Tag: teaching podcasting

Highgate Apprentices challenge the government – a new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

This programme is presented by two teenagers from Highgate in Birmingham. Earlier this month Stephen Hughes and Gareth Deeming spent a day in London talking to ministers and senior civil servants about young people and the communities where they live.

They had a few minutes with Baroness Andrews and recorded their conversation on a mobile phone (they had left for London with a digital recorder – which failed on them!). This forms the core of the podcast, but in it they also explain how they want support to work with a group called SCAWDI to develop a new apprenticeship for young people.

The community apprenticeship is being designed to get young people learning through working in their community, and also expose them to a much wider range of experiences and aspirations. The plan is to lift their lives to the point where they can once again fulfill their full potential.

Some other Grassroots programmes connected with this are:

Cuckoos in a White Middle Class Nest – our first ever programme featuring Barbara Willis Brown on the work of Scawdi.
Junior Street Champions – young people working in Lozells.
The Northfield Young People’s Forum – on controlling public money.
SCAWDI – link to a b:cen briefing on the organisation. (dead link)

Birmingham’s Digital Citizens – a new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

bismarckandmillie fromnewtownnickboothThis programme was recorded by the people of Birmingham to tell us what they love about their neighbourhoods. We’d been offered some space in the marquee on Victoria Square as part of the first birthday of Digital Birmingham.

We just wanted to accomplish a couple of things: introduce more people to the Grassroots Channel and give as many as possible the opportunity to record and then edit their own comments for this programme. It was a chance for people to get their hands on some simple digital technology. Millie and her son Bismarck (in the picture) had a go and everyone found it pretty easy. Most seemed to really enjoy the power of digital editing.

And what were they talking about? It was Valentines’ day so we asked them to tell us what they love about their neighbourhood:

Birmingham bits and bats… a new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

Just a couple of things I wanted to mention. Thanks a bundle to Pete Ashton of Bournville (the place where we make chocolate) who wrote this about the Grassroots Channel:

Podnosh is a podcast station based in Birmingham that I stumbled across recently. I like that this pretty established outfit with high aims exists outside of my awareness – it implies there’s even more happening online in the city for me to discover. I’m particularly taken with the Grassroots Channel which “is here to provoke and inspire anyone who thinks they just might want to change the world around them”. For a quality sample check out this interview with Soweto Kinch, a jazz saxophonist and rapper from Handsworth who recently released an CD set in a tower block in B19, samples of which can be found on his MySpace page. Given what he says in that interview I intend to investigate Mr Kinch further.

Pete come and talks to us – I bet there’s loads I’ve yet to discover. Perhaps together we can get dear old web 1.-1 Digital Birmingham listening?

But double thanks to Pete for telling me that Birminghamitsnotshit won the annual Birmingham Pantomime Horse Grand National on just the second time of asking. Unbelievable. Jon Bounds you are in big trouble for not sharing your triumph with us here, first.

Until My Dying Day – Nocks’ Brickworks in Erdington – a new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

Mike Overton has fought for years to prevent developers building homes on an old waste tip and clap pit in Erdington in Birmingham, UK. He talks to Emma Lewis of b:cen about the site and why protecting it matters so much to him. Also in the programme a thanks to listeners in Belgrade and Birmingham who mentioned our programmes on their blogs and more information of the Podminions, a podcast channel run by pupils at Kings Norton Boys School.

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