ANGELA AGUAYO

The Content Creation Lab is an youth run Media Lab at Illinois Public Media where young people are invited to come in on Saturdays and learn about not only how to create media, but also how to do that in the studios set up here at Illinois Public Media some of the broadcast quality studio systems that we have here, as well as some of the the the expertise that the that the station has, in collaboration with some of our graduate students and our faculty who've come together who study youth media production. And we're interested in, how do we take some of that energy that is around young people making media, and how do we bridge that with professional media practices like podcasting and short-form storytelling?

REGINALD HARDWICK

What time will this take place? And what will they do? Set the scene for what the day will be like.

ANGELA AGUAYO

So, we have three short workshops this April, April 4, April 11 and April 25 from 10am to 12:30pm on each of those Saturdays. And what will happen is that students will come in during those days. We will do a short lesson around storytelling interviewing, and then we'll invite students to walk into the studios and work on collaborative projects with one another, but also to develop their own work. Part of what we're really interested in is the kinds of topics and ideas that young people have and that the conversations that they want to generate themselves. So you know, you know, students making stories about things that are important to them, local sports, culture, music, culture, things that are important to them in their everyday life. 

REGINALD HARDWICK

What ages are you looking to work with and from what geographic areas?

ANGELA AGUAYO

We are hoping to get students from all across the region. So, if you're from anywhere in our central Illinois region, you are welcome to attend these these workshops, and we're looking for high school students, people who are freshmen, sophomore, juniors, seniors, who are interested in media as a profession, who are interested in storytelling, who are interested in doing this as a hobby, who maybe don't know if this is something they might be interested in, but want to try it, and don't want to pay a lot of money to try it.

REGINALD HARDWICK

When they are here, how long are they expected to be here? And can parents stick around? Or do they need to just drop them off and come back? 

ANGELA AGUAYO

That's a good question. You know, our expectation is that, you know, this is a really quick, you know, workshop. It's two and a half hours, and there's three workshops in April, and students can choose to come to one workshop, or they can choose to come to all three, or they can choose to come to two of three, and they can invest in the workshops in terms of where their availability is. 

REGINALD HARDWICK

Do parents need to stick around? Or can parents stick around?

ANGELA AGUAYO

You know, when you drop your kid off somewhere, you probably want to know what's going on. So, we welcome the parents to come on the first day. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to show folks around, and we're happy to show parents, you know, the studio that where their their teen is going to be working. But generally, you know, parents can come and just drop off their kid and we'll work for two hours and then come back and pick up their kid when we're done, but we're happy to show them around a little bit so they can see the studio and where we'll be making media.