Hello
I am a peripatetic music/radio prodcuer, working with young people in schools and communities. My work generally revolves around helping young people from a range of backgrounds to engage with and experience modern recording/sound/music technology.
I've got a new gig starting shortly, helping to set up a 'radio station' in a special needs school.
It's all quite open-ended at the moment, it'll will probably be aimed at producing podcasts and that kind of thing.
However what I'm interested in researching at this stage is ways of using the technology to engage with kids with special needs. I haven't even formally met them yet, so I am clearly going to learn a lot from them when I do.
I have worked with young people with special needs and disabilities before though, including Down's Syndrome, autism and visual impairment, and the rough theory behind what we're going to be doing is based on the following premises:
- most kids, even withdrawn ones, get quite curious and interested when they hear or see microphones, headphones and speakers being used to record voices and sounds
- a lot of kids find it quite exciting to record their own voices and hear them played back
- some kids with autistic behaviours may be drawn into the opportunities recording technology may offer them, e.g. to communicate at length about subjects that interest them, and perhaps even get into the audio editing side of things
- recording radio content - drama, magazine content, community material, school content etc., might be a quite stimulating endeavour for some of these kids, providing them with new avenues of communication and creativity, and perhaps even transferable skills.
I plan to open proceedings by doing demonstrations of recording, examples of vocal manipulation (make your voice sound older or like a chipmunk - always gets a laugh), playing with sound design as used in film/tv/radio drama, a bit of music creation, and see how it goes from there.
But I am also very open to ideas, as I'm not aware of other people doing much of this kind of thing. Does anyone have any relevant experiences, opinions, ideas or general advice that might feed into this kind of work?
Many thanks for any input.
Alex