Piece by piece

The Youth Channel is online! Or rather, evidence of the Youth Channel’s existence is online. But that’s pretty exciting. It's one of the small but encouraging pieces that seem to be coming together with the Youth Channel.

We just revamped the Media Bridges website, and the new one is clean and easy to use. The old one looked like it was from 1994, and there was no mention of the Youth Channel. On our new site, I created a page of info about the youth channel and posted our meetings on the Web site calendar. In the next few weeks I’m hoping to set up a blog feature on the Web site so we can add updates about the Youth Channel and announce current projects and ways kids can get involved. Also, we have a Twitter account! We’ll see how that goes. You can follow us; our name is CincyYouthTV.

Currently airing on our Youth Channel time slot are several youth-produced videos from the Mobile Film School in Austin, Texas. Thanks, Amy! If anyone else has youth-produced videos they wouldn't mind having on TV in Cincinnati, please send them my way.

We have several shows in production. Whether this is my doing, or just happened without my help, or a combination, I don’t know. An adult producer here is working with kids from a performing arts high school on an entertainment show, one of our interns is putting together a youth talk show, and a middle school club is planning a regular talk show about manners (yes, manners). I also have a high school student finishing a documentary project, and I am working on a documentary with students at a local elementary school.

I am also having an opportunity every week for kids to come to orientation for the Youth Channel. The goal is to get kids in the door and show them how they can get involved at Media Bridges. I’m hoping that this will help get more youth involved at Media Bridges, hopefully some who can be peer leaders in the future.

We are starting to talk about plans for our summer camp program, which we do every year, but the funding situation is kind of up in the air, so we can’t plan too much. The program we’re hoping to do will be pretty awesome, and I’m excited about it.