West Cork Music is delighted to announce details of its latest READ ON activity – Youthcast, which provided support and training to facilitate young people to create, record and share their new creative work using multimedia technology.
Murder Manor was devised, written and performed by members of Activate Youth Theatre, with support and mentoring from Dave Lordan. The participants were mentored to create a concept for their piece, device and write a script, record the scenes, edit the recordings, contribute to the sound design and distribute the final product.
One of the participants, 18 year old Brien Ahern from Blackrock, Cork, explained the process. “We devised and performed a radio play entirely on zoom. Once we settled on a theme of murder mystery, a few of us got tutoring from Dave Lordan on sound editing and what goes into it and what we can get out of it. We devised scenes amongst ourselves which we recorded and then put in script form which we would then edit and refine. .After every scene was recorded with the help of Dave we put it all together and gave feedback on various aspects such as music choices and sound quality as well as how we are going to distribute it to different media outlets. This process was completely new and unlike anything I’ve done.”
His enthusiasm was shared by the other participants.
“This production for me exemplifies the determination of our youth theatre, finding new ways of performing and being adaptable.” – Danny Foley
“Because of social distancing we were working remotely on an audio drama. As a sixth year student I was dealing with lot of uncertainty and having a social and creative outlet helped me feel some control and less alone.” – Laura Bradfield
“I think making this radio play has been brilliant, and working with a professional was really interesting and I think I learned a lot. Working over zoom especially was a totally new experience and I really enjoyed it!” – Ellie O Connell
“This experience has taught me so much about how to record and get a better understanding of narration , as well as collaborative efforts with my peers.” – Niall Delaney
“The podcast training has given me invaluable skills in lots of different areas. I loved having the chance to devise and perform our own radio play as it gave me an insight into a genre I’d never considered before! Working via Zoom was great and it really helped me through lockdown!” – Anna O’Connor
“The innovative nature behind the project gave it a spark of energy and life that motivated me, and everyone else, to truly give it their all. Whether it be improving scenes to then adjust into a script, or talking with Dave Lordan about sound and audio details to do with the play. This whole experience was amazing, it brought us a lot closer together and I can say I’m genuinely proud of the work we all did as a team.” – Joe Murray.
The podcasts will be available on our Murder Manor pages, Vimeo Showcase and YouTube playlist. The first episode will go live on 30th September and the next four added each Wednesday with the final one uploaded on 28th October.
Find out more about the process from Brien Aherne:
READ ON is a 48-month European project which is being delivered through 7 partner organisations across 6 EU countries; Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Activities include Reading Programmes, Creative Writing, Interviewing, Literature and Cultural Identity, Graphic Novels, Illustration, Training for Professionals, Audience Development and Multimedia. The project commenced in June 2017.
READ ON is undertaken with the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and the Arts Council.
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