Coming back to the project after a two month break was tough, the kids were unmotivated and so were we so this week’s sessions were a bit tough. I think maybe in the beginning they felt more enthusiastic because everything was so fun and new and this week the project seems to have become more like homework for them. This is problematic because there is no real reason for them to do the work because they are not getting marked on it and so there is no real reason to put the show together. It seems that for them it is just something we are asking them to do and not of real consequence to their lives. Perhaps this is some failing on our part for not making them more aware of the real way that their show can positively influence people. On the other hand it could just be that the two month break has made them shy of us and we need time for them to feel comfortable with us again.
Sadly one of the grade 4’s, Angel, did not return to the project this term because she had to move away because of family reasons. This has definitely had a negative effect on the group because she was such a talkative intelligent little girl. The other grade 4, Bukho, is finding this tough because without his classmate the older children do not take him seriously and don’t listen to him. He is far more nervous and quiet then he has been in the past, when he was always such a happy bubbly child, and so I think we are going to have to be aware that we need to put more time in with him because he is struggling to understand the process we are engaging in at the moment.
In terms of the actual workshops we had two this week. The first one was a welcome back and ideas session where we had big decisions to make about show topics but I think that maybe it was a bit too much talking and not enough doing because the kids were a bit quiet and uninterested. Originally we decided that we were going to do a show about abuse because this was a topic the children spoke a lot about last term but because of the heavy topic we decided to try and flip this into a more positive topic that wasn’t quite so hectic for kids this young and so we pitched them the idea of a show about safety and safe living. They were really keen and then we all chatted about the name for the show and decided on Safety Rules!! Which works nicely as a little play on words. The safety idea seems to be a good one because it can cover so many different aspects of safety which we then brainstormed and each of the learners were then able to pick stories they wanted to investigate. One of the problems we had is that the age at which the students are is an age where they tend to just agree with all authority figures and so getting them to truthfully say what they think about story ideas or show concepts is always difficult when they just keep agreeing. It’s this aspect of working with children that I find particularly hard in terms of true participation but I’ll talk more about that a bit later. The session was great in terms of deciding story ideas and familiarising them with the concept of a radio show and what their different roles in the show will be. The part they probably enjoyed the most was when we got them to audition for the role they wanted to be but they all wanted to be anchor and so it was difficult to choose who would be what. We decided to have two anchors of the show who will be Simphiwe (grade 7) and Mawande (grade 6) and originally we were going to have one assistant producer for the show and two editors for the PSA’s but none of the children were very keen to be assistant producer (because they didn’t like the idea of bossing the other children around) so we opted to have a PSA team of three: Lihle (grade 7), Azizipho (grade 5) and Bukho (grade 4). They all seemed fine with this but I think that those who did not get the anchoring role were a bit disappointed but we tried to explain that their roles as reporters would be vital to the show and that all of their voices would be in the show.
The second session went better in some respects because they wrote radio talks about a time they did or didn’t feel safe and recorded them in the studio which they enjoyed. We also ran a session about PSA’s where we played them back some examples and then got them to script some ideas. They actually all did really well and came up with some great stuff – especially Simphiwe’s dialogue he wrote about drunk driving - and I think we will definitely be able to use some of what they wrote, if we just polish it a bit, for the final PSA campaign so this was a great starting point. They seemed a bit more enthusiastic but still not as excited as last term. The big problem came in terms of them just not recording any of the assignments we set them yesterday, only one or two of them recorded anything at all. This really worried me because if they do not go out and do interviews and record things about safety we are not going to have a show at all. Once again this does not really seem to be a motivating factor. I’m not sure if it may not just be that they can’t really understand the concept of a magazine show fully yet or if they are bored of the project. I felt like I was the wicked witch of the west telling them they had to do all of these things or we wouldn’t have a show but I’m struggling to find a better solution to their apathy. They were generally naughtier during workshops then they have been in the past and so maybe that contributed to them not doing their work properly.
I’m not sure how much more insight we have gained into the lived experiences of the children this week because they have not been very forthcoming about their lives or experiences. Through the work they have done we have learned more about their ideas and experiences of safety and I hope that given the weekend they have been able to gather information and conduct interviews that we can use for the show and that next week will be more productive and inspiring.
This all got me thinking about the participatory process in general. I think that we have come to realise this week that true participatory work with children is a difficult thing to accomplish because the more involved we are in story ideas and actual interviewing the less participatory the project becomes; however the more responsibility and real work we place in the hands of the children the less real quality outcomes we achieve. So this is the difficult line we sit on, how much do we let them decide and how much do we help? If we help them too much are we falsifying the true participation process or are we aiding it?
These are all of the questions and thoughts I have been grappling with this week, let me know what you think,
Until next time, keep listening to the radio
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