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It’s awards season or the Spring/Summer season of award competitions and our radio work is earning its tag as award-winning with a Celtic Media Torc award for our series Winning Women on Irish women competing at London 2012 and we’ve just had the good news that our second series with Newstalk in 2012 ‘Grassroots‘ is a finalist in the prestigious New York Radio Festival. Last year we won Gold in New York for our RTE Radio 1 history series ‘Death of an Empire’ and this year ‘Grassroots’ a BAI Sound & Vision funded series for Newstalk is a finalist in the social issues category. Grassroots is a short form documentary series where reporters Robert Hope and Lisa Essuman travelled the country looking for stories at community level of change and positive engagement. We found some beautiful stories and three of them were entered into the festival from the overall series and these were stories of young people in Limerick, Dublin and Galway finding their voice, confidence and path through fantastic community action projects like Sing Out with Strings in Limerick or Headstrong in Galway.

We’re very honoured to have had the opportunity to have connected with these people and stories and proud that we’ve been able to bring them to an international stage at the global radio festival in New York where we are competing with the best radio in the world from BBC, ABC in Australia and CBS in Canada.

At the Celtic Media Festival Lisa Essuman represented Athena Media and picked up the very heavy and very beautiful Torc award for Winning Women which was a short form series on Newstalk across the Olympics Games London 2012 and the winning entry was our final documentary, a one hour piece, which told the story of the competitors - like Katie Taylor and Aileen Morrison along with their inspiring chef de mission Sonia O Sullivan.

Both our winning series in these two international competitions were funded and supported by the BAI Sound & Vision Scheme and without it we would not have been able to tell their stories or bring Irish voices and talent to this international stage. The Sound & Vision Fund takes 7% of the TV license fee and runs a content fund which both public and commercial broadcasters can use. Effectively much of our documentary-making for people like Newstalk and Setanta Ireland as well as RTE itself is funded, and made possible, by the Sound & Vision Fund. We’re currently producing The Media Show for RTE Radio 1 (which is directly funded by RTE as an independent production) and the Minister Pat Rabbitte recently told the programme that he sees the fund as a vehicle which could increase in funding given its impact in getting public service genre content into the public space.

In our current projects for both radio and television we’re lucky enough to have both radio and television funding for key works including Get Off the Couch - our six part TV series for Setanta Ireland and Citizens: Lockout 1913 for RTE Radio 1. Its extremely tough to make a living as an independent documentary-maker in a small country like Ireland and getting recognition at international awards like the Celtics and New York enables us to continue to work in this field and to tell the stories of change, transformation and positive engagement which inspires us and which we hope inspires you.

Our TV series Get Off the Couch! is in full swing. We’re three weeks in full production and our six participants are busy walking, jogging, running, swimming and cycling getting ready for the challenges and tasks ahead - like climbing Ireland’s highest mountain in May!

It has been an amazing experience - to bring together six strangers who all share a desire to change; to get fit, to become a healthier more active person and then to see what happens. Our group has bonded and tend to help get each other through the day to day chores of changing their habits, eating better foods and dropping the negatives like fizzy drinks, fried foods, takeaways, alcohol and cigarettes. Yet its not all hard work and pain. Its been fun with lots of shared laughs - particularly on the super-treadmills in Sasta Fitness in Carrick on Shannon with Fiona Egan. Its tough to change. Its hard for everyone. To challenge myself and share their experience I’ve stopped drinking alcohol since early February and thus cut our own weakness for a crisp, glass of white wine in the evenings. I’m trying to share the physical challenges so that I’m not asking someone to do something I would not - or could not do myself. I’m not a smoker but I know its a very difficult road to finally getting free of the fags and our two smokers are working with a wonderful cessation counsellor Norma who has spent a lifetime helping smokers to quit. Our team is motivated and lead by Teena Gates who is taking up all the challenges herself and working with the group every day via our closed facebook group sharing tips, stories and experiences. It is early days yet but for us Get Off the Couch! is about change at its most positive sense. Changing every day towards a lifestyle and habit which is not just about getting fit or losing weight but about feeling good about yourself and enjoying each day and life itself to the maximum. That’s what GOTC really means. Live life fully every day.

