Upstarters begin Radio Education

This week, the young Upstarters began their radio education. Last week was a meet and greet and discussion of issues, but this week Refilwe and I commenced in teaching them the skills of how to write for radio. We started off with a ‘freewriting’ session, in which the children wrote as much as they could for ten minutes on one of their family members and why they are important to them. The idea of the freewriting session was for them to write as much as they can, allowing them to formulate ideas for their talk. We then talked to them about the basic principles of writing for a radio talk (for the ear), as opposed to writing normally (for the eye). At this stage they were ready to transform their freewriting ideas into a radio talk. Refilwe and I helped them on their way where it was needed. The workshop finished off with each Upstarter reading out loud what they had produced so far, and we then suggested how each of them could expand on their central idea and improve their writing.

In last week’s blog, I discussed numerous potential problems that, to my mind, we needed to confront in our approach to the Upstart project. I stated that with time, many of these problems can be ironed out. After this week’s workshop and as discussed below, it is already clearer to me how we could overcome a couple of these problems. 

There is, for example, the problem with attendance. Last Friday only two Upstarters came to the workshop. This time, five out of the six turned up. Although this is still not acceptable, it is an improvement, and we will now contact their parents the day before to make sure that they are coming. We also gave the children letters of consent to give to their parents, and we hope this will help to consolidate their investment in this project, and with this their willingness to ensure that attendance at the training sessions is punctual. We’re hoping that the parents are happy for the Upstarters to continue to take part in the radio project, and thus that the letters will all come back to us signed. 

Then there is the problem of time constraints, one that has been of particular concern to Shireen for a while now. Although nothing is yet certain as to how we will work around the limited time that we have, it was established this week that the workshops will run for an extra half an hour, which the Upstarters have been made aware of. It has also been suggested that an hour on Saturday mornings will ease the time constraints, but this still needs to be established due to transport arrangements. After a discussion with Jeanne, it also seems clear that Refilwe and I won’t be able to fit in everything we were hoping to this term, so an interviewing workshop for instance might be postponed to next term. 

At the end of what was another successful workshop, and with the suggestions that we gave them in mind, we assigned the Upstart Radio team the task of completing their radio talk scripts for next week. Not everyone completed their assignments for this week, but their sheepish looks when telling us that they didn’t, suggests that the same won’t happen again. Here’s for hoping!