ABOUT Kensal Voices
Kensal Voices was a multimedia project for young people, led by Octavia Foundation & we made that, that took place in the W11 & W10 parts of west london in late 2020 and early 2021. It explored themes of community through the eyes of a group of 13-16 year old young people and what it means to them growing up in ever changing scenery of modern inner city london. They expressed this through the creative media of music, podcasting, animation, critical writing and community building design, working with a range of local partners including Afterparti, Construction Youth, Kids on the green, NAW, Portobello Radio, The Rhythm StudioRugby Portobello Trust, The Rhythm Studio, AfterParti, Construction Youth
THE PODCASTS
The main output of the project was the young people developing and recording a podcast covering themes about their community and what it means to them. Over the course of 4 workshops (1 face to face and 3 remotely), working in partnership with Portobello Radio, they worked in groups to develop ideas, scripts, roles and recorded 3 episodes. The first group covered celebrities who live in the local community & their impact on the area, the second group covered the history of Portobello road market and their memories and relationship with it and the third group interviewed different people from the local community about what community means to them . You can see some of the podcast planning notes in the 'Behind The Scenes' section below.
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
THE MUSIC
Another key element of the project was exploring themes of community through creative writing, songwriting and lyric creation and music production. Across 4 workshops, both remotely and face to face, the young people discussed the things the like and dislike about their community, memories and sensory elements that make their community special and this was woven into sets of lyrics which was then worked into 3 tracks at the Amplify recording studios in ladbroke grove, working with the rhythm studio and local producer danny wheeler.
You can see lyrics sheets and photos from these sessions, both in the studio and remotely on video call in the 'behind the scenes' section below.
THE ANIMATION IDENTS
An early module of the project, was an animation workshop for the young people in which animation facilitator, Lily-ash Sakula, taught them key techniques in digital animation, with a view to them each, in their group, creating an animation ident as a visual representation of the project.
ANIMATION IDENT 1
ANIMATION IDENT 2
ANIMATION IDENT 3
bEHIND THE SCENES
Here is a selection of images capturing how the project took place and developed over the 12 sessions, including photos from both the face to face and remote workshops, photos from the recording studio, photos from the remote launch event at the end of the project and photos of the notes and lyrics which inspired the creative outputs in the project
The Impact
Below are some of the key impacts made by the kensal voices project
Project Partners
