Activities are rolling in “Gems of Youth Work”, and in the last couple of weeks the team has been preparing intensively in order to officially take the first steps. With the project’s official visual identity confirmed, on Monday 17th of May we held a 1-hour workshop on “basics of radio interviews” with Aleksandr Žemžurov.

Aleksandr, who is a radio DJ and presenter at Radio 4 (Estonia) and developer of numerous podcasts and radio programs dedicated to parenting and urban topics, shared with us different tips and tricks to take into account when preparing for and recording radio/podcast interviews. Here below you can see a brief summary of the workshop in the form of written notes and also visually:

PREPARING

  • The most important success factor: an interesting speaker!
  • Do some research about your speaker and their topic beforehand, so you can ask good questions;
  • Make a list of possible questions/topics so you have a back-up if you get stuck;
  • Do not drink sweet beverages, to avoid strange sounds. Rather drink herbal tea;
  • Check out tutorials on how to correctly breath while talking and pronouncing clearly;
  • Pronounce difficult letters/words 3 times as a warm-up;
  • Sound design is important: use jingles, use sounds to anchor and create signatures and to set mood (eg going deeper, becoming serious, being funny, insights, …), you can even use your own voice for that.

The greatest podcast is the one where you are yourself and where you embrace the process as it comes.

DURING THE INTERVIEW

  • You as a host do not have to be an expert on the topic;
  • Have a conversation starter and make the speaker feel safe and comfortable;
  • Ask sincere questions that you are interested in. The speaker will feel if you are interested or not;
  • Be authentic, including laughing, surprise…
  • It is ok to ask once more if you do not understand, as maybe the listeners might also not understand;
  • Ask unexpected questions, eg “from a scale of 0 to 10”, “if your practice were an animal”…
  • If you want to improvise, listen actively to the speaker and follow up on what they say;
  • Do not rush, breath, be relaxed;
  • It is ok to read your questions from the prepared document;
  • Be yourself!
  • If you make a mistake, take it in a funny way and use it to joke;
  • If the speaker wanders around about an answer, try asking the question in 3 different ways.

Visual notes

“Gems of Youth Work” is a Strategic Partnership project funded by the Erasmus+ programme through the Estonian National Agency and implemented by Shokkin Group International (Estonia), Coobra Cooperativa Braccianti (Austria),Ticket2Europe (Spain) and EduEra (Slovakia).