Nuxalk Audio Workshop on ZOOM
After a stressful year under the thumb of Covid 19…Our World continued to be on hold. As 2020 turned to 2021, globally, we were officially living in the new pandemic way of life. In particular was the grave concern to keep remote Indigenous communities safe.
A big part of Our World workshops thus far, had been one-on-one mentorship, spending time in communities making friendships and connections….the idea of an online workshop didn’t at first come to mind…
That said, we had already been awarded the funds to conduct the first Our World audio workshop - in partnership with Nuxalk Radio! So we started to rethink the budget…a big shout out goes to BC Arts Council’s Youth Engagement Program as they were open to a pivot that allowed us to take money allocated for travel and accommodation and put it into audio equipment to leave in the community! Woot!
And so the audio workshop was born! Thanks to patient Nuxalk Radio founder, Banchi Hanuse (also the founder of Our World!) and audio mentor Helena Krobath (Vancouver based audio creator and mentor) for wating a full year for this workshop to get under way!!
Two immediate things to do was to create an equipment wish list and to find a community liaison person! The equipment list was based on the needs of Nuxalk Radio as well as workshop needs. So laptops, headphones, recording hardware and microphones made the list, along with waterproof knapsacks and storage bags! Finding an incredible community liaison was imperative and we quickly became so thankful to meet Kyle Talio! Kyle made numerous airport/post office pickups, organized all the gear and helped find workshop participants! Thank you!
Then we needed to find one more mentor… Koosen Piele (Tla'amin Nation based audio creator - near Powell River) was recommended and perfect for the job! It’s always so great to grow our mentor family and Koosen was already working in radio and language preservation!
The workshops started on March 10th and so there we were, hanging out on Zoom every Wednesday and Friday nights 7-9pm! It was so great to meet participants and audio lovers Corijo, Evangeline, David and Sheldon! As well, Kyle would create a story!
The first workshops were all about considering what to share….and the logistics of how. Sound is such a rich and layered experience and so conversations were had about tech tricks in order to record the sound of fire, how to best record drumming and singing as well as how to use recordings made on the phone of personal family interactions. The stories were as diverse as they were personal. Thanks to the participants for taking a chance on this! Also an option at this stage was to use the tools to record and preserve language. There are so many ways to utilize audio recording equipment and skills-so a participant didn’t need to tell a story per se.
The next steps were learning the recording devices (Zoom H5, H2 and the Marantz) and the microphones (on board, shot gun and studio mic) and then on to editing in Audacity (FREE editing software)!
It was a new experience to instruct over the internet! Everyone was soon sharing their screens and sharing their progress on their audio artworks…it was very exciting to see this new possibility and watch the stories emerge!