I’m generally a positive person but January has been (factually) one of the darkest months. Met Office in Ireland say Jan 2013 has been the dullest month since 1964 and it felt like it. Wet, cloudy and grey. And for me it was full of flu bugs and viral infection so I am extremely happy to say goodbye to January and welcome fabulous February. We’ve already had a celebration. Our rock n’roll production coordinator Rob Hope (lead singer with the band Senakah in his other life) is marking a birthday on February 2nd so chocolate cake had to happen today. He shares a birthday with that other famous Irishman James Joyce although he (Rob) plays better guitar.
So what’s the story? Well we’ve been Getting Off the Couch or do all our pre-production on the GOTC series which we’re shooting and producing for broadcast on Setanta Sports and which we’re funding supported by the BAI. Its been a frantically busy month for Rob who has been casting the six participants who will take up the challenge to literally get out and engage with new activities and sports. We’ve just cut a new trail and you can find it on
vimeo here. Our presenter Teena Gates is one active woman taking up new sports every time we meet her but we’re planning to get fully into production by Feb 9th and really start to make pictures.
In the meantime we’re making radio and I’m recording our big history project Citizens: Lockout 1913 which is simply fascinating. I had the chance to meet and interview some great writers and speakers including Ruth Dudley Edwards and Diarmaid Ferriter. And Im also recording for a new science series called Science is Everywhere and popped in to meet composer Daniel Figgis this week at the City Hall project where people make music by literally walking through the City Hall and being read by digital cameras and sound waves.
So from sport to history and science it is a diverse and interesting place and time despite the weather; but already February promises to be both brighter and healthier than its predecessor.

2013. Its not so long ago we made such a fuss over 2000 and here we are 13 years later. What does the year hold for you? We’ve started back into the swing of programme-making and we’re busy with several radio and television projects as well as a new venue and new schedule of workshops under Athena Media Training. We’ve a major history series to mark one hundred years since Lockout 1913 - it goes out on RTE Radio 1 from September and we’ve been recording since last August so quite a big project to trace the roots and impact of the six month labour lockout in Dublin dominated by big personalities like Jim Larkin, James Connolly and William Martin Murphy. In TV we’ve two new projects - Get Off the Couch! with Teena Gates and a new Beyond Limits project - the follow up to our paralympics documentary with Mark Pollock called Beyond Limits - the Next Generation. Both are for Setanta and made with the support of the BAI (thank you BAI and broadcasters involved!).
Our training modules move to a new venue from Jan 21 - the historic Gresham Hotel on O Connell St, Dublin’s main street. All the workshops are morning half days and priced at a modest 100 euro a head and we start with a new offering Linkedin on Jan 21 as we’re increasingly getting more and more inquiries about Linkedin these days. We’ve half day twitter, facebook and online strategy workshops so whatever your digital and social media needs are for 2013 we can help.
Check out the website www.athenamedia.ie for more or our facebook page .
We’re also looking at a range of new radio projects including - hopefully - a return of the RTE Radio 1 Media Show.
One of the things I like about the Get off the Couch! series is that everyone on the team is going to have to get fit themselves to make it - so we’ve a really incentive to get active and outdoors ourselves in 2013. One of the joys (for me) in 2012 was meeting some amazing people - particularly in the Beyond Limits Paralympics project - and working with presenters like Mark Pollock. 2013 promises more of that lightness of spirit through all the broadcast projects on the table but in particular Get off the Couch! and Beyond Limits - the Next Generation.
We’ll keep you up to date - and we’d love to hear your news and stories too. Join us on facebook or twitter.

Our latest project is a new TV series with Teena Gates called Get Off the Couch! Teena is quite an extraordinary person. Just a couple of years ago she was 23 stones and rapidly running out of time. After major health problems she decided it was think to get living ….and started walking, then hiking, then running, kayaking and literally climbing up walls. She is now 11 stone and a fit, strong champion for working yourself back to health by getting off the couch, getting out and enjoying the world around us. The series is for Setanta Sports Ireland and is supported by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. We’re starting to plan and research it now and hope to begin shooting in early 2013. If you are interested in taking part (we’re looking for six unfit and passive people who are willing to give it a go and take up Teena’s challenge). Check out our facebook page and the promo video.

