Title: Radio Adelaide’s Lifelong Learning

Presented by: Laine Langridge

‘Making Connections Conference 2005 – ACE is for Everyone’

Perth.     1^st & 2^nd July 2005.

Thank you for coming along to this session.

Up until recently, there’s been a perception that not many people listen to community radio but with a recent one-off government grant … a national survey was done and surprise surprise … What did the survey find?  - 7 million people listen to Community Radio.

Now that’s a statistic that makes community radio very attractive as a potential learning provider.

One great 20^th century writer, Anais Ninn wrote

“Every human being wants to be as close to other people’s experiences as possible”

That this is true - is most clearly shown by the fact that millions of normally intelligent people watch a group of not very stimulating strangers locked up together, in the ‘Big Brother House’.

But what I want to talk to you about is far more intimate – Radio.

And to give you an idea of what I mean, I’d like to start by asking you to listen to a young Afghani woman, Laila Azimi:

We can’t help but be touched and moved by the power and emotion of hearing her story. And I think that’s because there is nothing other than the sound, it allows you to concentrate on the meaning and intensity of what’s being said.

How does this fit into the Adult Community Education strategies?

1.      To increase participation and diversity of learners in ACE,

2.      Develop inclusive communities and

3.      Build on the skills and drive of providers and organisations to deliver ACE.

When I look at these goals I can see that radio fits into all of them and I’ll explain how in this session.

The main points I’ll cover are:

Point 1:    Radio is free and accessible to everyone

Point 2:    Formal and informal educational programs can be provided where and when people want them.

Point 3:    Will be examples of the kind of lifelong learning programs that have been successfully completed, so you can see the practicality of putting a series together.

Point 4:     How to go about setting up partnerships with communities, learning providers and

Community radio stations to fund projects that cover a wide range of topics

Point 5:  Educators can learn about effective communication and production techniques through interaction with broadcasters.

Point 1

Let’s take the first point. Radio is free and accessible.

On the table in front of you is a wind-up radio. This radio was developed for remote areas of South Africa … for rebuilding communications after the overthrow of apartheid. It’s powered by a dynamo, or via an integrated solar panel.

And here’s an Ipod. (Or MP3 player) Now with the latest technology you can not only listen to radio as its broadcasting real time but also download and play programs whenever and wherever you want it.

Things we broadcast via radio can be heard by people camping in a wilderness area …  on the other side of the world via our on-line broadcast. It’s the most endlessly flexible, adaptable, cost effective and popular information communication technology and its two particular strengths that are often the key to whether people really use a technology –

It’s free and it’s incredibly portable.

Radio isn’t an ‘old’ technology.  Radio is still at the cutting edge of the latest developments in communications – using web-casting, on-line broadcasting, CD production, and the latest digital technologies.

This means we can present information in a whole new number of ways but still with the great attribute of radio – it’s cheap, usually free.

AND there are more radios in Australia than people!

Radio today is a thriving intersection of technology and – in our hands – education. Using and extending all the newer capacity on-line technologies yet retaining the features that make it the great survivor technology and the most popular of all media.

Let’s expand on some of these features.

*I’ve already said it’s free and accessible to all –there are 4 radios per household, more than there are people in this country.

*The technology of production is cheap, especially compared to TV, easy to learn and broadly accessible.

*Being audio, it can accompany you on your daily life and doesn’t require you to stop everything else. This quality cannot be underestimated in any of our lives.

*Think about when you are by yourself and listening to the radio – or a CD in your car. You are in a uniquely receptive mind space, not the blank space of TV watching, but active and un-self-conscious, you are receptive.

*Radio reveals the great power and effect of audio – which is often relegated to an also ran and not assumed to have a literacy of its own.

Think about the impact on a mother of a child with Down syndrome; say she’s living in Meekatharra. She’s having a cup of tea. The radio’s on and she hears this program. And in spite of that isolation, perhaps for the first time she hears something positive and fulfilling that her child might one day be involved with.

An extraordinary moment of connection in her life.

