By many or by few

The past two weeks have been rather disappointing considering that two or three of the Upstarters showed up. This past Friday Xabiso and Reggie were the only two to arrive, while the weekend before the two of them showed along with Aphiwe. Our first show should ideally be this coming weekend, and if that’s going to happen, we as a team have a great deal to do if we’re going to make it come together. Let me walk you through what we did manage to do and my current thoughts.



Reggie and Xabiso searching through old Upstart editions for content.

Writing for radio

This past Friday we met with the Upstart Radio team and began writing for radio. We asked them to write a radio script about someone important in their lives. The process began with a “free writing” exercise in which they wrote for a few minutes everything that came to their minds without raising their pens. We then played a few examples of some radio talks so that they would have an idea of how they should go about changing their free writing notes to a radio script that would be written for the ear. The team then began writing their scripts with assistance from Tom and me.

Reggie editing his script 

The beginning of something great

Last week we short listed ten of the Upstarters, based on essays that they had written for this purpose. On Wednesday, we called in the children who ended upon the short-list for an interview. I think that, for most of them this was probably the first time that they had to take part in an interview. And there was, of course, a fair amount at stake, since only six out of the short-list of ten would make it onto Upstart Radio! The whole time, I kept thinking about how I hated being the one who would crush their radio dreams.

Thoughts before the start

Our partnership with Upstart is finally beginning but until we actually meet the young people we will be working with, it all feels abstract. We’ve met with Shireen Badat, the Project manager of Upstart and Tom and I are making plans, but it’s all going rather slowly because we haven’t really begun doing the practical work.