Lucinda Guy is the co-founder of Soundart Radio, a community station which broadcasts from studios on the Dartington estate to the Totnes area on 102.5FM and around the world online.

Lucinda tells us more: “We talk about being arts-based, but we mean that in a very broad sense. So people might be making arts programming, culture shows, but they also might be like playing and experimenting and trying things out or improvising or playing unusual music.

“So in a way it's a platform for people to try ideas out.”

The station is 18 this year and Lucinda along with her colleague Alice Armstrong have organised an event called Media Commons Camp 2024 which will include workshops, food, walks, discussions, skill shares, celebration and live broadcasts.

The event will be happening between October 4 and 6.

Lucinda gives us more details: “Well it’s for anyone who's really interested in our media, which is pretty much everyone because media affects every area of our life, doesn't it?

“So we've been working with a group called Media Reform Coalition.

“They are a group that emerged, like many things, after the Leveson inquiry.

“So they've been looking into press accountability, that kind of thing, and over the years that's their remit has kind of broadened to think more about grassroots media, which is what we're really interested in.

“It’s how people make their own media.

“I'm never very motivated by top-down change, I like bottom-up change.”

“So people coming together and creating positive things and making change that way.

“We're working together on this event and the media commons is a term of theirs as a way of talking about the different ways in which we can own, control and participate in media in lots of different ways, whether it's in community media or other kinds of local media.

“Media commons is more of an ethos about the kind of media we could have.”

Lucinda goes on to explain a bit about the alternative press in Totnes:

“There's quite a bit of independent press around, but there's also press that we would consider to be astroturf, which is a term which means it looks grassroots, probably isn't.

“It's probably funded by an invisible funder and might be promoting harmful ideas or misinformation so it can be quite tricky to discern, you know, where is this stuff coming from,

how did it get there? who's paying for it? and are the ideas, you know, accountable and fair.”

As far of the content it is not cast in stone as Lucinda outlines:

“Initially we ask people what they would like to offer, so we didn't fix a programme very early on, we're just shaping that up now with the people coming, so we ask people if they'd like to offer something like a workshop, a discussion, a broadcast or a game, or DJing, cooking, so lots of ways people can bring their own skills and knowledge to it.”

For more information call 01803 867135 or e-mail soundartradio.org.uk