Programming Update: KUOW Weekday High Skill Swap!

PROGRAMMING UPDATE: Our Summer Apprenticeship Program is well underway, with advanced Reel Grrls working in teams to produce outreach videos for the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, the Alliance for Education, as well as a short documentary about the 100-year anniversary of women's suffrage in Washington State!



With all this production, things have been really busy in the office lately - in the best sense! Last week, we had two youth groups join us for a skill share extravaganza.

First, we had arranged a skill swap with the youth from KUOW's Weekday High Program. These are young women (coincidentally - it's a coed program but it happens to be all girls this year) who are learning radio production skills at our local NPR affiliate, KUOW. They are starting to incorporate video into some of their reporting, and they came to us to learn some basic video skills.

So the Reel Grrls apprentices put together some activities covering camera work, lighting, shot composition, and b-roll.



It was really amazing to hand over the reigns to our youth and let them take complete control of the instruction. They were great teachers!

Then we switched, and let the KUOW interns take the lead on an interviewing skills workshop:



They put on skits in which they enacted BAD interviews, and they were hilarious! We loved it!

Then everyone ran out into the neighborhood and practiced their interview skills on our neighbors at 20/20 Cycle, Alleycat Acres, and Katy's Corner Cafe (we have the best and nicest neighbors!).

But that's not all! At the same time, we worked with the World Affairs Council to bring a group of Iraqi youth in on the same day. The Iraqi youth were participating in a cultural exchange program, and they, along with some local teens, came to Reel Grrls to learn animation skills and produce short animated films.



All three groups - the WAC group, the Weekday High interns, and the Reel Grrls apprentices - got to know each other through some warm-up games, and shared our work at the end of the day. We are so happy and proud that Reel Grrls could be a hub for so many dynamic, creative youth. Big thanks to Jenny and Nathan at KUOW for helping to organize the skill share between their interns and our apprentices, and to our former Americorps VISTA Nickey for pulling off a fantastic animation workshop for the WAC group! Whew!