Q&A: Maddy Macfarlane, award-winning community radio host

Maddy Macfarlane has been broadcasting at Melbourne’s community radio station PBS FM since 2006 but in 2013 her career has turned down an investigational path. As thehost ofAustralian music program Homebrew, Macfarlanehas combined her radio practice with PhD research to explore Australian community radio as an important focus for local music research. Her work has beenrrecognised by CBAA, having received multiple awards for What We Talk About When We Talk About Music, a radio documentarymade with musicians from Melbourne’s Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

TMNchats to Macfarlane about her personal rejection of the commercial model, how community broadcasters are sparking a national response with co-creative media, the ways in which local radio responded to digitisation and helped fight against threats to live venues, and what it was like introducing artist’s from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre to the radio world.

What do you see as the role of community radio in Australia?

Community radio’s role is to engage us all in the creation, management and dissemination of independent media, supporting under-heard voices and perspectives. It’s a vital alternative in Australia’s media-scape, and it goes beyond the representation of local communities towards community-ownership of the station. In doing this, community radio builds community cohesion, expression, visibility (audibility) and vitality.

Tell us about the rise of and value of co-creative media. How are community broadcasters sparking a national response through this type of collaboration?

This hinges on the questions, ‘what is co-creative media’, ‘what does it do’, and ‘how?’ For me, co-creative media is about making media (content) with people, rather than about them. To make something with others inevitably requires flexibility, rather than a set plan. It involves open conversations about the project – what do contributors want to achieve, what is most important, what are the personal values, aims, and conditions that underpin the collaboration.

Maddy Macfarlane

This sort of approach, its openness, is valuable because it essentially highlights the rules of engagement for the specific project, and the things that really matter for the different parties involved. This is in contrast to media-makers or project-directors going into a creative engagement with set ideas that get applied onto others.

A co-creative approach also demands a lot of self-awareness and reflection. When the creative process isn’t pre-determined, we all have to feel our way through, and take stock of what we are doing and how. This makes co-creation a rich opportunity to learn about ourselves, our media, our assumptions, our positions of power, our default processes and what these might overlook or deny. To me, co-creation can seem quite fragile to begin with, because I have to give up my preconceived ideas about how a project should run, what it should achieve, what its outcomes should look or sound like… but that initial fragility always seems to transform into robustness, and projects pursue and achieve real change – for the collaborators, for the media systems, and for the audiences.

Co-creative values and methods seem a natural fit for community media, which specifically seeks to engage the public in the creation of media. Community media is specifically about creating and presenting alternative content to what is generated and distributed by mainstream media. Community media has nothing to lose in doing things the peoples’ way.

You host Australian music program Homebrew on PBS FM each week; do you take a co-creative approach with the show?

Homebrew runs as a genre-diverse Australian music show, with a strong focus on new, local and independent releases. I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as a co-creative program, particularly because I’m the solo host and producer, but Homebrew does make me notice how co-creation can play out differently in live radio compared to pre-recorded audio pieces. Some of the co-creative values I carry over into Homebrew are around equal-authorship, consent, representation and trust in the context of interviews. Most weeks I’ll have an interview or two with guest musicians. Before we go live, I like to chat with guests off-air and explain some of my intentions. I see the interview as a conversation, not a Q&A, and as such it doesn’t have to be directed by my questions. The interview is an opportunity for the guest to communicate with the audience. When interviews are conversational, we share the reigns and move beyond positions of ‘host’ and ‘guest’, and as such these sorts of interviews are often more expressive, personable, unpredictable, and ultimately revealing.

I also like Homebrew to function as a training ground. Some weeks there’ll be students from PBS’ announcer training course or work experience students in the studio, experiencing how the program runs.

For your radio documentary What We Talk About When We Talk About Music you collaborated with musicians from Melbourne’s Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. What was it like working with those artists while the Prime Minister at the time was running his ’Operation Sovereign Borders’ to “stop the boats”?

I think there are two sides to this question: what was it like working with these musicians, and what was it like working with these musicians who are seeking asylum. My engagement with the ASRC’s music group was founded on a shared interest and participation in music. To me the group is remarkable – it has musicians coming together from different backgrounds, languages, music systems, experiences and training, and finding a meaningful way to make music together. That’s awesome. I sought to learn what/who the group is, what it wanted to achieve for its members, and how. We spent a lot of time early on identifying our aims for working together, and so our creative process required that we find ways to meet those aims. These aims included creating recordings of their songs, and introducing the group to Melbourne’s radio world and how it functions. I guess what I’m saying is that part of me engaged with these musicians simply as musicians.