Normally, if you’re living in a city, suburb or town there are so many possibilities for taking advantage of adult education but there are still the problems of cost, whether you have transport, live as a carer or parent of small children and can’t leave the house for long periods. This is where radio works do well.

Apart from the woman above, there may be the recently redundant dad who doesn’t know how to update his CV, or a neighbour who wants to know about their legal rights with a noisy neighbour or that tree pushing over the fence or someone with literacy problems that has been too ashamed to ask for help in learning how to read. All of these issues have been adult learning programs produced by Radio Adelaide over the last few years.

And to access any of them, all people have had to do – is turn on their radio.

In small communities or suburbs where there might be an adult community centre, one of the issues in the area might be gambling. The local community radio station is playing the series ‘Pokies, Blackjack and All That’. A self-help group may have decided to listen to the series together. Each Wednesday morning the group sit around the radio in the Centre, and listens to the programs together, then discuss the issues raised and how it affects them.

As Western Australia covers such enormous areas, it means there are small communities scattered in areas so far away from personal contact, that radio – and maybe satellite TV are the only access to the outside world.

Say, for instance, you’re working on a farm and it’s harvest time, there’s no way you can jump off the harvester, run inside and listen to ‘The latest developments in Land Practises for salt laden farmlands’.

You might have a trannie that you could listen to while you’re sitting on the tractor.  But in all probability there’s no reception at that time of day and concentration might be an issue.

In the evening you can tune into the radio station that broadcast it during the day via its website and either listen to it then or download it to listen to when the harvest’s done.

With access to computers and the Internet – someone studying through external sources can download educational programs or even lectures and listen to them in their own time – regardless of where they live.

Jus think of what you save – no travel costs, no accommodation fees and you get to stay at home and access the information when you want it.

So it’s free and it’s everywhere but how does it work as a community educator?

Point 2:

Formal and informal educational programs can be provided where and when people want them:

Where and how does it happen?

I’d like to show you how … by looking at Radio Adelaide and the work it’s been doing in Lifelong Learning over the last few years.

Radio Adelaide started off as an educational radio station in 1972 – spoken word only – as a matter of fact the Australian Broadcasting Authority was so strict that when we broadcast performances of Shakespeare’s plays we had to cut out all the music. We’ve since widened our content enormously but education is still intrinsic to our work and vision.

The station is a producer and distributor of audio content – just like a typical broadcaster. If you tune into Radio Adelaide, we sound like any other radio station but with a much greater variety of programming. Sometimes you’ll hear dance hip-hop music, other times a talk recorded at Writers Week and other times an interview with the local politician in the hot seat.  But Radio Adelaide is also an educator … working in partnership with all sectors …

Lifelong learning is an on-going strategy element of Radio Adelaide programming.

Our programs are aired on up to 200 radio stations around Australia, made available on CD, and as ‘audio on demand’ supported by additional learning resources on-line.

Teaching and learning are both transformed when the audio medium is extended in this way.

Contemporary community broadcasters are an exciting resource for educators at all levels:

*There are more community stations than in any other radio network – more than commercial stations and more than the ABC and SBS combined, and we are all managed at the local level, so you can work with us wherever you are.

*Our local services are supported by 3 satellites services – ComRadSat, the National Indigenous Service and the RPH service.

*Our expertise is in combining communication technologies with the skills and knowledge about effective communication,

*We produce and distribute ‘audio content’- that is, we make educational programs and broadcast them on our station 101.5 FM

*We are educators, working in partnership with all sectors – schools, universities, vocational community groups – anyone wanting to learn or to educate.

–We train volunteers that come in to work as presenters, program producers or in the many administration roles that are part of the running of the station.

-We train high school students doing media courses.

-We train university students undertaking degrees in Media.

-We’ve also trained aboriginal students in the Pitjantjatjara Lands to broadcast on their local indigenous radio stations.

*We produce educational resource material in the form of CDs

*We provide audio production services. This involves recording concerts, lectures, forums public events and producing them on to CDs.

