Each year, we receive hundreds of applications from community media organisations across Australia seeking support for a range of projects through our Content and Development & Operations grants. In 2019/20 we distributed more than $9 million in grants to community radio stations, community TV stations and independent producers partnering with community media organisations.
The following stories are a snapshot of the many projects we supported last year.
Mathew Layton (pictured) is the host of Vision Australia Radio’s new weekly show Studio 1. This national talkback program looks at life from the perspective of people who are blind or have low vision or a print disability. The program highlights issues relevant to this audience through interviews and sharing stories of people with disabilities in their own words.
A CBF Content grant funded producer and presenter roles, studio time, equipment and promotional activities. Studio 1 first aired in February 2020.
All the Best is an award-winning weekly half-hour program and podcast that showcases new and emerging audio storytellers from across Australia. Produced at FBi Radio in Sydney, in association with SYN and Triple R in Melbourne, All the Best features human-sized stories that illuminate the wider fabric of Australian society. A CBF Content grant supported the production of content, training and the development of the website.
Photo: Executive producer Allison Chan and All the Best colleagues Maddy Macquine and Chloe Gillespie.
Transcending the Gender Narrative is an eight-part web and TV series that investigates how we can move beyond existing gender stereotypes. Hosted and directed by Amelia Vale (pictured), the series features interviews with women working in typically male dominated industries, as well as insights from the men who support and champion women as leaders.
The first episode of the series was broadcast on C44 in June 2020 and via the Transcending the Gender Narrative website.
The series was supported by a CBF Content grant.
Lawyers at the Central Australian Women’s Legal Service (CAWLS) saw a genuine gap in the available local information about legal issues affecting women in Central Australia. Sisters in Law is a radio series broadcast on 8CCC in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek raising awareness about legal rights for women, what to do if things go wrong, and ideas or initiatives that are improving social justice outcomes. The series, now in its second season, is hosted by lawyers from CAWLS including Sophie Quinn and Amber Russell (pictured).
Sisters in Law was supported by a CBF Content grant.
Riverland Life FM is located in Loxton, a small town in the citrus-growing region of South Australia. They have been bringing family-focussed music, local news, interviews and faith-based content to listeners since 2005. One of their long-term goals has been to expand their audience and raise awareness of the station.
A CBF Development & Operations grant has helped them employ an office assistant to develop community engagement activities, and subsidised transmission costs while they build their capacity to generate self-sustaining revenue streams through membership, donations and sponsorship.
This year we supported a range of activities through our Development & Operations grants to First Nations Media Australia (FNMA). This included providing travel and venue support for the national CONVERGE conference held in Alice Springs, delegate travel to Thursday Island for the 2019 Remote Indigenous Media Festival, subsiding an Indigitube Content Coordinator salary, First Nations News training and resources, and funding the Best Radio/Video Production award as part of the 2020/21 First Nations Media Awards.
Photo: FNMA CEO, Catherine Liddle, presenting at the 2019 Converge conference.
During disastrous floods in 2019, Townsville’s 4TTT played a major role working with the local council to update the community on evacuation zones, road closures and other important emergency information. The flood had a huge economic impact on the town and surrounding communities resulting in reduced sponsorship and other sources of local revenue for the station.
With a CBF Development & Operations grant, 4TTT was able to employ a community engagement officer to help raise funds, as well as upgrade old outside broadcast equipment.
This year Radio 3ZZZ, an ethnic community broadcasting station in Melbourne, began implementing its strategy to increase community engagement and revenue by attracting a new generation of ethnic listeners and youth broadcasters, and expanding their outside broadcast program.
With CBF Development & Operations funding, 3ZZZ employed both a sponsorship coordinator and a youth coordinator to help make this vision a reality. We provided multi-year operational funding to support their efforts to become financially independent in the long-term.
Main photo: Sisters in Law presenters from 8CCC at the Central Australian Women’s Fair International Women’s Day in 2019.
About our grants
We run two Content and Development & Operations grant rounds each year, usually in January and July. You can check when our next grant round is open on the key dates page.
Quick Response Grants are also available outside our grant rounds for community media organisations that are experiencing emergencies
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