Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

October 2005 Volume 3 (5)

Schools

A sound move

As Librarian at Grangemouth High School, Joyce Barnes has witnessed a marvellous opportunity to build up pupils’ confidence – and their involvement in reading – through the BBC’s Soundtown collaboration.

In September 2004, Grangemouth High School became BBC Radio Scotland’s second ‘Soundtown’. This project, under the BBC’s community programme unit, aims to involve the school and wider community in BBC broadcasts. A studio was installed in the school and pupils were given the opportunity to be involved in a range of associated activities, from being part of the audience when programmes were broadcast from the school, to training in interview and speech techniques; from the technical side of programme production to web page design.

In the first month, it became common to see celebrities wandering round the school. Dougie Vipond, Chick Young, Gary Robertson, Lamont Howie, Craig Hill and Fred Macauley became as familiar as the rest of the staff. By October, things had settled down slightly. As National Poetry Day approached, I wondered whether Soundtown might be interested in literary pursuits...

I was approached by the then producer of Cover Stories, the book review programme presented by Richard Holloway. Would I be able to suggest a few pupils who would not be shy when asked to speak about their favourite reads? Would I! I run very active weekly Book Groups in school with pupils from all years. They aim to run one promotional event a month for staff and pupils, usually a literary lunch, ranging from big national events like NPD and WBD to celebrating books for Christmas presents, Chinese New Year, a summer reading picnic and so on. The producer was overwhelmed by the responses from the first group and their comments were broadcast in November.

In December, I was broadcast with adult recommended reads. In January, a new producer came to visit the Book Group. I explained to her how involvement in Cover Stories had helped raise pupils’ self-esteem, giving increased confidence to speak in public, for example. I also mentioned the financial constraints on school libraries and the amount of detailed planning that has to go into either arranging an author visit or indeed taking pupils out of school. Within a few days of our meeting, she arranged a spectacular surprise: Anthony Horowitz would visit the school in March to launch his latest Alex Rider novel, Arkangel.

The Book Group members interviewed Anthony for Cover Stories. Our Council in-house video team also filmed the broadcast as part of Falkirk Council’s raising attainment strategy, ‘Determined to Succeed’.On top of all this, BBC National Television’s ten o’clock news got in touch, asking for an interview for a report about encouraging teenage boys to read. They flew a team from London to interview me with some of our boys. The excitement in school was almost tangible!

For the main event, I invited book groups from other schools and we had more than 80 excited children who listened, enthralled, as Anthony spoke for more than an hour.
The footage was shown on national BBC ten o’clock news during the Easter holidays. The Cover Stories programme aired in April and included an interview with Coral Kirkham of Edinburgh’s ‘Teen Titles’, and Theresa Breslin talking about Divided City, the whole show conducted and presented by our pupils.

After Easter, we really thought we’d had our moment of fame... but not quite. The work of the Book Group had become well known and two more authors visited. In April, Graham Marks, author of Radio, Radio and How it Works visited to promote his new novel, Zoo.

This was followed by the American writer of Freak the Mighty, Rodman Philbrick, promoting Lobster Boy to 70 pupils from across Falkirk Council. The BBC interviewed both Rodman and myself live on The Arts Show.

Other BBC involvement included the school show, Juliet’s Tomb. The BBC Let’s do the show right here team were so impressed that they took the show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, performing at the Spiegeltent in George Square Gardens. The Book Group were later asked to be in the audience there to interview Anne Fine and Vivian French for a live Radio Café programme on writing for children.

As June came to a close, so too did our session as BBC’s Soundtown. It had given us so many opportunities, so much publicity and most importantly, drawn so many more young people into reading and literature promotion.

But we weren’t quite finished yet. During the year, our music department had been involved in a project to write the theme tune to the new arts show, Radio Café. The producer had secured a place at the Edinburgh Castle launch of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for one pupil to be BBC Radio Scotland’s cub reporter. The lucky pupil was chosen by means of an essay competition for Book Group members.

One of the purposes of involvement in Soundtown is to leave a legacy in the school and in the community. Pupils are on first name terms with authors, BBC reporters and producers, publicists and agents from all over the country – links that will continue. We have strengthened our association with pupils from other schools – and the Book Group numbers have swelled.

Information Scotland Vol. 3 (5) October 2005

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Last updated: 09-Dec-2005