Is your teenager interested in learning how to record, edit, and publish podcasts or documentaries? Or would you like them to learn how to tell real fact-based reporting from anything that’s on their algorithms on social media? Well, the University of Illinois Content Creation Lab is back this fall with four Saturdays of free learning. IPM News and Public Affairs Director Reginald Hardwick discussed the program with it’s creator Angela Aguayo.
ANGELA AGUAYO: Well, the lab takes place here at Illinois Public Media, and it is a open time for students to come join us on Saturdays from 10:00 to 12:30. And what that looks like is students arrive and we have a kind of time where we get to know each other. We have a short lesson and then students are invited to come into the studio, learn the equipment, learn the soundboard, learn how to work with microphones, cameras, and invited to tell stories that are important to them, stories from their lives, about their lives and about their communities.
REGINALD HARDWICK: Do the kids have to be theater kids or really extroverted to take part?
AGUAYO: No, that’s another really wonderful thing about this project is that we get all kinds of students who walk through this door from folks who’ve never made media to students who have made media in their school and they are extroverted and introverted. And there’s a place for everyone in the process of making media. And so if you’re an introverted soul and want to be behind the scenes and push buttons and be a part of thinking about the process of making and producing and not in front of the camera, in front of the microphone, there is a place for you here. But if you’re someone who’d like to be in front of the camera, in front of the microphone and be more extroverted, there’s also a place for you. So I would say there’s a lot of different jobs and a lot of different ways to think about this process. And so there’s a room for a lot of different kinds of people.
HARDWICK: And what have you as an adult and a parent learned about this experience?
AGUAYO: I learned that there’s a real power in the process of making work, that whether a student is making a podcast or creating a narrative story or making their first documentary or constructing an idea about what kind of short film they want to make, that in the process of doing that, there is this realization about who they are and who they want to be and critical thinking and who they want to speak to as an audience and who their community is. And that process is really a process that helps unfold a lot of things beyond just making media. And that I have seen students really come out of their shell in a really wonderful way. So for example, we had a couple of students last spring who were really interested in sports media. We’re able to bring in some local sports coaches and players to have them interview them.
Season 2 will meet from 10 a.m.- 12:30 p.m. on the following Saturdays:
- September 26, 2026
- October 3, 2026
- October 10, 2026
- November 7, 2026
Those interested in participating can register here.