Our Saturday morning podcast project at Stratford Media Circus finally came to an end this week. We were joined by two BBC radio producers who offered feedback to the participants and talked about how they could develop there skills.With bags of experience and enthusiasm, we all benefited from there received wisdom and we at times wished we were on the shoes of the participants once again!

The young people were each presented with a final mix down of the pieces they have been working on over the past 5 weeks. It included interviews, stories, sound effects, live performances, groups projects, individual projects and of course a range of indents.Overall, the young people enjoyed the project a great deal and got a lot out of it, as did we, and hopefully, there will be plenty more to come.

Big thanks to Lou & Alice for coming in and enlightening us as to the inner workings of BBC radio production, also to Stuart, Sound Connections, Stratford Media Circus and of course, all the young people who took part. Well done everyone!

With one more session to go, we’ve been busy tying up any loose ends and making sure we have recorded all the material we need to assemble all our shorter audio pieces into one big one. One big Podcast that is - made up of interviews, the groups favourite tracks, stories, sound FX, narration and more. We’ve also had a bit of a photo shoot so the participants can walk away with not just an audio record of the work shops, but a visual one too.

Next week, we will be making the final touches and presenting each participant with a finished product. Stuart has even promised to reward them with a bakewell tart each. We look forward vey much to these moments!

This Saturday saw the podcast group get to grips with creating an original story and learning how to jazz it up and flesh it out with sound effects sourced from the collective hard drives of Stuart and Tom. Hosting more participants than ever, we worked in separate groups to create two very different pieces of storytelling, including such edge-of-the-seat antics as police chases, trick or treaters, revenge and celebration parties that even we grown-ups couldn’t rival.


It was great to find focus with the young people and demonstrate to them how they could polish up their work using the editing suite - a kind of aural airbrushing! The addition of our in-house wordsmith Jasmine, meant the participants could really explore the relationship between writing stories and using sound effects. A rather extensive collection made it possble to add depth to their stories that featured Big Ben, horses whinnying, doorbells and more. We are building on the skills of the group and are moving towards a nice body of work.

This week, we have focussed on working as a group. After an initial brainstorming session, we came up with the name Music Mashup Podcasters which we think reflects what we have been up to in our workshops.

The next logical step was to create an indent for the group which was a lot of fun - you can see the photos by clicking here. For this, we decided to employ a good old box of percussion including shakers, triangles, djembes, marracas and more. After a lot of noise, we think we’ve come up with something.

We’ve also built on our interviewing techniques and generated reems of material. All in all, the group have got plenty to say so we’re looking forward to next week when we’ll be assembling it all into the form of a podcast.

The day is Saturday, March 8th and we have just finished our first podcasting workshop at Circus Media, Stratford which is delivered in association with Sound Connections and Youth Music Action Zones. The group of young people seemed to enjoy themselves a great deal and commented on how they were looking forward to attending next weeks session.

This week we have focused on the fundamentals of recording and spent time interviewing and getting to know one another. Each participant has worked hard to create audio content based around there favourite musical styles, bands and interests which we will be looking to edit into the form of a podcast over the coming weeks. Led by Stuart Silver and assisted by hubsters Tom and Andi, the programme has gotten off to a cracking start and everyone involved has greatly enjoyed what looks to be a hugely rewarding project. To see the pics, just click here.

Do you have an interest in music or radio and are looking to develop your digital expertise in this field? If so, you may be interested in what we have on offer…

Funded by Sound Connections and supported by Attitude Is Everything, the hub will be producing and delivering another inspirational training programme centred around podcasting.

The project Podcast Connections is a programme of workshops for disabled young people between the ages of 11–25 and is completely FREE! It is a workshop programme that enables participants to develop all the practical skills and knowledge they need to put together their own podcasts.

Including digital production skills, feedback from industry professionals, help to share and promote your music via a range of multi media channels and a chance to play live, you’d be mad to miss out on this fantastic opportunity!

Beginning on Saturday 8th of March and continuing to Saturday March 29th, the programme will run between the times of 10:00–15:00 at the Stratford Circus in East London.

To reserve your place on the course, you will need to fill out a brief application form which can be obtained by clicking here. This should be returned by 12:00 mid day on Wednesday 5th March so you’ll have to hurry as we only have 10 spaces!
For more information, please contact andi@thehubuk.com

Festival Update
We are pleased to inform you that getmytickets.co.uk is now well into its three week ‘Dummy Festival Season’. This will run until January 9th, 2008 enabling us to trial the site as if it were fully operational.

Working with five festivals from around the UK, we have populated getmytickets.co.uk with out-of-date or fake ticket information to give potential users a realistic idea of what the site will look like and how it will operate. The feedback we gain from this exercise will enable us to make any necessary tweaks or changes.

Alongside the five festivals, we have also been working in partnership with the Association of Festival Organisers (AFO) and the British Arts Festivals Association (BAFA) to bring you this online ticketing service for independent festivals across the UK.

Interested in getting involved?
The site has been set up to allow fake tickets to be purchased. If you would like to help us out by buying some (don’t worry, no money actually changes hands!), then please get in contact us via intern@thehubuk.com and we will supply you with further details on how to do this.

If you’d like any more information about the project, then do get in touch with Jenny Harris here at the hub: jenny@thehubuk.com or getmytickets.co.uk@gmail.com