Activity

All these programs have been broadcast to our general listeners and been available to our co-developers for their own use in their own time and also been accessed continually through our website.

Point 3:

I want to play you an example of the kind of lifelong learning programs that have been successfully completed, so you can see the practicality of putting a series together.

In particular, I’ll describe the program I worked on last year.

It was a 20 part radio series Called ‘Keep On Keeping On – working and connecting regardless of age’

The Station had previously worked on ageing issues with the Department of Social Services, Ageing and Community Care. When more funding was offered by the Department, the Station applied for funding to produce a series of radio programs on mature age employment and employer attitudes and intergenerational links.

The purpose of the series was to inform a wide range of the community about the issues and problems in mature age employment and intergenerational  issues - 

what is being and can be done about them.

From an Adult Learning point of view this type of learning is one that is done through getting the listener’s interest by raising points and discussing them in a way that isn’t telling them ‘you are going to be learning something so you’d better pay attention’.

People quite often listen to the radio with one ear and when they hear something that concerns or interests them they listen with both ears – sometimes they even turn the sound up!

As a radio producer you know you’ve only got a couple of minutes to get a point across before something else happens to your listeners – the toast burns or they have to get into the shower.

It’s a very different experience from sitting in a lecture and giving full attention.

As an educational program producer what you take into account is:

* You get only part attention to start with

*The information has to be succinct and clear.

*It mustn’t sound like a lecture or a class.

*It has to connect with the listener – either through voice, or the use of humour, music or drama.

The beauty of working on a radio series is

You have time to research the subjects thoroughly

You can talk to lots of people and then

Pick out the ones that are the most interesting to listen to and make the points well.

In the editing process you have the opportunity to hone it down to the essence and put them together so it can be heard once and still convey meaning.

To give you an idea of how Keep On Keeping On took shape, I’ll go through the steps.

I researched the subjects thoroughly, decided who I needed to talk to, to give good, clear information about the issues. There’s a lot of detective work goes on before you do the first interviews.

I ended up interviewing over 40 people, many of them spoke for up to half an hour.  Then I had to listen to all the interviews and work out which ones and how much to use. This is the editing process.

And I must say one of the great joys for me doing this series is how wonderful the technology is now. Digital editing is the sexiest thing that’s come into my life in the last 1ast 10 years!

The challenging and sometimes tedious part is cutting out most of what people say but leaving the essence in.

Again all the time you are trying to give people information in a way so you don’t frighten them off –

Not “Ooohh this is too complicated for me.”  Or “I can’t understand that point.”

But “Hmmm how can I find out more about this?”

You have to set the scene -catch their ears and definitely don’t say – sit very still and listen carefully and be prepared to answer questions at the end

With so much information to get across, the first program aims to give a flavour of what’s to come and the type of people interviewed.

Activity

Now with all the information I gathered I realised that the important issue in mature age employment is how hard it is for workers over 50 to get back into work if they’ve lost the job – be it by redundancy or whatever. There are thousands of over 50s sitting at home right now – depressed and lacking in self esteem – let alone not knowing how they’re ever going to live through and finance a retirement that may well last 30 years.

What I found is that there are many ways they can be helped.

There are agencies- private, volunteer and government that will advise and retrain the mature age, but lots of people don’t know this.

So some of the programs gave examples of groups and people who were offering these services.

I interviewed people who had successfully been through them and were now working – as well as others who had been looking for work for years.

The next example I want to play for you features an articulate older woman who took years to get back into the workforce.

Activity

The second part of the series was on intergenerational issues.

Here there were several major points I wanted to highlight –

First the role of grandparents and issues such as playing a very important role in child caring.

Then how as a society we work out ways for intergenerational mixing.

This story is about an aged care facility that has become a national role model.

Activity

And to finish this section I want to play for you a segment featuring a very successful intergenerational program taking place here in Western Australia.

Activity

So that’s an outline of how Radio Adelaide takes on a lifelong learning project and makes it accessible and hopefully informative while reaching people in their homes.

