Stroud Community TV is a not-for-profit independent channel for videos recording and celebrating the Five Valleys.
‘By the people of Stroud and for the people of Stroud’
We are after videos that have been made by local people or made in or about the Five Valleys. Whether it is skateboarding, music, a local event or an idea we would love to hear from you – see a short film about Stroud Community TV here and see our ‘Get Involved’ page.
Stroud Community TV is a place to promote the diversity of Stroud; to support our local economy; to raise awareness and help inspire us to take actions that secure a sustainable and resilient future for our community; to create a space for voices who are less often heard, and to encourage and develop media skills and creative talent in Stroud.
Whether it is a film about a sports events or a local project we would love to share it here. We are already fortunate to live in an area where we are blessed with many strong community links, enormous creativity and many people passionate to make things better still. This is an opportunity to tell some of those stories and inspire more.
Video is the future
YouTube, owned by Google, is currently ranked fourth in terms of traffic, ahead of both Bing and Yahoo – Google obviously being no 1. Currently 60 hours of video is added to YouTube every minute. Cisco is currently scrambling to sort its routers to deal with the video onslaught. At the moment 50% of all internet traffic after 5pm is on YouTube. By 2015, Cisco predict that 90% of all internet traffic will be video (Stats from Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer Google YouTube Hack report).
Our History
Stroud Community TV developed out of a conversation in the Autumn of 2011 between Peter Richardson (left), of Stroud-based Ethical Internet and Philip Booth (below), a local District councillor who works for a local charity and has been involved in many local community projects. Both were excited by the potential of bringing together films to share stories to foster and build communities in the Five Valleys.
The project attracted interest from many groups and help in getting established has come from a variety of sources. In particular thanks for advice must go to Buy Local magazines’ Alan Plank, video artists Rosa Verge, Ruth Davey and Nikki Simpson, Stroud Town councillor Steve Hurrell, OPENHouse’s Claire Mould, Stroud College’s George Butcher and Tom Medlock, Cirencester colleges’ Andy Freedman and indeed many others.
In November 2011 the project was successful in an application for a small grant from Stroud Town Council to establish the website and some marketing leaflets. Local artist Russ provided us with the great logo. The website launched in March 2012 with over 140 films and we hope to continue to build a comprehensive record and celebration of Stroud and the Five Valleys.
We also set up a Facebook site, a Twitter account ‘@StroudTV’ and our first SCTV newsletter went out in March (you can sign up from this site). You can also see our archive of old newsletters at; http://stroudcommunity.tv/category/newsletters/
In April 2012 we were excited to become part of Transition Stroud; as part of Transition, SCTV will help reach out to a wider audience to promote community resilience and a low carbon future. In February 2013 we ran our first Stroud Community TV Awards and by the end of our first year we had uploaded over 800 films and have viewing figures of between 50 and 200 each day. We are involved in a number of local projects including work with schools in the District.We are always looking for more help, thoughts and ideas on how to build this project.
“I think the thing that the Transition movement creates is a positive atmosphere for people to talk about change and a culture of thinking how that applies to a local situation. And also, it’s not just about one thing. It’s not just about energy, it’s about food, it’s about travel, it’s about work, it’s also about culture as well. I think that’s the unique thing that Transition does.”
Allan Shepherd, Author of ‘The Home Energy Handbook’
