All the world's a stage...

The experimental work and class exercises you've been doing have shown the real depth of talent in the room and the interest in the process and methodology of expressing ideas outside of the usual conventions of radio broadcasting - but we have been struggling a little to find a new place to play. The web and audio platforms, such as podcasting, give you a unique opportunity and an extraordinary freedom to get your toys out and throw them around without fear of regulation-junkies or limitations of target audience expectations.
The content and subject matter of the pieces played yesterday largely pointed, directly and indirectly, to issues faced by young people. The discussions, critique and q&a sessions revealed your wish to be proactive and to use the audio in a positive, discursive and educational way - but how and where?
A really good example of young people creating their own unique platform is in Canterbury where the concentrated schools, FE and HE student population have got together to form an FM radio station called City Sound. They have secured a five year professional license for 50% speech and 50% music and have been very well supported by the universities and their unions. The creation of CSR which runs a fairly traditionally styled operation has also presented an opportunity for less traditional production output to be aired - but the unique qualities of the web have allowed this to go much further. One group of students put together a sit com about a fictional university called the University of Konkerbury which has taken on a life of it's own as you will see. The sit com episodes can be heard live on CSR on Wednesdays at 9pm or downloaded via the Konkerbury site.
A little further afield is Youth Radio which is well worth a look and listen to see what other young people are talking about and trying to achieve through the audio-web arena. There are lots of examples like this which you can find on the net - let us all know what you find.
Yes Amanda, but what does this have to do with me and my experimental features class? Well, the problem is clearly not a lack of talent, production ability, ideas or motivation to make positive change - but perhaps the lack of a stage upon which to express your ideas and get some exposure.
As an author from the West Midlands once said, 'All the world's a stage' and thanks to the web that is a tangible reality - so why not take the lead from your peers in Canterbury and create your own theatre, build your own stage and direct your own production as you like it.

The 5 Live Report

I'm sure you know about the 5Live Report already - I've talked with Michelle about it during the Online Journalism classes. If you don't, it's definitely worth trying to catch it - it runs for half an hour on Sundays at 7.30 PM on 5Live.

Each show gives the documentary feature treatment to an ongoing news story - subjects covered recently include the growth of cannabis use in the UK (and the dominance of skunk) and the way some teachers now cheat to boost their pupils' results in SAT tests and GCSEs. I like the shows because they generally succeed in making subjects accessible without getting too tacky/sensationalist.

Sometimes the show turns up excellent stories that don't get much play across the rest of the media. About a year ago, I heard a great report into organised attempts to defraud the student loan system. Basically, con artists were signing up at multiple university courses and claiming loans, using stolen birth certificates. The programme focused on one guy who had signed up to around 20 courses at London colleges - often several at the same institution.

The show was a good example of the usefulness of court reporting. The starting point for research on the documentary seemed to be the sentencing of this one con man. The reporter had picked up the story from there, talked to the police then built up the report.

Anyway, it was a great programme. Unfortunately, it's not available any more on the 5Live site. However, you can still listen to some recent shows via the series site and also sign up for the weekly podcast.

Radiolab on WNYC New York Public Radio

One of the great things about the net is the way you can listen to radio from around the world, sample different approaches to radio news and documentary features. But you know all that already. So I should just cut to the case and post the link.

One interesting show that's worth a listen is Radiolab, which is produced by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich for WNYC New York Public Radio. They take a fairly open ended approach to documentary, tackling big themes - laughter, mortality, deception, memory and forgetting - in a imaginative way that shows a real feel for sound. I love the idea of doing a show about laughter - because as soon as you hear someone laughing, you're amused, engaged and kind of laughing along too.

Some bits of the shows are irritating - I'm not sure of the dialogue between the two guys works - it gets a little confusing at times. But perhaps that's a product of listening on the net. I think the way they put the shows online is really interesting. You can listen to all the shows online or download the podcast. But they also document all their sources and provide links to their websites - look at the page for the Laughter show as an example. (Incidentally, the pic above is of a laughing owl - apparently - and comes from the Radiolab site).

Avant-garde Sound Art

If you feel like broadening your horizons a little (OK a lot) then why not look around on UbuWeb. It's a huge online resource devoted to avant-garde audio-visual art. This covers everything from poets reading their work to artist films and sound art. OK - this may be a bit too out there, given that you are doing a Journalism course. And the site is a bit art theory jargon-heavy. That said, sometimes you can pick up really interesting ideas from this kind of thing.

I liked the Komar and Melamid and Dave Soldier audio art project, in which the artists (the first two) did a number of surveys on what people wanted from music and then, with the third guy (a musician) used the statistical data they got to create a Most Wanted Song and also a Most Unwanted Song. You can listen to both online. (They did the same thing to create a Most Wanted Painting - that's the pic shown above. I found it on Bob Rini's blog but it's all over the place online).

I also found a good selection of recordings of William Burroughs - the 20th Century American experimental author who worked with cut-ups (of tape and newspapers) to create novels and poems. If you've never heard him read before, it's worth a quick go.

Welcome to the unit blog

Ok - so this looks like just another blog. And, let's face it - you've probably had enough of the blogging already from me. So don't think of it as a blog. Really, it's a bold experiment that aims to push the boundaries of current thinking on teaching and learning. Or something like that.

Actually, the idea is to see if blogs can be used to support your work on the Radio Features unit. So kind of like the thing we're doing with the Red Button blog. Amanda already uses Blackboard to circulate hand outs, handbooks and important info and links. The idea isn't just to do the same thing with this, though we will be posting links to interesting material, in particular interesting radio work.

Rather, the plan here is to involve you directly and see if the blog works as a tool for discussing the work you're doing on the unit. Once I've set it up properly, you will all be guest authors on this blog. You'll be able to post on here - add your own ideas and links.

What you post is, on one level, up to you. But we'd like to encourage you to post ideas or updates about the work you're doing on the unit. Perhaps you've heard something that really inspired you and you want to see what other people think. Perhaps you've got an idea and you want to test it out on the class. You can do that on here. You can also leave comments - on the ideas people post here, on the links people highlight.

Now, clearly, it's possible to have discussions on Blackboard. But if we do it on the blog, it's easier to link out the web and connect what you talk about to other resources online.

That's the idea. It may turn out that it doesn't work that way at all. You may discover an alternative use for the blog.

But however it goes, I hope you find it useful.