"Studio 34" Youth Health/Social Media Project

Hey everyone,                                      
                                        
 

Under the 'Our Lives' project, we have incorporated a youth health/social media project called 'Studio 34' which aims to promote youth health through the creation of music, arts and media by young people, for young people. This is a joint project between the Menzies School of Health Research and the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Unit of the Northern Territory Department of Health and Families.

So what we are trying to do is to see how we are able to promote youth health more effectively to young people within the Darwin region - and hopefully beyond - through the use of social media avenues such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, etc. We already have a Facebook page going, with a little over 100 people following us, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Studio-34/129959087027173.

We've had a few workshops already around Darwin and in Borroloola, NT, which I'll go into a little bit later on. These workshops have a youth health component - which is either the Community Risk Mapping or Body Mapping activties - and then a hip/hop songwriting workshop conducted by local Darwin hip hop artists. Another side aim of this project is to promote local talent and for young people in Darwin to know that there are ways for them to get their voices heard and their talent showcased. So, the expected outcomes of these workshops are to produce rich qualitative data from the youth health activities, and also to produce either music, videos and photos that the youth themselves have developed that have a positive youth issue or youth health message which we upload on to Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. At present, we are currently working on producing/mixing some songs, which hopefully will be released soon!

Cheers from Our Lives,
Nia