Activating multimedia spaces with students and staff in a diverse and passionate STEAM non-profit
In October 2023, The Possible Zone invited me to join their team for a few months and warm up a suite of sound studios in their building. The objective was to increase student and staff engagement with the spaces, scaffold learning pathways for future use, and help begin a student-led podcast. The first few weeks were spent building relationship and learning how the organization operated so that we could effectively reach the goals we’d laid out for the residency. Things got off to a strong start, however some issues arose which prompted pivots and adjustments along the way.
First was a bout of Covid just when we were planning to host the first podcasting workshop with students. Entering the holiday season, scheduling conflicts began to arise as well. To top it off, we were just struggling to gain student interest for the workshop. Despite these setbacks, I communicated with members of the program team to share the situation and benefit from their insight. What came of this was a pivot from Fridays to Wednesdays, more pavement pounding with my sign-up sheet in hand, a sudden increase in student interest, and eventually our first podcast workshop. In the end, TPZ was left with livelier multimedia studios along with several deliverables including:
In-studio documentation and guides
Digital documentation
A roadmap for structuring and running the student podcast
