Chapter 510 Launches New Season of Soundspace: I Hear You with Listening Party
This month, Chapter 510 celebrated the fifth season of SOUNDSPACE, a podcast created by Oakland teens, with a collection of stories called I HEAR YOU: Audio Stories about Mental Health & Wellness.
This youth-produced podcast features original audio stories by teen storytellers exploring mental health and wellness through personal reflection, interviews, and voices from their communities. In this season, Oakland teens reflect on mental health and wellness. These ideas have become buzzwords – but what are actual tools to navigate an overwhelming world?
Four of the teen podcasters hosted a listening party, each of them incorporating their own unique style and perspective. Upon arrival, the first activity was a community spelling tree where each attendees was encouraged to write a short note to their younger self about something that could have been helpful to know about mental health and wellness. The result was a collage of everyone's messages and reflections.
During the listening party, each student introduced their story and why their topic resonated with them. We then played excerpts from each student’s podcast episode so the audience not only had the opportunity to preview but connect to each story, getting folks ready for the discussion that followed. Half way through the listening party the audience was invited to turn to a neighbor and talk about the moments that felt most impactful for them.
Youth Beat documented the entire event and interviewed a few of the students on their experience creating their podcast episode.
This year’s podcast was supported by HopeLab, which is also working to ground our students' work in their research and resources around equity-centered solutions that improve the health and well-being of Black, Brown, and Queer young people. Jayla Stokesberry, a Research Assistant at Hopelab joined the event as a guest speaker and shared the importance of youth led research and storytelling in the field of mental health and wellness as well as the value of third spaces that youth are able to find belonging within.
Overall, the event was a huge success!
A special thanks to our funders OFCY (Oakland Fund for Children and Youth), Miranda Lux Foundation, Port of Oakland, Kaiser Permanente, and our partner HopeLab for supporting this year’s podcast.
Congratulations to all the youth podcasters and producers on this incredible accomplishment. We are excited to continue sharing these powerful stories in next year’s teen audio storytelling program in partnership with HopeLab. Don’t miss registration for our next teen cohort in July!
Listen to I Hear You: Audio Stories about Mental Health and Wellness on Spotify here or on Apple Podcasts here.