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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
On Jan. 5, the Westwood Media Center officially opened its doors to the public. Previously known as WestCAT (Westwood Community Access Television), a rebranding has resulted in a new media center which not only benefits the community through a more advanced and high quality local television station, but also through the resources the center offers in regards to all sorts of different technologies available to Westwood residents and businesses. This past Thursday was an open house, during which locals were invited to come in and check out the new space.
While operating out of Town Hall, WestCAT’s resources were rather limited. “Before, we couldn’t even take interns, because where were they going to sit? On my lap?! We had one desktop computer and I was working on a laptop,” Garfield explained. Now, however, the Center has three separate interns that help out a few days a week. The space is well utilized, and there is a lot inside, despite it appearing on the smaller side. For the most part, the main focus is still the local television channel. “Our main focus is the education channel, which is a lot of the high school content, a lot of the sports – we do a lot of the sports. And hopefully soon, we’ll have more content like Coach’s Corner because now we have a place to do it!” Garfield said. “And we have the government channel. It’s pretty straightforward - we tape all the finance committee, planning board, Islington task force and school committee.”
So, what’s so great about this new space, then?
“Now we have this public side that we’ve never been able to offer before,” Garfield explained. “We’re hoping that members of the community will come in and create shows or shorts or documentaries and they’ll take classes to certify them to use the brand new equipment we just bought.”
Westwood residents can take a two-hour introductory course that is then followed by an additional few courses, depending on which path they would like to take – either creating content within the studio, or going out and taking a more documentary-oriented approach. The Center hosts six computers in an editing lab as well as a private editing suite, each one outfitted with the entire Adobe Creative Suite. “It can go beyond just editing. There’s Illustrator, there’s Photoshop … We just want people to learn and then the creative stuff will come later.
“The only other cool thing about this space is we are now the home for the Westwood Artists. So quarterly, they’re going to come and change out their artwork,” Garfield said. “We’ll have a gallery - our first one for them is February 3.” The space is not only for digital creativity, but for creativity of all artistic kinds.
Westwood Media Center is open to the public, and classes are already being offered for January and February.
