What a Difference a Year Makes!

By Amanda Eleftheriades-Sherry

The start of a year seems to be a time of excitement and change for the Clydesider Creative team.

At the start of 2018 we moved into our first office , pictured above and lovingly dubbed 'the Hobbit House’.

It isn’t big or fancy but it was a space for Clydesider Creative to call home.

For those who don’t know us we are a community media organisation based in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland.

Our purpose — to work with our community to promote the positive and inspirational stories and provide a space to showcase the creative skills, talents, ideas and experiences that exist here.

Our main focus for this is Clydesider magazine — a free quarterly publication launched in September 2016 which is written, produced and distributed by our wonderful team, most of whom are volunteers.

So fast forward to today and the start of a new chapter in the Clydesider story.

Much to our delight we can now announce that we have been selected to join the Engaged Journalism Accelerator programme!

The news arrived like an early Christmas present popping into our Inbox just as we were finishing up for a well-earned Christmas break.

And on Monday I flew to Amsterdam to meet the Accelerator team and my fellow grantees — seven news organisations chosen from over 120 applicants from across Europe.

Together we represented seven different countries — Spain, Romania, Belgium, Hungary, Denmark, Germany, Scotland and an international organisation based in London.

Our news content and means of delivery are as diverse as our geographies.

The one thing we have in common - a desire to do journalism differently.

And for the Clydesider team we are so excited to join this amazing cohort of journalists who want to use their craft to make a difference to their community.

It was why I went into journalism — and also why I took time away from it — before returning to find some like-minded people to help set up Clydesider.

Our team are not media and technology whizzkids, far from it. We’re ordinary folk from all walks of life who are passionate about our communities, here in West Dunbartonshire.

Our creative contributors include local poets, writers, photographers and design enthusiasts.

We started life in the sitting room of my one-bedroom flat and grew together on Trello boards, in local libraries and community halls finally securing a small social enterprise start-up award to launch our first issue.

That was back in September 2016.

Seven issues later we have been supported by over 100 volunteers who have helped with everything from editorial and photographic content to DIY, design, distribution and website development. Not to mention delicious home-baking and impressive entertainment at our launch and anniversary events .

Our first year everyone involved gave their time and energies voluntarily until in the summer of 2017, thanks to another social enterprise award, we were able to employ a part-time advertising representative and I left my job to concentrate full time on building the business.

The journey so far has been amazing — so much more than I had expected when I first put my ideas on paper and pulled together a rudimentary business plan for Clydesider Creative.

In our first two years we have discovered and reported on so many interesting and inspirational individuals from our community.

More volunteers of all ages and backgrounds came forward to join the team and it has been a real pleasure supporting them to grow their skills by developing basic citizen journalism workshops designed to instil confidence, not conformity.

And along the way I found a husband, marrying one of our volunteer photographers in July 2017 — not an outcome I had included in any funding application!

So, to 2019 and our plans for the future.

Well the Accelerator funding will allow us to open Community Newsroom Hubs where our ever-growing team can come together to work, share ideas, experiences and learn new skills.

We will also be launching our Creative Community Cafe taster events thanks to funding from Big Lottery fund Scotland. These will allow people to try their hand at a range of creative story-telling techniques from song-writing to animation, photography, art — there’s even talk of puppet shows!

Of course Clydesider magazine will still be at the forefront of our work with 10,000 free copies being distributed in over 200 shops, businesses, cafes and community venues across West Dunbartonshire.

But readers can expect to see some changes here as well.

We won’t be altering our positive news ethos but we will start to look at how we make solution-focused journalism a part of Clydesider.

By dedicating a section of the magazine to an issue that has a negative impact on West Dunbartonshire and working with our wider community to identify, promote and develop solutions to this problem we hope to not only promote the positive but also tackle the negative.

And this year has got to be about sustainability because we are not there yet and as we grow there is more to sustain.

We are fortunate to be part of the School of Social Entrepreneurs Scotland Trade Up programme this year where we are learning with and from another fantastic cohort — this is a group of 20 social entrepreneurs passionate about positive solutions to a whole host of issues facing society today.

And while Trade Up is about increasing social impact it’s also very much about sustainability. So with both the Accelerator and SSE in our corner we’re off to a good start.

But without a doubt the most valuable asset we have in our corner is our community — it’s what inspires and guides us and is our very reason for being.

And I made an amazing discovery after sharing our good news on Twitter this morning.

It turns out that as well as the wonderful community of West Dunbartonshire who have helped get Clydesider to where it is today; there is also an international community of journalists, techies and news organisations all looking to do media differently and willing to share their knowledge and experience with each other.

It’s a real honour to be part of this community and I look forward to learning and sharing together.

So, this is what our little Hobbit House looks like today….

…. wonder what it will look like at the start of 2020!