Our latest project is a new TV series with Teena Gates called Get Off the Couch! Teena is quite an extraordinary person. Just a couple of years ago she was 23 stones and rapidly running out of time. After major health problems she decided it was think to get living ….and started walking, then hiking, then running, kayaking and literally climbing up walls. She is now 11 stone and a fit, strong champion for working yourself back to health by getting off the couch, getting out and enjoying the world around us. The series is for Setanta Sports Ireland and is supported by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. We’re starting to plan and research it now and hope to begin shooting in early 2013. If you are interested in taking part (we’re looking for six unfit and passive people who are willing to give it a go and take up the Teena challenge!) please contact Rob at Athena Media -01 4883350. Join us too online on our facebook page for the series and have a look at the promo video which will get you in the mood.

It’s a busy radio week in Athena Media Towers. We’ve just started a new radio series Grassroots for Newstalk on positive action from community groups across the country. Its fitting into the Seoige Show on Newstalk Saturday between 12-2pm and last weekend we started with Drum Dance Ireland - a wonderful initiative in Kerry where drummers work with special needs people and disability groups to bring music, joy and fun to their lives. Next week its the joy, art and magic of home farms and how growing your own food in a local community brings people together particularly during a recession. The two recordists on the project are Rob Hope and Lisa Essuman and the series has been edited by Brendan Rehill here in Athena Media. Grassroots is an eight part series made with the funding support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

This week we’re editing quite a different project - all about opera in Ireland for RTE lyric fm. Our recordist Michael Gallen spent five weeks recording behind the scenes of the new opera company Wide Open Opera and its recent production of Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde which just did three nights at the Grand Canal Theatre Dublin. We’ve a full one hour documentary on that story on RTE lyric fm on Friday night Nov 23rd and a broadcast of a recording from the theatre, made by Platform Ireland, goes out on RTE Lyric fm on the Saturday night Nov 24th. In conjunction with that we’ve a five part short form series called Re-Imagining Ireland going out in the week leading up to the documentary and opera. This 5×5 minutes series goes into Lunchtime Classic with Niall Carroll and in it we’ve been asking people across the opera world in Ireland about their views on the current state and health of opera in Ireland particularly given the decision last year to abandon the idea of a National Opera Company in Ireland. Is opera seen as elitist and for the few or is it simply a lack of funding support which is forcing our talented singers and performers to leave and work abroad given there is no national company or opera house here? So you can hear that series from Nov 19th every day leading up to the documentary broadcast and then enjoy the full opera (which hadnt been performed in Ireland in over 50 years) on saturday night.

So a busy radio week ends with a radio highlight. We’re short-listed for a national radio award for agricultural journalism in radio for our Made in Ireland series with Ella McSweeney. The series ran on RTE Radio 1 last winter and ended in January and the feature selected is Ella’s very colourful and dramatic visit to the abbatoir and the exploration of the art of craft butchers. The event happens this Friday November 9th so fingers crossed for Ella and Made in Ireland. The series was picked up by ABC in Australia and it was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and then repeated in a packaged form on RTE Choice - you can still hear it online here.

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We’re in the midst of music, wonderful music, at present.
It’s our Wide Open Opera and Tristan & Isolde radio documentary for RTE lyric fm.
The opera opened at BGET (Grand Canal Theatre to you and me) on Sunday night and the sense of excitement about seeing the production was real.
It’s 50 year since Tristan was last produced in Dublin and Wide Open Opera, a brand new opera company, took it on as its first challenge.
With a predominately Irish cast (the superb Miriam Murphy as Isolde) and an Irish orchestra it has truly created an occasion about opera in Ireland. Newstalk’s Henry audition made fun radio and the Irish Times supported the project with strong coverage. Michael Dervan’s five star review of Sunday’s performance was the most positive thing I think I have ever read by him.
Yet one of the conversations we are having is about the nature of a voice for Irish opera - not just in vocal performances but operas which address modern Ireland. Surely our boom to bust storyline of tycoon families brought to disgrace and prison or NAMA’d developers facing up to collapsing empires is the stuff of opera? Ireland seems made for opera and the Arts Council should match composers with some of our outstanding novelists and see what happens. A Roddy Doyle meets Brian Irvine opera for example. Which would be comic and dark. Or Ann Enright and Siobhan Cleary.
I’d love to see it, to hear it.
Over to you Arts Council.

