From coexistence to cooperation: Experiments in intercultural broadcasting in Swiss community radios

Broadcasting since 1983, Radio LoRa in Zurich is one of the oldest community radios in the German-speaking world. Men and women with a migrant background have been involved in the radio since its onset and today programmes are aired in more than 20 languages. To promote closer cooperation between radio-makers of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, Radio LoRa started developing specific projects, initially focussing on multilingual programming. Over time, the perspective of “integration”, often the primary concern of funding institutions, evolved into a more articulated intercultural approach, abandoning the narrow label of “migrant” and opening up to a plurality of cultural cosmovisions, methods, forms, expressions and languages. The projects that followed aimed at creating dialogue between different age groups, gender(s), sexual orientations, socio-economic conditions, political perspectives and cultural backgrounds, providing a framework for relationships of equity based on the respect of differences. Adopting interculturality at LoRa as a philosophical option, an ethical and political project, an approach to social development, also facilitated participatory processes and identification with the radio as a whole, beyond the single individual programmes.This article will discuss some of the challenges, methods and formats of intercultural work in community radios, based on the experiences at Radio LoRa from 2003 to 2008. It will also provide a broader perspective on intercultural efforts in the alternative media landscape in Switzerland, referring to the work of klipp & klang radiokurse, the Swiss community radio training organization and one of the partners of the EU project Inter.Media – Intercultural Media Training in Europe (2004–2006). klipp & klang radiokurse has developed frameworks for the implementation of the Inter.Media training modules and for the exchange of experiences in intercultural project work amongst the non-commercial radios in Switzerland, motivating more radios to embark on the intercultural path.