This term Refilwe and I will be working with Upstart, a newspaper written by the youth for the youth. One of our partners will be Rhodes Music Radio, who will be hosting the show on which Upstart Radio will be broadcast. We will also be assisted by Shireen Badat, the founder of Upstart, in preparing six Upstart members to work as the production team for the show. Our aim this semester is to help this team to run a series of radio productions. The following passage outlines my assumptions and beliefs of the task ahead.
I am fully aware of the problems associated with the standard of education in many of the communities in Grahamstown, so my immediate assumption about the children that we will be working with is that they will not be familiar with audio production. Therefore the workshops that we will host for them may require a lot of time and patience. This is why Shireen Badat has informed us (Refilwe and I) that when it comes to interviewing the children who want to be part of the team, we must keep the questions we ask short and light, without being judgmental about their lack of previous experience or knowledge about audio production. It is up to us to teach them how to present and articulate themselves on radio.
There are issues that always need covering in the community, such as crime, substance abuse and education. These were also the kind of issues that were dealt with on last year’s Upstart shows. My sense that this approach would not captivate and entertain an audience of the kind that Upstart targets. I believe the aim should be to provide something lighthearted and fun- something that the youth within the communities can enjoy and relate to. At the same time though, these shows do have the opportunity to be informative to the community, and this can be achieved with various features that address important issues, such as substance abuse, a matter that Shireen believes should be raised again. Therefore to meet the needs of the community and in accordance with my personal philosophy, I am going to create informative and entertaining features, where the children that I will be helping to produce the shows also gain enough experience to keep the show going once Fifi and I have completed our studies.
There are various contributions that I can make to this community project. I hope, most importantly, to be a teacher and a leader. By using my experience and skills as an audio student, the workshops that I will host will allow the children to learn the necessary skills to present a radio show. These skills include voice control, sound and editing and anchoring skills. I also hope my leadership skills will allow me to engage with the children in a way that allows them to feel comfortable to approach me and talk to me openly.
In my coursework, I have been looking at different approaches to social research, such as paradigms. Paradigms constitute useful areas of thought which can place me within a certain approach to the way I conduct research. I consider myself to be situated in an interpretive and critical paradigm of thinking. In interpretive thinking, the purpose of the approach is to explore and question phenomena in a more investigative manner. The nature of the individual is empathetic and subjective. In critical thinking, the purpose is to consider how social phenomena develop in social contexts. It focuses on the contingent variables of our social selves rather than the inherent quality that it possesses in itself. The individual is suspicious and political. In light of this, I aim to use my subjective way of reporting to influence the children to facilitate debate and discussion, and from a critical perspective, challenge certain issues in some of the features.
Another aspect of our coursework that we were introduced to was the concept of service learning. The aim of service learning is to provide a service to the community whilst benefiting in the process. I hope to fulfil this aim by learning how to facilitate shows and hosting workshops, which is important in order to gain experience in leadership. However, as I don’t wish to pursue a career in community radio, the values and skills I will acquire to meet the skills required to move into commercial broadcasting remains to be seen.
As said before, maintaining and sustaining this project after Fifi and I have finished University is something we will be watching closely this year, as we consider it crucial to the success of this project. Last year this didn’t happen, so we will be looking into why this was the case. There are a couple of obvious ways to rectify this. Firstly, rather than Upstart being a weekly half hour show, it could be transformed into a number of features, so that the workload and expectancy of always producing a weekly show isn’t as demanding. I will also liaise closely and frequently with the children to ensure that they are happy and that they are confident to present the shows. If they build up enough confidence and experience, they may be able to feel that they carry on without us.
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