New stretch target
Our stretch target of £3,000 will secure funding for the project moving forwards so we can do it again; making it bigger, better and benefit more young people.
Amplifying marginalised people's voices through free media and journalism training, mentoring and paid publication.
by The Canary in United Kingdom
Our stretch target of £3,000 will secure funding for the project moving forwards so we can do it again; making it bigger, better and benefit more young people.
We need your help to amplify the voices of young working-class people, and chronically and disabled people of any age, through free journalism training, mentoring and publication.
The team at The Canary will voluntarily provide free training and mentoring in journalism and media production. Each person will be supported to produce a piece of work which will then be published on our website and promoted across social media.
Print and broadcast media in the UK is dominated by people from middle and upper-class backgrounds with many being privately educated. 75% of everyone who works in the industry had a parent in one of the three highest occupational groups. While just 8% of journalists come from the poorest backgrounds.
The impact of this is that, as the BBC's own Creative Diversity Report 2020 has shown, those “from lower socio-economic backgrounds are depicted negatively, fuelled by stereotypes and seen as the object of ridicule”. It also means that the issues important to working-class people are under-reported, misreported or simply ignored.
Members of The Canary staff will enroll and mentor participants. We will provide free workshops in journalism practice, article writing and video production. We will then work with participants to shape the idea for their piece, provide feedback and edit their piece before publication on our website.
The first round of the project ran between January - March 2022.
The second round will run between April - June 2022.
There is a dedicated page on our website to showcase and celebrate the work that comes out of the Amplify project with an accompanying social media campaign across all our platforms. You can see the work participants have already produced.
The Canary is one of the largest progressive media outlets in the UK with 250k monthly readers. We have a staff team of 20 people, the majority of whom are working-class, who bring many years of journalism experience. The team has undergone safeguarding training and we have a qualified safeguarding officer overseeing the project.
We will be working with young people between the ages of 16-25, as well as chronically ill and disabled people of any age who are not in paid work. We want them to work on an issue they are passionate about; one that affects them, their friends or that is important to them. This could be anything from the closure of a local youth centre to the climate emergency.
We want to pass on our skills and knowledge, to use the platform that we have built over the last six years to amplify marginalised people’s voices and give them their first byline. We hope this will help bring about change on issues that are important to them, add to their self-confidence and increase their chances of future employment.
We need to raise £1,500 to be able to pay the first two rounds of participants in Amplify a fair amount, as well as The Canary team who are mentoring them. Our stretch target of £3,000 will secure funding for the project moving forwards so we can run it again; making it bigger, better and benefit more young people.
This is a great opportunity for you to be involved in a project that will prepare tomorrow's generation to take on the entrenched privilege of today's media.
Your donation will go directly to young working-class as well as chronically ill and disabled people for their work – inspiring them to realise that they can be part of changing our media and society.
So, if you want to help amplify the voices of the people who we all need to hear then please donate.