Mr. Ian Pringle
Education Specialist, Media
Commonwealth of Learning
1055 West Hastings Street, Suite 1200
Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9
CANADA
Tel: +1 604 775 8235 Fax: +1 604 775 8210 E-mail: ipringle
Ian Pringle has been working for twenty-five years with community-based groups using media as tools for expression, learning and social change. Ian spent a decade working in community media in Canada and eight years living and working in South Asia. After five years as an international consultant to UNESCO, he returned to Canada in January 2008 to work with the Commonwealth of Learning where he directs a programme on participatory learning for development using media. Ian holds a Masters degree in New Media and Society from the University of Leicester (2009).
Participatory communication has been at the centre of Ian’s work since 1987. He has worked with community and public media in Canada, where he was born and raised, and later in South Asia and internationally. Ian studied English and communication at McGill University in Montreal, where he also began a long association with community radio. He lived in Vancouver from 1991 to 1997 working with a variety of media, including radio, video and the emerging internet. Then, as now, the focus on Ian's work has been on local media as a platform of participation in public life and dialogue and a vehicle for empowerment, development and social change.
In 1998, Ian moved to Nepal as a co-operant with the Centre for International Studies and Cooperation (CECI) working for three years as a technical advisor to Radio Sagarmatha, South Asia's first independent radio broadcaster, and supporting the growing movement for community broadcasting in rural Nepal, in India and Sri Lanka. In 2002 Ian joined UNESCO's Regional Bureau for Communication and Information in Asia-Pacific (New Delhi), managing two major regional projects in community media and new information and communication technologies (ICT). In 2006, he began an assignment at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris to co-ordinate the organisation's community multimedia initiatives, with a focus on scaling-up community media centres in Africa.
Ian is a skilled and experienced media specialist with broad international experience and strong interests in innovation, social change and policy environments. He has contributed to numerous publications relating to media, new ICT and various aspects of development.
At COL since 2008, Ian runs COL’s Healthy Communities initiative, building the capacities of district-level groups to use local media and mobile telephony to create new learning opportunities about health and development.