Digital media skills served up at Inuvik Youth Centre

Some Inuvik youth are dancingtheir way into digital mediaand storytelling.

The InuvikYouth Centre recently received a $15,000 grant, which it used topurchase gear and offer a free two-week course totrainparticipants on how to use the equipment.

While the youngest of the kids got an introduction to the camerasperformingdances thatthey choreographed the older youth were shown some of the more intricate details about shooting and editing as well ashow to use Photoshopto makea poster.

"The whole idea behind giving these little kids cameras is to get them thinking about digital media not necessarily training, like refined photo techniques, but letting them know that they can create using media,"said workshopco-ordinatorDavisHeslep,who is with the non-profit Western Arctic Moving Pictures.

Heis training some of the youthright now but the priority is for the staff to become experts on the equipment, saidthe centre's executive director, Cheryl Zaw.

"If we train our staff how to do it and get them really interested, they can maintain it," she said, addingthe goal is to organize more programs built around creating with digital media.

"That was the big thing we want to make sure this keeps going and that gear doesn't get tossed in a closet aftertwoweeks and left alone."

For the moment, the younger kids are mostly interacting with the equipment by performing in videos, but Zaw said that is only an introduction.

"By the time they are high school they will be able to make full projects without thinking about it at all. It will just be natural, which I think is how, these days, technology needs to be for kids," she said.

They are affected by digitalmediaand digital storytelling every day, whether they know it or not.- DavisHeslep

Kenny Stewart, 17,a worker at the youth centre, applauded the chance to learn some skills.

"They are affected by digital media and digital storytelling every day, whether they know it or not. For them to be able to have an understanding of just what it is, and that they can feel a part of it, is enough for us to feel successful."

The workshop wraps up this week.

The youth center says the next project that they will use their new skills and equipment for is a digital storytelling project through the NWT Literacy Council.

The grant money for the gear and training came from theNorthwest Territories' department of Industry, Tourism and Investment's SEED funding.