The first episodes of Beyond the Classroom – the new community education series co-produced by DCTV and the Aontas Community Education Network have now been released online. Links are below.

Available to stream (watch in your browser) and download (for viewing later) the two episodes were first broadcast on DCTV on Wednesday 3rd March and repeated on the Fresh block later in the week.

Beyond the Classroom - The Communities. Episode 1 - Kilbarrack

Beyond the Classroom – Communities Ep1 from DCTV on Vimeo.

Directed by Donnacha O’Briain the 4 short form documentaries that make up the “Communities” section of Beyond the Classroom are thoughtful, engaging stories from the depths of another, earlier recession. This first episode tells the story of the young mothers in Kilbarrack who established a community education centre in the early 1980’s, of the learners interviewing the teachers, of the transformations both personal and community. Beautifully told this is one of the many success stories of Dublins Communities.

Introduced by Bernie Brady from Aontas the total piece is 20 minutes long and well worth putting the headphones in and having a cup of tea and watching.

Beyond the Classroom - The Practitioners. Episode 1.

Beyond the Classroom – The Practitioners Ep1 from DCTV on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/10052319

Currently being broadcast in three half hour episodes, The Practitioners section of Beyond the Classroom is the document of a live, 90 minute studio based discussion on Community Education. Inspired by the practices of Community Education the set was modeled on the Learning Circle which is so central to community education. The film-makers brought footage they had shot while researching the series and a group of insightful, experienced and committed practitioners discussed many of the key issues in Community Education using the clips as jumping off
points for an honest, deep and at times challenging exploration.

Facilitated by Anne Louise Gilligan this piece does not just look at the shape and boundaries of community education – it develops a new format of community television based on the tools and practices of community
television.

DCTV would love to hear from people who have viewed this material. A DVD version will be released later in the Spring with Aontas and the series will be released in a number of formats over the next few months. For
the month of March each week will see two new episodes released each Tuesday the week after they have been screened on DCTV – NTL 802. Please help the development of community television by passing these links onto
those you think may be interested.

Contact us at CE@dctv.ie for details on DVD and other media availability, to get help organising screenings or to let us know what you think.

In the run up to the launch of The Pedal Project, DCTV will be drip feeding ten short sketches to the net.  The cycling shorts seize on  a selection of cycling stereotypes and deliver tongue in cheek side swipes against them.   The sketches were designed to both annoy, provoke debate and hopefully give you a chuckle as you wait for the launch of the project on-line.

The first annual Noise Flicks event was held at RUA RED South Dublin Arts Centre on March 21st 2009. The event was supported by Dublin Community Television (DCTV), RUA RED South Dublin Arts Centre, and IT Tallaght. DCTV provided a judge for the selection panel, aired the entrants work as part of its Gimme The Camera block and sent out a small crew to record the event and produce a 20 minute documentary with editorial guidance from the festival director.

Mother-and-daughter team Lucia and Kelly Chisholm devised and feature in this groundbreaking series, which uses the medium of arts and crafts to teach children between the ages of 6 and 12 the importance of recycling. Each of the 13 episodes involves a visit to a different national school and a recycling plant and looks at all of the current recycling initiatives underway in Ireland today. Lucia and Kelly explore everything from the Green Flag initiative within schools to the way in which materials such as paper, aluminium and general waste is recycled. Mainly funded by the BCI and also by Lispopple Studios, Funky Junk created some wonderful arts and crafts. Aimed at tackling the issue of recycling in a child-friendly way in the belief that this will have a knock-on influence on parents, the concept for the series was the brainchild of Lucia Chisholm and was further developed by producer Dave Byrne. Before working on the show, Dave had no idea of the extent of recycling in Dublin. “I started to feel guilty. These children knew more about recycling than I did.”

Access for All is a four-part series, which looks at some of the issues facing the disabled community in Dublin. Each episode looks at a particular issue from the viewpoint of people with disabilities.

The series participants speak candidly about their experiences in the areas of: Education; Family; Media and Disability; Sexuality and Relationships. The aim of the series is to facilitate individuals and the wider disabled community to become more visible and to present their own experiences and views on the issues that matter most to them.

The people involved in the series provide thought-provoking and challenging stories about how they live work and define themselves.

‘This is a series about everyday people; not heroes or warriors, just regular people trying to access a regular life. And they want to share their stories with you because sometimes just fitting in and getting by takes all you’ve got.’

On the launch of this major piece of observational documentary, we took the iniative to add a new section to our site that weaves together our programming strands on disability issues. We’ve hours of content and it’ll take us some time to get it all online, but keep checking back for more.

We are interested in organising screenings and discussions about this project.  If you want to organise one with us, then get in touch.

Access For All premiered as part of our Fresh Block during January 2010 on DCTV.  It had its real world launch on November 9th 2009 in conjunction with the Disability Focus Group who are part of the Community Forum and work for the rights of the disabled community in Dublin .

Access for All has been uploaded to our Vimeo account for online viewing.

The Dublin Council of Trade Unions, in conjunction with the Youth Committee of the ICTU and in co-operation with the Health trade unions, inaugurated a ‘Campaign for a Decent Public Health Service’ some time last year.

The Campaign hoped to bring together those who work in the Health Service and their trade unions, with patients’ advocates, Health and Hospital campaigners, concerned Health professionals, community and voluntary organisations, the trade union movement in general and the general public to demand a civilised Health Service.

DCTV recorded the meeting as part of our The Document series.

A documentary on homelessness in Cork.

Working with Young Urban Arts, DCTV invited 14 young people from youth projects across the city to get involved in scripting, acting, directing and producing their very own series called Happy Pizza. The young crew trained from January until June 2009 in preparation for the production in July. Happy Pizza follows the life of John Murphy, a pizza guy going through the trials that his life has thrown at him. Happy Pizza is a slice of comedy packed with funny shorts and a strong story. As John delivers pizza, Crew TV, delivers a great production in 3 half hour shows. As employees of DCTV for July, they earned money while gaining invaluable experience in an arts focused environment.

CREW TV/ HAPPY PIZZA plays from December 12th as part of Fresh 2 on Tues 1900, Wed 1230 and Sat and will play out all December and January.

Check out Irish Times coverage here.
Check out The Crew TV blog here.

Cultivate’s Powerdown TV Show is a series of ten twenty minute programmes that aim to inform individuals and groups on the context and responses to climate change and peak oil. The programmes follow the same themes as Cultivate’s Community Powerdown course and will be both educational and entertaining.

The series includes interviews with Richard Douthwaite of Feasta, Rob Hopkins of Transition Towns, George Monbiot, author of ‘Heat’ and Guardian journalist and many other leading thinkers in the fields of Climate Change and Peak Oil. The shows also include other interesting segments such as animation which will both inform and entertain and comedy sketches which take a slightly different look at the issues and include such characters as the Oil Junky, the Eco-Preacher and the Peak Beer Party People.

The series was made as a co-production with Dublin Community TV.