Hear Me Out. How to Use Participatory Audio for Supporting Young People

Participatory Audio, one of the participatory media methods, is a way of empowering people by supporting them to share their personal life stories with the help of digital means of expression - in this case audio recordings, soundscapes and personal stories recorded digitally.

The philosophy behind the method is that everyone has a story to tell. We often work with groups of people, who do not have a voice in popular media or are only represented by statistics. Many people believe that what they have to tell is not interesting enough, that they are not creative enough, or they don’t want to bother others with their worries and cares.

We help people to tell stories which they are proud of, stories they want to share. We do that through a group process, where the participants are heard and respected, and where they themselves also learn to listen. We use simple and free tools, to keep the method open for everyone no matter what economic and cultural resources. We don’t expect a professional product in the end, and we keep the method flexible, to be able to adjust it to our different target group.

During the activity we are going to use the “learning by doing” approach, which means that each participant will be invited to create their own podcast episode or a complete, short audio narrative to truly experience and understand the method. In the second part of the training we are going to focus on analyzing participatory podcasting as a method and teaching our participants how to become a facilitator and how to use podcasting and audio while working with youth with fewer opportunities. Although during this project each participant is to create their own podcast episode or an audio narrative we do not require any previous knowledge nor experience on voice recording or audio editing.

This project is suitable for newcomers in the field. The main requirement is for participants to be open and eager to learn new skills.

Who are we looking for. Participants profile:

- Youth workers or active volunteers working for NGOs and other institutions that aim at supporting young people at risk
- Living in the Erasmus+ program country Interested in exploring participatory audio and ready to use the method in their work with young people
- Ready to make their own podcast episode/ audio narrative
- Able to communicate in English both in speaking and in writing
- Minimum 18 years old