there, and how both inmates and captors adapted to the camp, is enlightening.
But why do I connect the two events? Because sometimes planes, and the ease and rapidity of our modern world can make us feel very distant from our past. A hundred years can seem a long time to everyone except a volcano. Yet Auschwitz is a mere generation away. For most of us its our parents or grandparents time. We know the failure to know history is to living through it again and Levi reminds us that the impulse that drove Auschwitz is the same one which on a small more personal scale drives all hatred of ‘the other’ and in Ireland has recently lead to the death of two Polish workers and a young Irish-Nigerian man. Xenophobia, racism, homophobia - all those ways we categorise people who are ‘not us’ is the beginning of our nature which created in its extremity Auschwitz and all the other camps of destruction both then and now across the world.
The planes are flying again, the airlines are rushing us all to forget the strange week when we were still, and yet maybe we should cherish the moment, the pause and let it remind us of where we come from, who we are and just where we are all rushing to in such a hurry.
The volcano exposed how little we know about our world. It challenged us to discover more, to be open to learning and to learn from our past. After all if we had we would have expected the eruptions and been prepared. We now know, for sure, it will happen again, in our lifetimes and in those of the next generation to come. In a sense Auschwitz challenges us as well. It challenges us to see ourselves in it and to learn from it and the misery it presents. If we don’t, if we see it only as the product of one people, one time, we risk inflicting it again, suffering it again, as either the torturers or the victims. We can be both, we can be either. The question is what have we learnt? What do we carry into our future?

Just back from the EBU’s Multimedia Meets Radio in Hilversum which was fascinating on lots of front - including the Sound and Vision building where it was located. Its the national audio visual digital broadcasting archive where decades of Dutch radio and television output is digitised, stored and used. A wonderful public interpretative centre, especially engaging for children, is part of the multicoloured cube building and its frankly something which we in Ireland can only look at in envy.

We were there facilitating the podcasting workshop and showcasing our www.joycesdublin.ie project as well as chairing a discussion with the Apple podcasting team who (because of somewhat restrictive guidelines in Apple) only wanted to be know as ‘Pete’ and ‘James’. Both lovely American guys with proud Irish roots although Pete did get a reaction and causes a lot of tweets when he answered one question about iTunes, podcasting and the future by simply saying ‘we can’t talk about the future. period.’. While Apple were not talking too much about the future many others were including Mark Friend of BBC Interactive who showed us the soon to be released (coming by the end of this year) BBC Radio Player which will allow users to play all forms of radio both public and commercial with added digital extras. One of the most popular presentations was that of Mark Rock of www.audioboo.com which is a simple to use audio-blogging tool which ironically grew from the failed Channel 4 Digital Radio initiative. We loved audioboo and can’t wait to use it in our work and to share it with those who find creating RSS feeds just a little bit too techy. The BBC is using audioboo in promotions and blogs and its rapidly growing across the world. One of the hilarious asides of this seminar was the use of twitter on screen during the two days of workshops. Its quite disconcerting to present to 150 people and see most of them have their heads down furiously tweeting on their iphones or laptops and then seeing a parallel conversation emerge on the twitter screen about your presentation! Many of the conversations, points and twitpics are online under the twitter hash-tag #mmr10 if you want to re-visit the sessions and find out what people were saying and sharing. Or visit the EBU site www.multimediameetsradio.ebu.ch which has trapped all information relating to the event including participants.

So what is the future of radio? Visual, mobile, on-demand, multi-platform and multi-media but retaining its personal, emotion heart which works so well with social networking and social media. One of the key learning curves on the final day was the use of applications via iphones, mobile hand-sets and social media to facilitate radio’s future. Radio’s future is ubiquitous, flowing into every part of the digital landscape and remaining close to users by increasingly opening up interactivity to content-creation. The loser in the digital landscape is DAB which hardly got a mention during the seminar and workshops and indeed the BBC has just announced the closure of two of its DAB Radio family, BBC Radio 6 and Asian Network. The good news from the BBC’s message was that the money stays in digital but will be focussed, supporting the extended digital life of the main radio family rather than growing the empire of stations available from the BBC. The problem, according to Mark Friend, is that digital has moved too slow and the demands of both a terrestrial and online expansion are hurting the industry. The answer, he says, is not to stop or make a choice but to move faster and focus the offerings.

