Scholarship Information
Scholarships granted are to help offset conference costs in hopes of encouraging ACM regional leadership, invite greater diversity of participation, enhance and expand your access experience, improve production skills and expand your knowledge of public, education, and government access organizations. This special award provides up to $500 to help cover your travel or lodging costs to attend next week’s conference. Whether you’re an ACM member or not, if you’re passionate about community storytelling, local access media, or creative collaboration—you’re encouraged to apply.
Background Information
Amidst a National ACM conference, on Friday morning, July 14, 2017, came the horrifying news that our colleague and friend Erik Möllberg had died in a motorcycle accident in Indiana. Erik had just been with us at the conference to talk about the work he had been doing to build WELT, the low power community radio station in Fort Wayne, and to catch up with folks.
Those who knew Erik knew him as a mentor, friend, realist, story teller and connector. He was always bringing people together. Erik made a difference wherever he served. His commitment to empowering those who otherwise would have no platform - simply no voice - in the wilderness of today's electronic media has never faltered. He was the go-to guy when things at the state capital turned against the best interests of free speech and the people's' right of access to the powers of television and radio. Eric has always walked the walk and Fort Wayne, the State of Indiana, our nation - and the broader world owe Erik a debt of gratitude that will likely be understood in the months and years ahead when we will be reminded by his absence of what he has meant to us all.
Erik spent the last 33 years of his life working at Access Fort Wayne and championing public access. He was instrumental to the region when budget cuts threatened its existence, going to bat for the importance of community media by telling politicians why it was essential. And Erik's more recent building of 95.7 FM WELT a Community Run Radio Station based out of Access Fort Wayne. He had personally created something that people were eagerly responding to. In fact, the numbers generated by WELT vastly surpassed anything that Access Fort Wayne has done in years. He had tapped into the last frontier of community media that still matters to people. That station is yet another of Erik's ongoing gifts to Fort Wayne.
Written by Professor & Friend of Erik’s Frank R. Jamison, “The truth is that in one shocking instant we lost him. We miss him enormously and that will not soon fade. But our loss will validate anew the old adage that those departed continue to live on through their words and deeds. The legacy that Eric leaves is now and will always be immediate and powerful. He will continue to lead by his example.”
The Erik Mollberg Grassroots scholarship is a way to to help offset conference costs in hopes of encouraging ACM regional leadership, invite greater diversity of participation, enhance and expand your access experience, improve production skills and expand your knowledge of public, education, and government access organizations.