Transforming perceptions through youth-led podcasts

Weaverham High School is a comprehensive, 11-16, secondary high school, in Cheshire West. Charlotte Murray, Associate Assistant Headteacher writes about how their youth-led podcast increased engagement and interest in their arts provision:  

We received our Silver Artsmark Award in April 2023. We decided to embark on a second Artsmark journey, as we had seen so much positive change in our school culture and ethos because of our first journey. Our first journey really helped us to place young people at the heart of what we do and involve them in arts and culture opportunities. Parent and pupil voice has evidenced that the arts subjects are “inspiring and impressive” and we knew we had great foundations on which to build and develop our offer further. 

This academic year, we have been focusing on the Arts Council’s Quality Principle of ‘Actively involving children and young people’ and ‘Striving for excellence and innovation’ as we continue our next Artsmark journey. 

In June 2023, we launched our school podcast, “The Weaverham Way”, in collaboration with our students - they are the writers, researchers, editors, presenters and graphic designers. Our vision is to use the podcast to actively involve our young people in our school improvements. So far, our students led the creation of nine episodes celebrating arts, culture and creativity within our school and our wider community. We have approximately 30 staff and students on the production team for the podcast and our whole school community listens to it. Our wider community also subscribe, and we even have listeners in New Zealand and Malaysia! 

Tackling mental health, subject options and arts-related worries 

Our podcast tackles issues such as mental health concerns and how the arts promote wellbeing. Other topics have included what creative arts options are available at Key Stage 4 and how we asses pupil progress with the arts.  

We also have a section of the podcast called “The Weaverham Worries.” Young people can submit any concerns they may have about arts and culture related issues, and we use this section to reassure them and to offer advice and support.  

After Covid, we noticed a reluctance for some students to join extra-curricular arts and culture activities and needed to start celebrating our fantastic offer more. We have recently started working with our local primary schools to develop episodes focusing on transitions from Year 6 to Year 7 with the aim of helping to remove barriers and angst surrounding transition and generate excitement about our arts offer at Key Stage 3. 

The importance of youth voice 

We regularly collect our students’ opinions from the team and our listeners. We send out a survey every half term and students have fed back on how they “enjoy being part of a team and working collaboratively to create positive changes”. The podcast has given them “a voice and a platform to share ideas”, commenting on how it has “raised aspirations and inspired them to consider leadership roles in the future.” Working on the episodes has helped them to “understand that the arts are for everyone.” Our listeners have commented that they have felt “reassured by the Weaverham Worries section” and how proud they are to “celebrate their school publicly.”  

The number of young people involved in performing arts has doubled in some areas since the start of the podcast.

Recognition for our global impact  

In January 2024, the impact of our podcast was recognised by our local newspaper, the Northwich Guardian, and we were awarded “Team of the year” and “Digital Innovation 2024” in their Guardian Education Awards 2024. The podcast is not limited to just our school. We broadcast on several platforms including Amazon music, Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts so our young people can have their voices heard across the whole world. They are empowered to stand up for what they believe in and share ideas with a global community.  

A tool for transformation 

The impact of the podcast has seen the culture in our school shift and our young people are the engine room behind this positive change. Our arts and cultural events are now highly respected by our school and the wider community. The number of young people involved in performing arts has doubled in some areas since the start of the podcast. Our arts provision was once limited to our setting and local community, now we have a global voice. Our school culture has transformed, and our young people are empowered to investigate, challenge, and explore through creativity. 

Upon completing our first Artsmark journey, we received such valuable feedback from the Artsmark Assessors which helped us focus on our next journey. It inspired us to be creative and source new ways and means of engaging our students. One of the areas that was recommended was to focus on finding opportunities for students to actively contribute to the planning and delivery of authentic arts, cultural and creative experiences. The podcast has been the ideal platform to enable our students to achieve this. They suggest the topics for episodes, they research the material and compose the articles and reports. It is the students who have the ownership.  

Feedback from our first journey also recommended that we improve our arts and culture offer to be representative of the diversity of our setting and wider society. The podcast enables us to select topics that are meaningful to our school community and representative of our pupils. We are also able to tackle wider issues and ensure that our students are exposed to a rich and diverse collection of episodes. This is helping our pupils to gain understanding of each other and issues affecting young people. Students delivering the information makes the topics more relevant and really resonates with our young people. 

I would recommend that any school on their first Artsmark journey really focus on the Quality Principles. These are key to engaging your young people, staff and parents. The Artsmark journey is an exciting one and one that you will want to do together!

Listen to the Weaverham Way podcast on Spotify and Amazon Music.  

Ready to start your next Artsmark journey? Re-register today!