What really extends the accessibility of this way of educating is the great addition of the Internet. The programs can be heard again and again and specific information accessed.

Right now KOKO can be heard on the Radio Adelaide website or the CDs can be purchased also on that website so if people want to go back to it later – it’s still available.

Point 4:

How do you go about setting up partnerships with communities and learning providers and community radio stations to fund projects that cover a wide range of topics?

It takes a lot of work to make a KOKO (Keep On Keeping On) but that first Afghan sound piece I played is achievable with very little cost and time.

KOKO’s budget was $25,000 and took 6 months to complete.

The Afghani project cost about $300 and took volunteers about a month.

What I’d like us to do now is look at areas that might be suitable for being produced into a radio project.

Activity

So far I’ve been explaining the types of programs we have produced.

You might be thinking ‘How do you go about doing it? Who comes up with the ideas? If you have an idea where do you go from there?

And ‘Where does the money come from?!!

There’s a fine line between being inspiring and being practical. I’m sure many of you are thinking now about possible projects that might suit the area or people you are working with.

But the practicality comes down to having a partnership with a party that can actually produce the goods and has the money to do it.

You can see from the examples I’ve brought along today that Radio Adelaide is extremely experienced in this area. We’ve been doing it for years.

Our mandate is to be a Lifelong Learning provider.

Unfortunately there are not many radio stations set up in a similar way to ours BUT – there is an enormous potential for it to develop.

If you are living in Perth, there are several community radio stations with the facilities to do what we do.

Economics or funding is usually a big issue with community radio, as it has to rely on community support rather than corporate sponsorship or advertising for funding. So many community radio stations haven’t explored producing educational programs simply because the idea of cost has always been an obstacle.

What I’m suggesting is that … the ideas you take away from here today could be worth discussing with your local station.

Now a big plus coming up is that for the first time, the community radio sector is holding its national annual conference here in Perth in November. This will provide a huge input of information and ideas into the local sector.

Hopefully some of what I’ve been talking to you about today will interest local community radio stations and encourage them to think about doing similar projects.

Okay you’ve come up the idea of what you might be able to do

 – but – the Big Crunch! – funding.

Most times Radio Adelaide doesn’t think of an educational series and then think about the funding.

No.  We … or our partners … that is … people like you … are always looking for funding opportunities that fit the need.

For example –

If you look through your local paper or The Australian, you will quite often see – for example -a government ad for community members who want to provide information to the community. It might be ‘How to help new migrants understand the Australian political system’.  You read there are grants of up to $5,000.

You work with the local migrant centre and have some ideas of how to put this information together. The most accessible way to offer it is through a series of radio programs.

You approach the community radio station with a proposal. You apply for the grant. You get it! Then you and the radio station plan how to do it.

One of the difficulties with this … it that magic ad may never come or you don’t buy the paper that day.

Well I have here an excellence resource that we use constantly.

The Easygrants Newsletter and Grants Education Service.

*It covers Federal, State and Local Government Grants

*Philanthropic and Corporate Grants

*It informs you of all the grants to apply for in the next two to three months.

*It has a separate newsletter for each state and Territory

*Plus it has a 24 hour online Search Access to the FundingFinder Grants Register

*And a Grants guru with Tips, advice and support for all your Grant seeking needs

(Excerpt from the cover page):

“Our great grant of the month is the ‘living in Harmony’ program. Just about every community group in Australia can apply, from sporting groups, workplaces, neighbourhood associations, cultural organisations or other local groups. We’re sure that you can make your community group more inclusive and apply for funds through this program.”

I’ll give you written details of how to access this wonderful service.

Easy Grants Newsletter and Grants Education Service

Published by Our Community Pty Ltd

National Headquarters

51 Stanley Street

West Melbourne VIC 3003

PO Box 354, North Melbourne VIC 3051

Tel: 03 93206800 Fax: 03 9326 6859

Email: grants@ourcommunity.com.au

Website: www.ourcommunity.com.au

Subscriptions:

Community and non-profit groups: For community groups there is a special member rate of $45 a year.

