Have Your Voice Heard – Multimedia Weekend Training

A weekend of small beginnings

LOOK www.look-uk.org, in association with www.Screenreader.net , hosted a multimedia training event for young people with a visual impairment at the prestigious Think Tank in Science Museum Birmingham.

Josh with Training Certificate

Setting the scene – Since 2004 OutLOOK (LOOK’s Youth Service) has produced OutLOOK audio magazines for children and young people (CYP) with a visual impairment (VI) across the country. CYP have always featured and have been the emphasis of the project, in the form of; musical contributions, presenting and a percentage of reporting. Throughout the years the magazine has become increasingly representative of CYP however OutLOOK feels that it could not take the next big step of true representation without training and equipment for its members. With support from Screenreader.net funding from ‘ BBC Children in Need’ was made possible with joint funding from ‘The Parenting Fund’ Norfolk this idea became reality. With additional thanks to Olympus, RNIB Digital Accessibility Team and Granite 5 for all their support.

Who was chosen to attend?
The CYP for their previous involvement in the OutLOOK audio magazine, their expressed interest as a journalist or presenter or future sound technician.  The weekend saw 10 delegates (with an additional 2 volunteer/participants) with a visual impairment.

The Offer
For children and young people with a visual impairment to be trained in audio recording, interview techniques and web design.

For What Purpose?
For the CYP to become regional ‘OutLOOK Roving Reporters’, for which they record articles to be uploaded onto their own regional website and selected on to the OutLOOK audio magazine.

The commitment from CYP?
To take on teachings with training
To handle their recorders with care and use them appropriately
To meet the realistic deadlines requested by OutLOOK for the website, audio recordings and uploads. Make comment on the use of their DM5 recorders. To enjoy their new responsibly and use their experience to develop their own C.V.

Preparation
Before the training weekend the attendees were asked to vote on their favourite website domain. After all votes were cast. They decided on the name ‘outlookoutloud’ as the voice behind OutLOOK.

A special piece of software had been created for the CYP by Granite 5, a Cambridge-based web company dedicated to accessibility and inclusion. This eGenius software makes sure that everything goes in the right place. It helps the CYP to produce an attractive webpage and it all works well accessibly with screenreader assistive softwares.

East Midlands Roving Reporters deep in discussion

The concept in detail
All the children and young people came from 5 different regions of England and could be split into 5 equal groupings. The North East, West Mids, East Mids, the South East (inc London) and the East. Within the network we wanted for all the CYP from the different regions to have their own website as part of ‘outlookoutloud’. To upload their roving reports specific to their region, to provide a short profile of themselves and feel connected to the wider network of OutLOOK, to show the voice behind OutLOOK as a truly youth led project. These websites we be able to be viewed at the end of May 2011.

Conclusion

The children and young people now have the basic skills to be champions for their Outlook Magazine and mentors to other young people interested in becoming reporters for the magazine. Additionally, they have the building blocks to further develop their skills in editing and production in future training events.

In response to the evaluations received and the praise and welcomely received constructive criticism we strongly believe that we would like to run similar training events not only to build upon prior learning for the attendees but to offer the training to others in order to widen the network and to encompass more CYP in more regions.

One interview was edited and presented to the young people to show what their final piece could sound like for inclusion in a future Outlook Audio Magazine – 1st Roving Report

“Loved it all – great experience, I’ve met some amazing people and I am very proud of the certificate I received on the last day! Thank you LOOK!!” Immie aged 13 years. (her movie of the event to follow)

Immie with Certificate

If you would like to be apart of any future events similar to the training weekend please get in touch. vicky@look-uk.org

For a more detailed report please visit Multimedia Weekend1