Tag: Frankley Talk

Very Local Media blossoming in Lozells – but who should keep watering it?

I was really pleased to find the first bulletins from Lozells News – a new child led digital service, appear in my feed stream last week:

Lozells News Highlights from can uk on Vimeo.

This is a project from CAN-UK, who’ve been working from Ladywood for more than a decade. Lozells already has the very fine www.lozells.info and the South Lozells Housing Regeneration area is beginning to use the web to tell the story of how it is progressing, see vision-lozells.org.

A couple of things.

The first is the question of how to integrate these a little better and so seed more local story telling? Perhaps a local social media surgery might help? It is a certainly somehting I’d be interested in.

The other is that our own experience of creating local news with young people  in Frankley or Castle Vale (and others) tells us there remains a problem of how we keep things going once the project ends. There’s no lack of enthusiasm from the young people:  Comments like

this was the best week ive had at Frankley, and making this podcast was a great experiance!

and

can’t wait to see if we do anything else

show there is an appetite for more.  It’s rarely an issue of equipment or websites etc, these are now cheap enough and simple enought to leave behind.  I think the problem is often who will take the lead/ownership in your absence.

So thoughts?  How could we ensure that when the project dosh dries up the storytelling keeps flowing?

Of All the People in All the World finally comes to brum.

One of Birmingham’s greatest recent cultural exports has finally found a venue in Birmingham. Birmingham based Stan’s Cafe describe their enormous show over on their site:

As you approach this former metalworking factory you will be given a grain of rice. This grain is you. Inside lots of people are waiting for you, billions of them, each represented by a grain of rice. 112 tonnes of rice – 6.7 billion grains – one for everyone on the planet.

As you explore the extraordinary landscape of rice hills and mountains stretching out in front of you, you discover every pile represents a different population and that together these piles tell hundreds of stories, stories of the world’s people and politics, history and current affairs.

This breathtaking show has amazed adults and children alike, from Los Angeles to Melbourne, Madrid to New York City and now it is coming home. Shocking, up-lifting, thought provoking and funny, Of All the People In All The World will change the way you think about the planet we share. Come and find yourself.

So from the 13th September to the 5th October you can visit this astonishing performance for the modest fee of £2.50 at Birmingham’s AE Harris Factory, B3 1SZ.

[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iDWcuBygAUw]

Before then you can add a statistic to the performance – just think of one grain of rice represents one person and give them your numbers here.

Podcasting in Plain English plus Frankley Talks again.

Students at Frankley High have returned to their experiment with podcasting which I was helping to support last year. It’s taken a while to get back but we’re hoping to create a learning group where those who worked with us last year begin to show the teachers how to use the kit.

We also went through a fascinating process for a Creative Partneships project – we had a series of teachers pitch to us about how they would like to use podcasting.

It is a really positive starting point for any school work because it helps the staff focus on why they might want or need your support. It allows us to put our effort where we are most likely to find the enthusiasm to turn the skills into something of mainstream value, which of course is likely to further encourage other teachers to experiment with social media.

Anyway thanks to Laura for listening to the warm up podcast for a year 9 group and commenting. Laura also helped me spot this youtube film from commoncraft on her blog. Useful woman: Laura.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-MSL42NV3c&eurl]

Update. Thanks also to Andy for his thoughtful comment on the Frankley Talk blog about the problems of background noise and people with hearing problems.

Hear by Right – new website

Tim Davies tells us he’s off to the pub having just finished a substantial revamp of the Hear by Right website. Hear by Right sets out standards and principals designed to help organisations involve young people in what they do and how they do it.

The mapping tool looks promising as a means to encourage collaboration between organisations, although there seems be a bit of a gap where brum sits. It’s great to see Tim so closely involved because he is working methodically and intelligently to explore how social media will improve participation. With the site they aim to:

Create a space to share learning from the many 100s of authorities and organisations using Hear by Right to map and plan for change.
Curate and share some of the best resources to support the participation of young people in decision making Encourage organisations to be more open about the challenges and successes in engaging young people in decision making.
Make clear the neccessary link between participation in decision making and real change for the lives of young people.

Our experience with podcasting as a tool to encourage conversations (and using the microphone as a tool which a lot of people find gives them a bit of extra power and confidence) is that we can relatively easily share skills and engendered huge amount of enthusiasm. However maintaining the momentum is the challenge – it needs to be planned for from the start.
Loads to learn and this site is a great place to start learning.
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