Digital media skills served up at Inuvik Youth Centre
Grant enabled youth centre to buy new media equipment and offer two-week course to students
Some Inuvik youth are dancing their way into digital media and storytelling.
The Inuvik Youth Centre recently received a $15,000 grant, which it used to purchase gear and offer a free two-week course to train participants on how to use the equipment.
While the youngest of the kids got an introduction to the cameras — performing dances that they choreographed — the older youth were shown some of the more intricate details about shooting and editing as well as how to use Photoshop to make a poster.
"The whole idea behind giving these little kids cameras is to get them thinking about digital media —not necessarily training, like refined photo techniques, but letting them know that they can create using media," said workshop co-ordinator Davis Heslep, who is with the non-profit Western Arctic Moving Pictures.
He is training some of the youth right now but the priority is for the staff to become experts on the equipment, said the centre's executive director, Cheryl Zaw.
"If we train our staff how to do it and get them really interested, they can maintain it," she said, adding the goal is to organize more programs built around creating with digital media.
"That was the big thing — we want to make sure this keeps going and that gear doesn't get tossed in a closet after two weeks and left alone."
For the moment, the younger kids are mostly interacting with the equipment by performing in videos, but Zaw said that is only an introduction.
"By the time they are high school they will be able to make full projects without thinking about it at all. It will just be natural, which I think is how, these days, technology needs to be for kids," she said.
They are affected by digital media and digital storytelling every day, whether they know it or not.- Davis Heslep
Kenny Stewart, 17, a worker at the youth centre, applauded the chance to learn some skills.
"It's a great opportunity because we don't usually get these types of opportunities here in town," he said.
"It's after school, so you can learn about it, and they show the programs you can use so you can go home and learn it there and continue your progress.
For Heslep, he just likes to see the students thriving in the media and technology world.
"They are affected by digital media and digital storytelling every day, whether they know it or not. For them to be able to have an understanding of just what it is, and that they can feel a part of it, is enough for us to feel successful."
The workshop wraps up this week.
The youth center says the next project that they will use their new skills and equipment for is a digital storytelling project through the NWT Literacy Council.
The grant money for the gear and training came from the Northwest Territories' department of Industry, Tourism and Investment's SEED funding.