About CACTUS
Welcome to the CACTUS website!
CACTUS stands for the Canadian Association of Campus and Community Television User Groups and Stations. CACTUS is an online resource and meeting place for campus and community television volunteers, producers, station managers, advocates and activists. This website is intended to be a tool for the advocacy, mobilization and preservation of community television in Canada.
What is community television?
Community television is a way to democratize television, and a way for citizens to take back the airwaves and to muscle our way into the crowded cable universe so that we can tell our own stories. It is way for us to participate in shaping the communities where we live.
Community television is television that is innovative, investigative, engaged and non-mainstream.
Community television is a way for voices excluded by mainstream broadcasters to be heard.
Community television is a way for rural communities to make local relevant programming.
Community television is a way for people to make television what they want it to be.
Community television is television that can choose independence from the distortions of market priorities and advertising.
Community television exists in Canada in a number of forms.
It is created by regulation by the CRTC which requires cable companies over a certain size to (i) create a community channel; (ii) train volunteers; (iii) provide them with equipment; and (iv) show their programs on the community channel.
It is the programming made by hundreds of small groups across Canada in school basements, in bingo halls, and in community centres that is aired on local cable.
It is the handful of low-power and community broadcast stations that are delivering local programs to local audiences in rural areas throughout the country.
It is the small groups making programs and sharing them with the community through home made cable systems running wires from house to house.
It is student groups located on Canadian campuses making television and distributing programs on the internet or on campus.
Community television exists in the large urban centres, throughout Canada’s rural communities and in Nunavut, NWT / Denedeh and the Yukon. In all cases, it is television that is made by a community for a community. It is a playful and thought provoking gesture of cultural celebration, preservation and persistence.
Why the CACTUS website?
Canadians have been making community television across the country for more than 30 years, but there is no national organization to represent us, no place where we can share stories and exchange ideas, nowhere we can easily access and discuss the policies and regulations that effect community television, no one place to learn about the other community tv groups in Canada and how they deal with volunteers, fundraising, technological changes, negotiating with cable companies, creating programs.
CACTUS is here for all of these reasons – to provide a space where people who care about community television in Canada can collaborate, share resources, exchange ideas, and most importantly, mobilize. The long-term goal of CACTUS is the preservation and flourishing of community produced programming.
How does CACTUS work?
The CACTUS website uses druple, a website design that allows users from anywhere in the world to register and immediately begin contributing content. The whole point of CACT(us) is for the people who care about community television in to come together and create exactly the kind of resource they want and need. It’s as simple as registering.
Forums
A large part of CACTUS is devoted to Forums, ongoing online discussion groups about various aspects of community television. Here, you will find conversations about Community Television Policies, Negotiating with Cable Companies for Resources, Fundraising, Creative Workgroups (for program production), Urgent Issues (regulatory threats, cable company bullying, funding crises, etc.). If there is a conversation that you want to have that doesn’t fall under one of the existing Forums, start it in the General Matters Forum, see who else shares your interests. If enough people join the discussion, we’ll make a new Forum.
Resources
The other important service offered by CACTUS is resource sharing. In these pages you will find resources on policy issues, technology, fundraising, training, activism.
Group PhotoBlogs
Since we are all scattered across this huge country in hundreds of different amazing and beautiful places, few of us get to meet other community television advocates. But we share many experiences and the passion for making local tv. PhotoBlogs are a chance for you to introduce yourself and the other members of your tv group to the rest of the CACTUS community. Photos of people, studios, productions, equipment, local surroundings all welcome. Tell the story of who you are, and how you came to be. The PhotoBlogs are for groups only.
Community TV News
Community television is notoriously underreported. One of the primary puposes of the site is to share community television news stories. They can be stories about new stations, program innovations, policy changes, calls for action, community tv activism, cable company dirty deeds, community tv in far away lands…whatever might be of interest to the CACTUS community. We are hoping this will become the place to get your community television news in Canada.
What’s with the name?
As you probably know, acronyms for group names that are catchy and have more than superficial meaning are hard to come by. With a little creative playing around, we came up with CACTUS, the Canadian Association of Campus and Community Television (users groups and stations). Cacti in Canada are sort of rare, a little like community television groups. But there are cacti native to Canada (the prickly pear cactus), and they are hardy and persistent – again, much like community television groups. Cacti persist and flower with only the smallest amounts of water…well, you can see where this is going. The metaphor has its limitations, but we like to think it captures the resilience and humble sort of beauty routinely found in the efforts of community television programmers across the country.
Getting Involved
If you would like to get more involved, there are many ways. Please read on.
We are looking for regional editors to let the CACTUS community know what’s happening in with community television in their province or territory. Editors can bog about stories themselves or solicit the help of other writers from their province or territory, or manage the regional reports any way they like.
We are looking for people who would like to help out with the website. As the CACTUS community grows, the website will also grow. Many hands make light work.
We are looking for people interested in creating a national community television organization. Canada is long overdue for national representation on policy matters that effect community television practice. A national organization could help mobilize community advocates across the country to lobby for beneficial policy changes, and to fight off pernicious and destructive policy changes.
Please contact us if you are interested in getting involved.
Suggestions
Please please please get in touch with us if you have any suggestions for the website.
Who are we? & Contact
We are a very small group of dedicated volunteers who believe in the importance of community television.
For more information please contact: Michael Lithgow
michael[dot]cactus[at]gmail[dot]com
Michael is a long-time community television advocate and organizer from Vancouver now living in Montreal. He was one of the founding directors of ICTV on the west coast, former member of the Cue Up collective at Video In. He is currently a PhD student at Carleton University.
or Cathy Edwards at (819) 772-2862
Cathy Edwards used to be the Volunteer Co-ordinator and trainer at Shaw's community television channel in Calgary until 1997, the year the public was told it could no longer participate in local production. For the last several years, she has been touring the globe researching and documenting forms of community-access television. The results will be aired next year as the six-part series "My TV, Your TV, Our TV" on Canadian Learning Television, Access, the Education Station, PBS, FreeSpeech TV and Link TV.
