YOUTH PRODUCED MEDIA
The New Podcast: YouthSoup
YouthSoup is a youth produced podcast from Listen Up Youth Radio’s Youth Media Collective, distributed by our friends at the Alive Podcast Network! Each episode is told from your everyday youth who discuss real-life social issues that teens and young adults face in our daily lives. As media storytellers, it is our intention to add some youth to your soup, some flavor to your day, and to acknowledge and raise awareness of these topics to let you know you are not alone.
Youth Produced Audio Stories
2021 Imagining Future Worlds Radio Play
During summer 2021, a group of Listen Up youth were a part of a creative laboratory where they learned about abolition, community safety, radio production, and script writing. Participants then wrote and produced a short radio play envisioning how their communities could function in more humane ways if they were designed by youth. This work is funded in part by the Minnesota Humanities Center with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the NEH. A big shout out to our guest artists and trainers who helped youth producers learn along the way: Saymoukda Vongsay, Aziza Bisanz, and Antonio Duke with Black Table Arts.
One young person that is involved with the radio play said, “The entire radio play process was such a great learning experience for me. I learned that I enjoy collaborative brainstorming, and for once I didn’t take the lead in a project and allowed other creativity to shine. It felt nice to be a supporter.”
Thoughts from Anniessa, the project ideator:
“Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.” -Ruth Wilson Gilmore
After last summer, we at Listen Up have been reflecting on youth voice in the ongoing wake of uprising in our city. Themes of police brutality, racism and injustice are familiar topics for youth to cover in their audio productions, but I was noticing the youth’s desire to go beyond status quo in a different way after summer 2020.
During one of our youth forums, folks were grappling with really important questions around police abolition, which sparked the wondering: what would a police-free world look like? While youth producers often work in reporting, we thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to move into a more creative audio style: the radio play.
Last week we began our radio play workshops. Thanks to a generous grant from the Minnesota Center for Humanities, our youth have been able to be paid to write, act in, and produce a powerful radio play about every day abolition. I was blown away by our grounding conversations - folks were passionately talking about systemic oppression and the liberated future they envisioned for themselves and their families. One question that came up was: How do we move with the principles of seven generations thinking - that each action we make today impacts seven generations in the future? We definitely grappled with how to practice abolition in our day-to-day life. How can we build a police-free world if we can’t deal with conflict in our own lives?
I’m the end, producers have taken on a play in three acts, including script writing, sound design, character and plot development and the theme of generational and every day abolition. They have been working hard collaboratively, and we’re excited to wrap up recording this week and share our final radio play with you all! — Anniessa
Summer Media INSTITUTE 2020-2022
Since 2019 Listen Up has offered a Summer Media Intensive (formerly Summer Media Institute), informed by KFAI Radio’s Youth News Initiative, a program created by Listen Up volunteer and former KFAI Executive Director, Janis Lane-Ewart. The Summer Media Institute leverages Listen Up’s partners, including Step Up and Right Track, to pay young people to learn about media justice, media literacy, audio production, community journalism and storytelling from local and national media makers, while using their voice to share stories that create change in their community. All interns create a final audio piece, learn audio recording & editing and attend guest speaker trainings by local media makers. For return interns, several different media and leadership tracks are available
Youth Media Collective 2020
Listen Up’s Youth Media Collective is an after school program expanding upon the Summer Media Institute’s curriculum, with a focus on media entrepreneurship for high schoolers & some college students. Youth produce audio stories, facilitate Youth Forums, plan media and arts events, and produce a range of other media.