I needed to change collation on 80+ tables so I wrote this simple python script.
I placed the file in my Django project folder (same folder as settings.py etc)

I also changed the character-set on the whole database with the following command:

ALTER DATABASE databasename CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

The script gets all the tables from the database and then loops trough them running this command for each table:

ALTER TABLE table_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8;

Run it like this:

python set_utf_collation.py

set_utf_collation.py

import sysfrom settings import SITE_ROOT

sys.path.append(SITE_ROOT)
import os
os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "project_name.settings")
from django.db import connection

def init():
   cursor = connection.cursor()
   tables = connection.introspection.table_names()

for table in tables:
    print "Fixing table: %s" %table
    sql = "ALTER TABLE %s CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8;" %(table)
    cursor.execute(sql)
    print "Table %s set to utf8"%table

print "DONE!"

init()