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MediaShed Charter

Submitted by MediaShed on Mon, 2006-07-03 22:48.

The core activity of the MediaShed is free-media - replacing money with imagination with a minimum impact on the natural environment and on our wallets. This Charter identifies the objectives which the participants of the MediaShed share and strive to achieve.

The central principle of free-media is the principle of FREEDOM, both individual expression and for new approaches to culture and a sustainable society. It can be applied to all creative arts. Free-media is located as much within ourselves as it is in a form of media. Free-media aims to be as environmentally sustainable as speech. The ideal free-media can be thought of as talking between people.

  • One of free-media's core aims is the freedom to form and confront opinions while actively engaging in everyday life. Free-media should never be used to create destructive conflict between different cultures and communities.
  • The MediaShed should provide access to informal training, production and distribution facilities using free-media and to use free-media technologies for the benefit, entertainment, education and development of it's participants and audiences;
  • The MediaShed seeks to promote media self reliance and ownership, for individuals and communities of common interest;
  • To research, use and promote wherever possible cheap, free, and recycled technologies, with a mind to create projects, resources, services, economic developments which have a minimum impact on the natural environment.
  • To research, use and promote media systems that have a minimal financial cost available to those on low income, and in ways that are repeatable, accessible and improvable to those on low incomes.
  • To research, create and promote communication through free-media technologies outside the monetary and licensing control of proprietary systems, to assist the free flow of information, self education and opinions, to encourage creative expression and to contribute to and explore the issues that are important to the everyday lives of individuals, communities and diverse cultures in a pluralist society;
  • The MediaShed aims to create tools that empower minority and marginalized groups where ever they are geographically or socially located and to promote and protect cultural and linguistic diversity;
  • The MediaShed should strive to be editorially independent of government (local, regional, national), commercial and religious institutions and political parties. They should play no major part in determining our creative and programming policy;
  • The MediaShed as an organisation is not run with a view to profit and to ensure our editorial independence we try to be financed from a variety of sources;
  • To operate management, programming and employment practices which oppose discrimination and which are open and accountable to all supporters and staff; Expressly recognising and respecting the contribution of volunteers in such a way to give them clear channels of involvement and representation;
  • To foster exchange and communication between free-media practitioners to develop their greater understanding of the principles and potentials of free-media and sustainable development;
  • To promote free-media as a sustainable approach for urban regeneration, education, individual and community self reliance.
  • To promote free-media as a tool for people on low incomes to help get skilled in ICT, building confidence and encouraging sustainable economic development.
  • The MediaShed encourages formal/informal training of all its staff.
  • Wherever possible all outcomes from projects and all software written will belong to the public domain and all content will be covered by a Creative Commons license; in order to support the right of all to give and receive cultural products and information freely and in a way that does not hinder their participation in the creative process;
  • Free-media systems MUST be well documented as an aid to keeping the systems open and free and as an aid to their wider dissemination.
  • The Mediashed is available for the use of the local community as a space to enable the practice and production of ‘art’ in its broadest spectrum, and other uses as deemed fit by the group and its membership.