SoundAffects

Soundaffects Launch Hails the Power, Depth and Immediacy of Audio

On October 23rd 2008, SoundAffects was officially launched at the House of Commons at an event hosted by Nigel Griffiths MP.

Opening the event the MP, who chairs the International development Connecting Communities committee, said he believed that “linking is the key to international understanding and friendship … and it is children, not adults, who are the key ambassadors”.

John Humphrys, of BBC Radio Four’s Today Programme, delivered a speech in support of the project and hailed SoundAffects as “a brilliant way of communicating.” He described the “stunning effect when children hear the voices” and addressed the audience directly saying “with respect to the many teachers in this room you cannot communicate with children as well as they can communicate with each other”. John Humphrys urged everyone to support SoundAffects and help children to “see beyond the stereotype”.

This sentiment was echoed by Mared Gwyn, link co-ordinating teacher from Ysgol Tregarth in Wales, whose school took part in the SoundAffects project along with two linked schools in the town of Denu in the Volta region of Ghana,

Ms Gwyn explained: “taking part in this project has given our children a glimpse of the real Denu, through the eyes and experience of the children living there”.

Deputy head teacher of Galliard Primary School in Edmonton, Penny Sullivan, described the atmosphere in the classroom when the children were listening and responding to the audio from their linked school: “the class room was really quiet and intense” she said “the experiences described were quite complex, very individual, funny and even sad … the audio had an immediacy and a depth and allowed the children to express themselves and think about their experiences.”

Ms Sullivan also commented that teachers at both ends of the link found themselves intensely moved by what they, themselves, learned for the first time about the children involved in the project.

Hear Penny Sullivan at the SoundAffects launch describe the impact of the project.

Moyra Zaman, link coordinating teacher at Chesham High School, explained how she felt that participation in the SoundAffects project had allowed children at both ends of the link, for the first time, to take “ownership” of their partnership.

Hear Moyra Zaman speaking at the launch about how she feels children have benefited from the project.

Grace Amissah of the Aseseeso Abonse diaspora group, which has been involved in working with some Ghana/UK school links, also spoke of the way SoundAffects is adding a new dimension to these school links by bringing voices from across the world directly into the classroom. At the launch, Ms Amissah, who is a SoundAffects trustee, interviewed some of the children who have been involved in the project.

Hear Grace Amissah interview one of the children who speaks about the power of audio.

At the end of the launch event, project leaders Penny Boreham and Caroline Swinburne spoke of their aims for the SoundAffects project in 2009.

They described their plans to return to Ghana to hand over the recording process to local broadcast journalists, thereby allowing the SoundAffects project to be truly sustainable. They also described how project work enhancing links between schools in Sri Lanka and the UK will begin in 2009, as will the production of SoundAffects audio material on CD, which will allow more schools to access the wonderful resource of child driven audio material as a curriculum based learning resource.