A panel at a LIASA Seminar with the theme of “Librarians as Agents for Social Change, Community Development and Democracy” included Felicity Keats Morrison.

Her talk was around the thought that librarians might include child-written books in their purchases in order to tempt children to love reading.

The purpose of the seminar was presented by Ms Tebogo Mzizi, (standing up, in white), the Senior Manager, Ethekwini Municpal Library.

Librarians were encouraged to be passionate about their calling which asked them to get involved with the community.

Literacy week brought a call from the Principal of Clifton Preparatory School at Nottingham Road, KwaZulu-Natal, for right brain workshops for the school.

Felicity travelled up to this prestigious school in the Natal Midlands to give a training first to some seventy grade 2’s and 3’s who were fascinated with the requirements of right brain writing and responded beautifully. They easily understood about the two sides of the brain and that the seat of creativity is in the right brain.  Teachers were fascinated at what they wrote.

The second workshop took two and a half hours and involved many children who filled all the pews of the gracious chapel.  The moment that Felicity said “You are now to write for 10 minutes without stopping” to a man, all of them turned around, knelt down, and used the benches as desks!

An amazing pile of stories were the result. Many children came with smiles to thank Felicity and to say they had learnt a lot of new things that morning. It is possible that a selection of their stories could be published in an anthology for the school. Self esteem and confidence rise for children when they see their work in published form!

Learners from Ndela School doing creative writing.

Film maker Mthokizisi Lembethe and Felicity Keats went to Umzinto where Felicity ran right brain workshops for two large classes of learners – the entire Ndela school, in fact.

Felicity explained to the HOD that learners are using half a brain in the normal school situation, but that the right brain workshop she runs allows the learners to access a whole brain. This gives them the advantage of a flow of language which is beneficial both in exams and throughout life.

Teachers were amazed at the volume of written work the learners produced at this training.

Mthokozisi has been filming at Ndela School. He collected in all their stories and is selecting the best. These will be published by umSinsi Press in an anthology for the school.  This launch will be included in the short documentary he is making about the school.

The video will highlight the excellent creative ability of learners in deep rural areas as it will include some footage of traditional dance taken a few weeks previously.

Dancing Pencils and umSinsi Press have responded to an appeal for donations of books for street libraries in Ghana. With a relatively low literacy rate, they are aiming to establish street libraries in 2 000 communities in Ghana over the next five years.

Our contribution to this request is an initial one box of beautiful books, most of them child-written,

Here are some of the umSinsi team (left, Ndiphile Gule, centre, Felicity Keats, right, Edith Gule) with the box addressed for posting to Accra!

Journalism in all schools is what the Media Development and Diversity Summit decided that they would like. Journalism  is already partially there, hidden in the curriculum under various headings such as “narrative” or “discursive” paragraphs, but the MDDA Summit would like to see schools all writing their own newsletters.  This would encourage children to read newspapers and learn to be selective as to what the media are saying and not to believe everything.

School journalism  is a great idea but there are complications.  Children creating newsletters that go out widely to school members or parents or further afield need to understand the ethics of journalism. So teachers would need to train to know that their children may not  plagiarise, be defamatory, or infringe copyright. They would need to know what is news and how to present it so that it is not biased in any way

Other exciting developments were suggestions of having children read their own stories over community radio which would expose them to public speaking and a wider world.  This would help develop self esteem and self confidence.

This  was a high profile Summit, and was attended by top calibre people. This included Ms Phelisa Nkomo, MDDA Board Chairperson, Mr Lumko Mtimde, MDDA Chief Executive Officer, Dr Shermain Mannah, Chief Director in the Department of Basic Education, and Professor Keorapetse Kgositsile, Advisor to the Minister of Arts and Culture. The Keynote address was given by the Honourable Obed Bapela, Deputy Minister in the Presidency. It also included people representing media of all kinds – radio, newspaper, SABC TV Education, Mother of all Professions, and also librarians and members of Departments of Education so the topic was widely discussed and good suggestions made for future development.

A feather in our cap was the statement that KZN had got it right with their school newsletters. That was the result of our Dancing Pencils project with the MDDA in 2011. They did request a Power Point Presentation  to showcase how Dancing Pencils trained young journalists in Nongoma and Ulundi  had produced high quality professional newsletters. Felicity did a power point presentation explaining in detail from photographs she had taken at the Summit in Ulundi in 2011 and during the trainings in Nongoma and Ulundi later that year.

We are very proud that we got it right! Also proud that recently a young man who trained with us in 2011 telephoned Felicity to say that he had decided to become a journalist and needed a lead in that direction which Felicity was able to help him with.

We expect this project to develop further. The idea of our youth having a voice in the affairs of the country is tremendously powerful. Proper training for all concerned will bring about the desired result. Congratulations to the MDDA, and to Manana Stone, for hosting such a high power Summit.

Read the National Media Literacy Summit Conclusions.

By felicity keats

The MDDA’s (Media Development and Diversity Agency) National Media Literacy Summit is to be held on the 10/11 April in Gauteng. Felicity is honoured to be chosen to be on a panel discussion with the Department of Education, and representatives from the Free State and the Eastern Cape on the effectiveness of this project.

Four provinces have had the experience of this project when learners from schools were introduced to the power of the media, with particular relevance to journalism. In 2011, for the KZN project, Felicity was mandated to introduce journalism to learners from 10 schools in Nongoma and Ulundi. At the Summit held in Ulundi at the Old Legislature Building in April 2011, Felicity gave the young participants a very quick introduction to the right brain by giving them an “unlocking” exercise to do. She also gave them each a book on creative journalism that she had written and a short lesson on what an article is, what news is and where to find it.

It was two months later that the actual trainings were held, 5 schools attending the workshop in Nongoma, and 5 schools in Ulundi. In one morning, we showed the teenager journalists, chosen from grades 9 – 11, how to use their right brains to write articles on their particular interests, how to make a mock-up of the newsletter, and then to create their own school newsletter on A3 paper, complete with title, school logo, contents page, editorial team, illustrations and a lead article on the front page. This was an exciting creative workshop with the educator from each school involved with the learners and the newsletters varied from school to school.

There were articles on sports, school activities, fashion, problems of teenagers, local community news, interviews, jokes, puzzles, and illustrations. Our particular team wanted to create professional newsletters so we had the handwritten material couriered to us to type and scan and then to have printed.  The schools were delighted with these newsletters which would get the learners reading and also update them on school and local activities.

The success of this project was made obvious to me when one of the young “journalists” phoned me a couple of weeks ago, to say that he had decided he wanted to be a journalist and needed a further introduction – either to funding to learn, or to go straight onto a news team!