Making waves, disrupting narratives: Radio-making as a practice for youth-led counterstorytelling and advocacy

Abstract

Brimbank LIVE is a youth-led radio program created in response to young, racialised people experiencing forms of exclusion and discrimination in public and local spaces within a Local Government Area in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne/Narrm, Australia. Within the context of a community-university collaboration, our team accompanied the Brimbank LIVE program since its inception to document learning with the young people about their radio-making journeys. In this case study, we draw on the radio shows curated by the young people and focus groups and interviews with them to share program experiences and reflect on how radio-making supports re-existence through counterstorytelling. We show how young people used radio-making to forge their own self-determined radio shows and tell stories important to them; producing knowledge about their multifaceted identities and passions, and critiquing dominant framings and narratives on air. Through our analysis, we share key insights about how radio-making as a digital medium positioned young people as authors of their own stories, the importance of forming an intentional and self-determined setting and practice on the ground, and in supporting young people’s development, skills, participation and leadership to curate and broadcast stories from below. It is argued that the practices of creating settings for dialogue and critical reflection in addition to using radio-making to curate and broadcast content rooted in lived realities, experiences and dreams enabled counterstorytelling and re-existence. The work at the community-university interface illustrates the possibilities of mobilising research and university capital for the purposes of re-existence through counterstorytelling and self-determined future dreaming.