We were in London on Friday for the BBC Radio 4 producers briefing. Its a big annual event intended to brief internal and independent producers on the commissioning needs and briefs for BBC Radio 4. Its always interesting and gives an insight into how the station and indeed BBC Radio is thinking. The audience figures for BBC Radio 4 have been growing in recent survey from RAJAR (the radio listening data resource) and the station has about 10 million listeners. Audiences for speech radio in UK, Ireland and US has clearly grown in the past year and a half with some attributing it the financial crash and gobal recession. Bad news, whether its 9/11, Iraq invasion or Lehman Brothers, makes us want to know more and understand more.
Its interesting the briefing happened on the same day the Times of London front page was running with the BBC internal review which threatens to close two BBC digital stations, BBC Radio 6 and the Asian Network as well as cut web staff by 25% and close online and digital projects like JAM aimed at young people. Strange you may think since the buzz everywhere else is how broadcasters get half as good at digital as the BBC. But the decisions seem less about the performances of these projects, or even about the future needs of broadcasting and audiences, but more about matching the BBC to the public debate on the public broadcaster’s ‘mission’ and ’scale’. With traditional media companies, in newspapers and radio, suffering badly during this recession the BBC feels the need to stand back from openly commercial or digital projects. Many feel it is part of an internal preparation for the return to power of the Conservatives in the coming elections in that the Torys may feel cutting the BBC down to size is an easy first year target. The BBC is big - over 23,000 staff - and it has massive resources but its impact and strength affects broadcasters far beyond the UK. A strong BBC has always been seen as key for the security of very small public broadcasters like RTE or YLE in Finland. The challenge the BBC faces is less about public appreciation (it is higher than it has been in a decade) or audiences (which are high) but about the growing debate on the role of public broadcasting in the digital sphere. In a sense the BBC’s problem, if it can be a problem, is its success and size.
One would think the issue is cleaner for the BBC since it takes no advertisement, unlike RTE, and therefore is not pulling revenue away from commercial broadcasters and newspapers but the challenge now is that the level of high quality free content that the BBC supplies on the Internet is seen as reducing the competitiveness of commercial players. One would hope that the thinking on the digital channels is open to discussion since both BBC Radio 6 and Asian Network have loyal and commitment audiences and have both proven the need for niche radio offerings and have been key to the strength of the UK digital radio market. It is far from clear that commercial players will provide either channel given the evidence of what is currently available. The decision to stop projects which have taken over a decade to develop and grow will be devastating for those involved but equally for the audiences who now support them. Its one thing to look at the cost of production and the match to mission. It is another to cut off projects which can grow the future of the BBC and indeed, through leadership, the future of all public broadcasters. BBC 6, JAM and Blast are all aimed at the next generation of BBC supporters. Its seems a shame that they are they ones to be targetted and strange that BBC Radio 2 is one of the few stations globally being told to recruit older listeners, 60+, and add more speech to what has always been one of the BBC’s most successful and most loved radio stations.
For BBC Radio 4 there is some fear about the move to add more speech to Radio 2 and how it can affect its remit and audience. Ironically they key concern flagged by commissioners is the obvious one facing the UK this year and its the coming elections and the potential of a major shift in both policy and public thinking. Its a concern in that they want us as programme makers to pitch for programmes for 2011 but none of us know the political framework of the world and society we will be operating in within the UK. Not a big issue for programme makers as we’re used to that process but for the UK which has been in Labour administrations since 1997 the potential shift in power and politics will be significant. For the coming period the big theme is the London Olympics in 2012 and it may surprise some to know that BBC Radio 4 is the most popular station in London. A major London season is planned to celebrate one of the world’s great cities. Although we have to say, while we love London, the city is suffering from one of the worst service attitudes we’ve seen in any major city in recent years. Poor service, unqualified staff, often with no English or knowledge of the place they are working, met us at every location we visited and stayed in across several days. Maybe the London season needs to reflect that as well as all the capital’s glories, history and character. London for all its joys has lost a sense of identity and even pride.

We’ve been shooting on our documentary My Private Everest, the life and times of explorer Pat Falvey, since January and we’ve just waved farewell and good luck to Pat who has headed off to Yellowknife on the first leg of his trek to the North Pole without the aid of dogs (or 4×4s as per Top Gear!).

