Report from the FIAT Programming & Production Commission Meeting held in Valencia, Spain 21/22 November 2001.

It was with great pleasure that the P&P Commission members travelled to Valencia, Spain for our meeting - I think some of us (the northern Europeans - Karl Maier, Birgitte Rathsach , Con Bushe, Phillipe van Meerbeck and Sue Malden in particular ) were looking forward to the last sun of the year. Others were keen to sample the food and hospitality of Valencia. - Billy Segal came from Israel, Dominique Saintville from France, Roberto Rossetto from Italy and Alicia Conesa ( a local!!) from Barcelona.

We also knew that we had a lot of work to do!!! Following on from the success of the London conference we had to begin to plan our contribution to the next annual conference to be held in Antalya, Turkey. Our host for the meeting was Enric Bellveser of RTVV. Enric had organised everything perfectly. Before we began our work in the RTVV building we were greeted by José Vicente Villaescusa, the Director General of RTVV. He told us how much RTVV valued their links with FIAT and wished us well in our work (see photograph).

We were also treated to a tour of the archive by Lola Alfonso, the manager of the archive, and spent some time with learning all about the structure and organisation of the archive and some of the major issues facing them. We particularly appreciated the time spent with us, as the staff were coming into work over the weekend to carry out a comprehensive stock-check of all their holdings!!

Work then commenced. Sue Malden, chair of the Commission has left the BBC and therefore is no longer a company representative.

• Stronger links and co-operation with EBU
• More visible role in archive policy and standards setting
• Clear policy and strategy statement for FIAT/IFTA from the executive
• More facilities for networking among organisation members
• More bilateral working in groups
• Identify and Promote the benefits of FIAT/IFTA
• Promotion of the World television Archive programme award
• Well prepared conferences
• Relevant regional seminars
• Attract members from other areas of broadcasting that just archives

We also discussed a range of things that we could do to make FIAT more useful for its members and will put them into action over the coming year and particularly at the Annual conference in October 2002. We will be contacting FIAT members in the near future to ask for useful information form them about their archives and organisations.

Topics for the Commission to address over the coming year are: - Rights/copyright; Heritage collections and relations with National Archive collections; Knowledge management; website trading; FIAT/FOCAL Summer School.

We have been reviewing the Television Archive Award selection criteria and process in preparation for the shortlisting that we will need to do in May. PLEASE SEND YOUR NOMINATIONS IN TO THE WEBSITE www.swr.de/ifta

2002 will be the 25th anniversary of FIAT - does anyone have any ideas of how we can celebrate?

We will next meet in Prague on 29th May - the main tasks will be shortlisting of FIAT Television and New Media Awards and planning our contribution to the programme for the Annual conference in October.

The Programming and Production Commission wants to be sure that the work that we do really reflects the needs and concerns of FIAT/IFTA members, so do let any one of us know what you want from FIAT/IFTA