MEDIA
Muslim Women's Media Workshop

In November UTS Shopfront ran a media skills workshop for young Muslim women. The workshop was developed to respond to the increased level of racism, threats and harassment suffered by the Muslim community in the aftermath of the Tampa crisis and US terrorist attacks. The request for assistance came from the Muslim Women's Association (MWA) that needed to have spokeswomen confident to speak to the media on these and other pertinent issues.

some of the young women who participated in the media workshop

A timely response was offered due to the immediate and generous support received by the staff of the University of Technology Sydey. With their help a program was developed and delivered to eighteen participants within four weeks of the request. The skills gained will enable the participants to express their perspective on issues through the media. The workshop will be a foundation for further media skills development in partnership with the MWA.

In the studio

The one-day workshop was run by Humanities and Social Sciences academics Penny O'Donnell, Sandy Symonds, Tanja Dreher and Jo White from Radio 2SER. The workshop attracted media attention and a second session was conducted at the Islamic Centre at Lakemba. This was filmed by an ABC TV crew and was screened on the "Ecnounters with Islam" episode on Compass.

Click here to see a full transcript of "Encounters with Islam"

These workshops have fostered a series of other developments including a number of Shopfront projects.

MWA working in partnership with UTS:
Nada Roude, Sandy Symonds and Maha Krayem Abdo