A few weeks late with this but I just want to share with you the work of a group of year Nine Students at Frankley High in Birmingham.

I’ve been working for Stan’s Cafe and Birmingham Creative Partnerships, with musician Mathew Beckett, to develop podcasting skills in infant and senior school students and staff in Frankley. The most recent results are up on FrankleyTalk (blog every much in beta! any tips to improve it visually gratefully received).

It’s the start of the process for most of the young people, and we have more time in September to leave develop the skills, and hopefully enthusiasm, to continue to use these techniques to raise creativity, aspiration and citizen involvement.

The group pictured above chose to produce a piece of short radio fiction and radio journalism on the connection between boredom and antisocial behaviour. Their starting point was “The tenth pink slip..”  – a drama created in less than a day and based on the fear of getting too many pink slips from the police. The tenth one, they told us, means a likely court appearance.

From dramatists to journalists: the next part of the work produced radio journalism exploring the link between boredom, crime and gangs. (listen to “The Estate We’re In”).

One curious frustration was our attempts to invite the police to come and talk to the students. In principle they were willing to help, in practice it didn’t happen. Even a direct appeal from two of the most pink-slipped young men didn’t manage to get the critical interview. Better forward planning which helps the services understanding the value of work like this as a means of talking directly to young people is on my to do list.

The team presented their work twice, once to the rest of year 9 and once to a Creative Partnership conference. If you want to understand what the work meant to the group listen to this podcast (produced by a shy (!) volunteer conference goer who we trained on the spot)

 

Also read the many comments on the Frankley Talk blog – add to them if you wish.