Drawing to an end

We dropped the bombshell on the Upstarters in the previous Wednesday workshop, very soon we’ll be gone and they’ll be left alone to see to it that the radio show continues. I saw several dilated pupils after we told them that our relationship will be coming to an end in about two weeks’ time. We’re still going to have a conversation about what we mean by the end of the relationship.

Part of this conversation should be a detailed structure of what it takes to put everything together, from planning of Wednesday workshops to the broadcast of the show on Saturdays. This is not to intimidate them but to give them an idea of the kind of work they’ll have to do after we’ve left. And also so they can see which task would be suited for whom in their group of six. They’ll need to work as a group to ensure that all the different elements are taken care of. From the previous debrief session we had, I got the impression that they want to see this through, they want the radio show to continue, they want to build an audience for it and they’ve become attached to Yung Amplified. They suggested that they should have a name for themselves as the group of six Upstarters. To put it in Thobani’s words “there’s a lot of Upstarters we need to have a name for ourselves”. For me this shows that they want to take ownership of the show and want to be acknowledged as contributors of the show.

As part of handing over the responsibility of the show, this past Saturday I ran the debrief session with Thobani. He did most of the talking and I just helped him guide the discussion. We recognized as a group that maybe Anesipho and Ziphozinhle could be Nadia’s assistant producers after Mike, Stephen and I have left. These two girls would be capable of running the content part of the Wednesday workshops, but they would need to do this with the help of one of the radio students. At the moment we are teaching them how to edit and Anelisa has shone through as someone who grasps Adobe easily. She could help fellow Upstarters who are struggling with the programme and editing audio. It’s difficult to place any kind of responsibility on Roche at the moment because some weekends he might not be available, due to rugby matches.

For the handing over of tasks and responsibilities to happen successfully, the team of radio students will need to sit together and talk about how things have worked and what they have done to get to this point. This will help us in deciding which responsibilities can be handed over to the Upstarters now, and which will still need some time and should be done in small doses. We all also need to be creative about how these responsibilities are handed over. The Upstarters are still in school and whatever tasks we give them shouldn’t eat into their time to do homework and other school related things, especially as exams are coming up in the next week. There’s also the issue of availability of resources, it’s been relatively easier for us to run things because we have airtime to make phonecalls and access to internet and computers. The Upstarters are willing and are excited to start doing most of the work themselves, but we should make sure that the transition is as hassle free as possible for them. This will depend on the viability of the production system we have established over the past couple of months.