Its an amazing journey and it’s been fascinating to watch him and his team prepare for the trek gathering the food and supplies they will need to drag all the way there and equally training to shoot firearms so they are able to defend themselves against an attack by a polar bear. Just before he left we spend a day training with him on Ireland’s highest peak, the beautiful Carrantouhil in Co Kerry, just a stone’s throw from Pat’s own home and base in Beaufort. It was just days after the big thaw and you can still see how icy and snowy it was up hill.

Next stages in our shoot will be to continue filming with Pat’s family and friends in Cork, Kerry and Dublin while Pat himself will be filming along the North Pole trek using his bullet camera strapped to his head like a coal-miner and his own camcorder. We’re filming with the Sony EX1 and enjoying the experience. We’re keep you up to date with progress on the documentary as we go on. Its schedule for Setanta Ireland later this year and is being made through the support of the BAI Sound & Vision Fund.

There’s always something good about February (besides my birthday). The sense that Spring is in the air - or not far off. For us here at Athena Media February 1st, St Brigid’s Day, has come with a sense of a new beginning. We’ve moved once again. Only this time its just around the corridor in 10-13 Thomas St, Dublin 8. More space, light and since we’re at the back we’ve lost the soundtrack of city tours and hospital ambulances. Peace at last. We’re also celebrating our new radio series ‘Field of Dreams’ which goes out on Newstalk in a special broadcast on St Patrick’s Day, March 17th. Its a series telling stories with a sporting angle but with a different twist - like ‘Count Us In’ which is a sports project run by Sport Against Racism in primary schools in Dublin’s inner city to open children’s minds and bodies to new sports, from badminton to basketball, and to show how sport can unite across all boundaries. There’s also a documentary following the uplifting story of Portumna hurlers, heading for their 3-in-a-row Club Championship. That’s a story of brothers, like Ollie and Joe Canning, but its also how parish pride out-weights anything else and how the Club Championship represents the very best of the GAA tradition and legacy. The third in that series is about competitive sisters like athletes and twins, Rebecca and Charlotte ffrench O Carroll and sisters Annalise and Claudine Murphy, who are both laser sailors. Its great a series which showcases inspiring sports stories and people goes out on the national holiday and we hope it will give more people a chance to catch them. (We’ll also release them as podcasts so visit our new blog site www.podcastingireland.ie and you’ll find the podcast there after march 17th).
So besides our Spring move we have also welcomed a new office member, Niall Brew, who joins us on work placement for the next nine months. Niall’s a rugby man from St Mary’s with a ton of interests so expect to see his name around our projects across the year. We’ve been busy in January shooting in Kerry with Pat Falvey who heads off shortly for his trek to the North Pole so we’ll be following his progress and I’m sure he’ll be doing lots of radio updates for shows like Gerry Ryan. Our shoot the other weekend brought us up the highest mountain in Ireland, Carraountouhil, which was amazing and we hope to share some of those shots with you soon.
Back here in Dublin we’ve been busy with our Belmayne project and we’re out there again this week, talking to 4/5 year olds about their world! One of them wants to be the pizza man when he grows up!
So a new month, a hint of Spring, new work in radio coming up and a new person in the centre. What more could we want this early into 2010?
(By the way the podcast download numbers on our www.joycesdublin.ie site are quite incredible - over two thousand in just over a month. Visit and tell us what you think)

Well that will teach us for taking the met office as gospel. We had hoped to get some great snow shots this week for our film documentaries - Belmayne - and Pat Falvey - but sadly by Monday it was all slush and a fading memory of whiteness. We’re back in the swing of things with a bright new year 2010 and hoping to see lots of new projects come on the table. There’s been a wonderful reaction to our Joyce’s Dublin series of audio podcasts (check out www.joycesdublin.ie) and they’re currently running on RTE Choice, Digital Radio (thank you to the Sunday Business Post for a glowing review). We’re nearly finished editing our three part sport series for Newstalk 106, Field of Dreams, and we hope we can give you transmission dates soon for the series. The first in the series is ‘Count Us In’ a lovely documentary following a schools project run by Sport Against Racism Ireland (SARI) which uses sport in primary schools in Dublin’s inner city to help break down barriers of race, gender and class.
We’re busy with a few tenders which have opened up for the New Year and we’re recruiting a new production assistant under the FAS work placement scheme which gives unemployed graduates a chance to get work experience. Its a sign of the times that there has been significant interest in the posting and we’re looking forward to welcome someone new to Athena Media soon. This Friday evening Anita, Barry and myself head down to Kerry to work with Pat Falvey on our biographical documentary. Pat is getting ready to take on his latest challenge and trek to the North Pole with fellow explorer Clare O Leary. Its a pity to have missed the snow……but who knows it could be back yet!
Happy New Year to all our blog readers and we hope its a bright one for all of us.