This is available to all community and non-profit groups.

It is part of the Our Community Giving Back program where we reduce the fees for community groups.

Government and Local Government agencies pay $330 a year and Private businesses and private individuals pay $470 a year (includes GST) for an exclusive GOLD Easy Grants package. This package includes a special telephone advisory service.

For an updated schedule please visit:

www.ourcommunity.com.au/production_schedule

Point 5:

Educators can learn about effective communication and production techniques through interaction with broadcasters.

This particular point is aimed more at your own needs. All of us can benefit from being better communicators no matter what job we do or where we sit in the hierarchy.

There are times when you will have to address a meeting, forum, discussion, a … conference! And you go through the ‘I can’t possibly do this’ scenario.

‘I’m not a good public speaker. I can’t remember what to say. What if I trip, what if I stutter, what if what if …’

Every day when you tune into the radio and listen to the presenter talking or doing an interview, you can be sure that a whole lot of it has been prewritten if not rehearsed. Certainly with practise good broadcasters can talk and interview without notes. But that’s only because they have trained and trained and absorbed good technique.

Activity

I’m going to give you a list of points to remember and work on … when next you are asked to talk to a group.

List on whiteboard:

1.  Research

2.  Write out exactly what you want to say.

3.  Rehearse aloud.

4.      Reprint the text with changes and rehearse again out loud.

5.      Breathing and relaxation exercises.

1. Research. Even if it’s an area that you know a lot about, it’s usually important to make sure your information is current. Gather as much information as you think you need to be well informed on what you will be talking about.

2. Write out exactly what you want to say. After you’ve done the research … write word for word what you will say - not note form or slabs from texts on whatever you’ve researched. Write it THE WAY YOU WILL BE SAYING IT. That means it will sound like you speak. So you can use contractions eg. "I won’t” not  "I will not." You may need to practise this because there’s always a tendency to make what you write look like a text or ‘conference paper’ rather than writing it for the spoken word.

3. Rehearse – aloud! That’s right. You actually have to read the whole thing out loud in the way you’d say it to your audience. Make corrections where it doesn’t sound right. Make notes as you read it aloud the first time. Read it again, then time it.

4. Reprint the text with any changes then practise reading it in different places – in front of a mirror or the dog … Get the emphasis right. Underline or highlight the important points. Do this often enough so that you start to memorise it. If you’re lucky enough to have a good memory you might get to the point of being able to have the paper in front of you and refer to it only when needed. If you aren’t up to this, read a few lines and then stop and look up at your audience. Then go back to speaking the text.

5. Before your presentation breathe and do relaxation exercises.

This is extremely important. No matter how well prepared you are, adrenalin will be racing and you need to be able to control it.

Activity

The other skill that broadcasters learn is how to interview.

While you may not be doing this in front of an audience, you still want to get the best information possible from the person.

To get good information you have to ask the right questions.

Again broadcasters/journalists are taught the big 5 Ws

What

Why

Who

When

Where

Also Why Now

And add How .. There’s still a W in it.

How many times have you heard someone ask a question that gets a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer?

Eg. Are you happy to be here?

Answer: Yes … or maybe No.

Instead of

“How do you feel about … being here? … the situation? … getting elected? …  losing your job?

You see how this makes the person give a fuller answer.

Or

“Do you like the way things have developed?’

Again you will get the yes or no answer

Instead of ‘How did this situation arise”

This is something you can take away with you and hopefully put to use when needed.

I’ve printed some of the information I’ve presented today on an information sheet that you might like to take away with you

Activity

If there are any questions you have I’ll be happy to try to answer them

If not and we have time, there is a display area where we can walk to and see the Radio Adelaide website for those who are interested.

I’ve tried to cover the many aspects of how radio and Adult Community Education can work together to continue a partnership that I feel enriches peoples’ lives daily in ways it’s impossible to calculate.

I wish you all the best in the area you’re working in and that you also find yourselves enriched by your own contribution to making us a better informed community

Thank you very much.