As an educator, there is maybe no better feeling than when something a kid says or does stops you in your tracks. I have experienced a couple of those moments over the last few weeks, with two utterly outstanding creative-learning organizations that we are currently developing projects with.
The first is LYJA, Lincolnshire Young Journalists Academy. They have created 9 fully functioning newsrooms in schools across Lincolnshire where their professionally trained student-journalists create filmed, radio and online reports which are posted not only to LYJA’s own site, but also on partner news-outlets including BBC Lincolnshire.
It’s a competitive process to become a student-journalist for LYJA, and they have to live up to high expectations. But it pays off because the professionalism of the students and quality of their work is amazing. The Chief Executive of the Royal Albert Hall remarked after being interviewed by them that they were the most prepared journalists he’d ever encountered. To see an example of what LYJA kids are doing, check out their podcasts about our Swanning Around partner, The Royal Albert Hall.
Then there’s the Tallis School of Creativity. Thomas Tallis School in the South London neighbourhood of Kidbrooke (not normally considered a hot-spot of creativity) is a specialist arts college and one of thirty national Schools of Creativity. They have a ‘Creative Tallis’ steering committee, made up of students and teachers who meet regularly to discuss creative learning, plan projects and make recommendations to the leadership team.
I was recently invited to meet with them to discuss running a WebPlay project and I cannot tell you how impressed I was by these kids, and their teachers. The whole environment buzzes with creative ideas. The kids are engaged, mature and obviously feel great ownership of their school and the projects they select for it.
I had an especially riveting moment upon first arriving when a student named Kayleigh, who happens to be deaf, showed me a video project she was working on called ‘What I would make better’. She said that she would change the internet so that all videos and sound files were captioned. Watch her video here. Kayleigh said that for her, the internet was currently ‘useless’. It wasn’t something I had really ever thought of before and it really struck me. Poor Jon (WebPlay’s Projects Manager), first thing I did Monday morning was tell him to figure out how we caption all of WebPlay’s videos for our website. It’s going to be our summer project thanks to Kayleigh.
It’s been fantastic to experience such creative and active participation from young people over the last few weeks. I want to say a big thank you to all the kids I’ve met from LYJA and Tallis recently. You definitely walk the walk.
We’ll keep you updated on our developing projects with both of these organizations.
You can find out more about WebPlay’s other creative projects at www.webplay.org
by rss