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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.