Its been a roller coaster of a year for most media businesses and lots of people may not survive the long winter as the credit freeze continues. For Athena Media 2009 has been a year with distinct highs and lows and like most of you we’re looking forward to a better one in 2010. A big highlight this year was the completion of our 10 part series on young people and mental health ‘ is it just me?’ which went out Jan-March on RTE 2. The series is now entered into the Celtic Media Awards and IFTN TV awards for next year. The series was launched in January and we’re delighted to see so many of the young people involved in the series doing well and thriving - like Daire, Emma, Tim and Akeem who are now all active in Headstrong - the National Youth Mental Heath Organisation - www.headstrong.ie. A second major highlight was the broadcast of our radio documentary ‘Tower Songs’ on RTE Lyric FM on February 14th. The documentary told the story of a community music project in Ballymun, led by an inspirational teacher Ron Cooney, and featured the voices and work of children and young people in Ballymun who used music to tell the story of urban renewal. The documentary later went on to win gold at the PPI National Radio Awards in October and it’s also entered in the Celtic Media Awards which take places in Northern Ireland next Spring. It’s still available as a podcast on our site www.podcastingireland.ie under Athena Media podcasts in the directory.
Lows, we’d have to say, was the lost of our sponsor 02 for Making Waves - our podcast music channel which we’d been running every week since 2006. Sadly sponsorship of content has been more challenging this year and our music channel was a casualty. But we’re hopefully that the channel and the concept of an online new Irish music channel can be re-born in a better economic climate.
One of the surprises of the year, which has taken us a new documentary route, happened in April when we filmed a short feature for RTE’s Capital D series on a new eco-park along the north coast of Dublin in an area called Belmayne. The park, Fr Collins Park, is a jewel in Dublin City’s crown, but our find on the shoot was a nearby new primary school St Francis of Assisi in Belmayne which started us thinking about a full film documentary around the school. We’ve been filming since Sept 1, on and off, around the school and the area and we hope to create a very special piece for Autumn 2010.
In radio work Spring also brought us to the end of a big four part series we did for Newstalk 106 (under Sound and Vision Funding) called Urban Beauty, Urban Blight which traced the story of our cities and the legacy of urban planning or the lack of it. It was a fascinating project (we learnt a lot!) and brought us the opportunity to meet some interesting people like architect Sean O Laoire.
In May we moved office again - back to Thomas St again and we’re now based in 10-13 the old project office for The Digital Hub. We also launched a new initiative Athena Media Training and from May to December we ran a range of digital media courses and workshops in podcasting (both audio and video) and a very popular Social Media for Business workshop. We’ll be announcing our training schedule for 2010 shortly.
In September We once again worked with the wonderful folk at Women Mean Business and created short videos around this year’s event 02 WMB Awards and Conference. Its our third time to work with the conference and last year we met someone - Pat Falvey - who again triggered a documentary concept which is also (finally) coming to life. Pat is an extraordinary adventurer who has climbed Everest four times (reaching the summit twice) and the only man to have completed the seven summits challenge twice. We’re now working with Pat on a new documentary for Setanta (under Sound and Vision funding) called Pat Falvey; My Private Everest. Pat is currently in Canada training for his North Pole expedition next Spring while we’re beginning to get the project off the ground now that all the (lengthy) paperwork is completed.
We also re-visited another Capital D featured we shoot for Dublin City Council. The dublinwaste.ie initiative was up for a major international award last month and we re-cut a short package to help them tell the story. (You can see it online if you visit www.vimeo.com/athenamedia)
But a real highlight in the last month has been a project we’re just finishing for UCD and its online archive project. Joyce’s Dublin is a multimedia project showcasing the archive resources and for this online project we’ve taken the story of The Dead and shown what the archives can tell us in documents, manuscripts and photographs about Dublin in 1904 and the world that Joyce reflects in The Dead. The project will be online shortly and we’ll keep you posted on it.
So at the end of a challenging year lots to celebrate (and somethings to mourn). But the key is the coming year and all it offers and promises. We hope it will see streams of new work (particularly in the documentaries we’ve mentioned) but also that it will be a year when digital media in Ireland comes centre stage and begins to realise its potential to both enhance our lives, societies and economy.