Date: Wednesday 5th of June 2013
Location: Kilmodan Primary School
Workshop: Interviews and Recording Information
Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers
The second half of the session focused on interviews, encouraging the pupils to develop their communication, interviewing, research, and media recording skills, as well as discovering who the pupils would like to interview as part of the All Our Stories project, and identify individuals who may be iconic in the pupil’s Glendaruel research.
Firstly, as a group, we discussed what makes a good interview, and what an interviewer must do when conducting a recorded interview. The pupils gave us some great suggestions on questions that they would like to ask fellow Glendaruel residents, and were all very keen to interview the older residents of the Glen, who have lived here for many years. The pupils were enthralled in finding out more about what life was like for their grandparents generation when they were at Primary School – what facilities they had in the Glen, which school they went to, how did they travel to one another’s houses, what games did they play in the wide open spaces, and what they liked about growing up in such a beautiful, but rural, area. Many of the pupils began thinking about their family members who live in the area, and began taking notes on questions they would like to ask them on living in Glendaruel. It was a great exercise to also find out what the pupils already knew about the history of the Glen, particularly through discovering which Clans they descended from, and which family groups have become joined through the years by marriage.
The next part of the session saw the pupils putting their interviewing skills into action, by taking turns in interviewing one another in groups. Following some practice of identifying topics, constructing questions, how to begin and end an interview, and working on producing strong, clear vocals, the class reconvened, and the pupils would conduct their interviews in-front of the class. The interviews were recorded, and then played back to the group, who then identified the good aspects of what they had listened to, and those that had to be worked on. This was a great exercise that really gave the pupils confidence in conducting interviews, and it was encouraging to hear how keen they were to interview members of the community for the project.