Its been an amazing month of sport and I was lucky enough to be in the ExCel stadium for Katie Taylor’s gold winning bout. It was heart-stopping. We made a TV documentary with Katie Taylor some years ago and got to know her quite well so it was particularly moving to see her finally reach her life-long ambition. I am back in the Olympic Stadium in early Sept, Sept 7th, for the Paralympic Games and this time to see Derry sprinter Jason Smyth compete in the final of the 200m. He is the second fastest man in Ireland - just a flicker behind Paul Hession who represented Ireland in the Olympic Games and Jason does it with under 10% vision. He is a stunning athlete and we’ve got to know him because of our latest TV documentary Beyond Limits which goes out on Setanta Ireland, starting August 27th and runs across the period of the Paralympic Games. Beyond Limits is presented by Mark Pollock and tells the stories of seven of the elite athletes representing Ireland in the Paralympic Games in London. Jason is just one of those inspiring characters and we’ve created a vimeo promo channel www.vimeo.com/channels/beyondlimits
Sport has dominated our Summer with our winning women series on the women athletes at London 2012 which we created for Newstalk breakfast and we’ve a new full hour documentary wrapping up that story going up in late September. Its been really interesting to meet the returned Olympians and get an inside story on what happened and how they experienced London 2012. Everyone we’ve talked to has made the point that Sonia did a truly superb job in building a team spirit and providing the athletes with real support. There’s a Presidential ceremony for the athletes and Sonia O Sullivan in September and it certainly provides the opportunity to get the home welcome right this time.
While Sport made our Summer as we move into September and Autumn we’ve got some new obsessions including a big history series Lockout 1913 for RTE radio1 for the 100th anniversary next year. Its this time of year August 26th which marked the beginning of the Lockout so we expect our history series to be on air for the anniversary year and we are already recording and collecting audio content. History has become part of our bag (with sports and art) since our New York winning ‘Death of an Empire’ series earlier this year and we hope to do more in this genre in the coming period. Besides history we’ve a big arts and music project starting which will dominate September. Its Wide Open Opera and the story of Ireland’s newest opera company and its first production Tristan & Isolde at the Grand Canal Theatre at the end of September. Its for RTE Lyric fm and Wide Open Opera, like Lockout, Beyond Limits and Winning Women have all been supported by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Sound & Vision Scheme. Increasingly the fund is one of the biggest supports to documentary-makers like us and without it a lot of amazing content and stories would not be told. This year our direct RTE Radio commissions included Death of an Empire and the Media Show but sadly we’ve yet to get a second series with the Media Show although there is talk of a return to it by next Spring. RTE like all major broadcasters is facing significant funding issues and getting commissions for documentary and factual content is a tough business.

Our Summer has been dominated by sports and outstanding Irish people. We’ve been producing the radio feature series Winning Women on the Irish women athletes in the Olympics for Newstalk and we’re just about close the long edit on our TV documentary “Beyond Limits’ on the elite athletes heading to the Paralympic Games at London 2012. One of the really delights of our work is being able to move from one genre of story-telling to another. This year we’ve made the award winning history series for RTE Radio ‘Death of an Empire’ as well as the current affairs “Media Show’ and we’re now working on a radio documentary on Ireland’s newest opera company Wide Open Opera. It certainly keeps our minds busy getting to know and understand such diverse topics and subjects. Winning Women gave us the pleasure of meeting women like American Tori Pena who is Ireland’s first woman pole vaulter. Tori comes from Irish-Mexican descent and get to represent Ireland because her granny is from Ireland. We met at Morton Stadium in early July when she defended her national title and she’s someone Irish audiences will love getting to know and to watch during the Olympic Games. We were also also filming that day with sprinter Jason Smyth, who has less than 10% vision and is double gold medallist in the last Paralympic Games. Jason was trying at that Morton athletics competition to become the first Irish athlete to compete in both the Olympics and Paralympics. Sadly he narrowly missed the qualification time and came second to Paul Hession the Irish sprinter who will represent Ireland in the Olympics. Jason, who comes from Co Derry, is a stunning athlete. One of the fastest men in the world and second only to Paul in Ireland’s history as as a sprinter.
Beyond Limits has been an incredible journey. Its a documentary for Setanta Ireland supported, like Winning Women, by the BAI Sound & Vision Scheme, and goes out August 27th just days before the games start. It features world champion hand cyclist Mark Rohan, tandem cyclist Catherine Walsh, teenager champion swimmer Darragh McDonald, runners Michael McKillop and Jason Smyth as well as equestrian competitor Helen Kearney.
have a look at the promo for the documentary and let us know what you think. We’ll be posting more details in the news columns of our web site as August progresses.