But of course, these musicians also had heavy limitations explicitly placed upon them by our government, its policies, and in turn wider Australian society and its attitudes. Making media content to support these musicians to shape their own representation in the media is a political thing. Our radio piece challenges narrow, hostile, discriminatory and harmful representations of people seeking asylum. It challenges these representations and their impacts by creating content to the contrary – content that demonstrates individual personality and expression, skills and knowledge, and which demonstrates participation in and contribution to our wider community through self-representation in its media.

You’ve been with PBS FM since 2006, has the local radio sector changed much since then?

Community radio stations, locally and nationally, have certainly faced many changes in the past ten years, good and bad, which have ultimately brought us together as a sector. Technology has certainly changed in this time, but while we might have more information and more formats than ever before, there’s all the more need for reliable media outlets. Switching to digital radio looked like a technical challenge for the sector, but we continue to be well positioned to confront issues as they arise. In 2013, it looked like community radio nationally was going lose important government funding which had been promised to the sector to support its transition into digital radio. Ordinarily the sector doesn’t rely on government funding, but in the unique circumstances of switching community radio over to digital, and hence ensuring its presence in a digital future, required government support. So when it looked like this funding would be revoked in the federal budget, community radio mobilised its audiences through the national ‘Commit To Community Radio’ campaign, demonstrating to the government the strength and value of the sector, and the unwavering support of the voting public. Then locally, when Melbourne metro stations did turn on their digital radio channels, this was done as a simulcast at a public outside broadcast event in Federation Square – a way to celebrate our continuity together!

Other changes that local community radio has responded to include the Save Live Australia’s Music (SLAM) action in response to proposed changes to liquor licensing laws that threatened small live music venues. Community radio was a vital part of mobilising community to fight the proposed laws. I remember calling in to PBS from the rally to give listeners live updates. And amongst this, when the beloved Tote Hotel closed (though it thankfully reopened), PBS and RRR simulcast the final gig. It was amazing to switch between the two stations and hear the same live action from down at the Tote – we were hearing a community celebration and mourning of an integral music venue, and we were also hearing, through the simulcast, community solidarity.

In the year of the Global Financial Crisis, the local community got around its community radio stations and continued (actually increased) its financial support. This, to me, proves that community radio is something we are not willing, and cannot afford, to lose. Even while experiencing financial uncertainty, the community was certain that community radio would not be risked.

Would you say community radio offers more or less space for expression than commercial radio?

Oh, it’s an absolute no-brainer. I don’t really want to spend the words explaining how restricted and restrictive (gross) I find commercial radio. The names alone – community and commercial – illustrate the differences in values and action. In choosing to exist for commercial purposes, commercial radio constructs itself as a vehicle for ads and profit, not expression or education. This isn’t a criticism of pop music or pop culture; it’s a personal rejection of the commercial model that this type of radio uses, and which inhibits its content. The passionate me wants to yell about how shallow, hollow, irresponsible, and damaging I find commercial radio. The calm me says, it is what it is, and there are plenty of other media options out there. It’s really up to us as radio listeners: are we actively making choices about (and demands of) our media, or are we are passive consumers?

Are there any constraints that are limiting the community radio sector currently?

Any cuts to arts funding limits the funding that community radio stations and broadcasters have access to. While the Community Broadcasting Fund offers a funding pool for community radio, if we only look to this source, then really we’re just taking funding away from each other. We have to look to diverse funding sources, and have confidence in conveying the value of what we do.

The digital future for some stations is still a little uncertain, but as a sector we are keeping a strong eye on government budgets. We have to hold the government to its specific, promised support, to ensure community radio’s transition to the digital radio, and make sure this not reduced or reneged.

Do you see internet radio services like Pandora as a threat to community and public radio?

I don’t actually use Pandora, but sure, more music streaming and playlist services will continue to emerge. I just don’t see this as a threat to community and public radio. The value of community radio and public radio is what it does differently to services like Pandora. The greatest difference is the human element – expressive and passionate presenters who choose their content autonomously, rather than financially driven playlists and clunky, impersonal advertising. Wherever there is a community-generated media service, whether the community meets in a physical building or across online spaces, that media service will continue to offer its audience an experience of community through its content.

Maddy will be joined by academic Christina Spurgeon and the ABC’s Scott Gamble to talk about how co-creative media is connecting communities and unlocking Australia’s creative potential as part of the upcoming Vivid Ideas festival.Find out more and register here.

Community broadcasters can get free registrations – email for more information – hhenry@cbaa.org.au.