WE'VE DONE THE FIRST RADIO WORKSHOP FOR THE KIDS!!!

Last weekend we did the first radio workshop for the children (and some of the staff) at Parada de Lucas, which went really really well. Everyone seemed to love it, which was fantastic and it definately served its purpose of inspiring the local community about AfroReggae Digital. I was especially pleased as I had constructed the whole workshop plan (sacrificing the Brazilian sunshine for 4 consecutive days) and this workshop is now established as our Introduction to Radio workshop. I also conducted the workshop in Portuguese!
After brief introductions and a round table discussions on radio and music, I introduced the basics of recording and editing through the concept of Jingles. We got the kids to think of their own DJ names, show names and jingle for their show. I then explained how to record (connecting the equipment, holding the mic, levels etc) and off they went recording their own jingles. We listened to the jingles then loaded them into Cool Edit (editing software), added a few sound effects and hey presto! The kids had made their first radio piece, and hadn't got bored once! In fact, that was the main difference I noticed in teaching the kids here compared to in England. They were so similar in many ways - appearance, likes, dislikes etc but their attitude was very different. The kids i met on Saturday anyway were very motivated. When they introduced themselves, nearly all mentioned how they wanted to do radio as a way of advancing their skill set and increasing their opportunities. For 15/16 year old boys I was impressed by their level of maturity and understanding. They are especially anxious at the moment, for reasons I cannot discuss here, but they still threw themselves into the exercises and I'm hoping I will be seeing them all again at AfroReggae Digital.