JMS Critical Media Production

After my isiXhosa test I quickly rushed to watch the third year journalism students’ visual and audio presentations. Unfortunately I had missed the snacks and the first presentation but was just in time to chuckle at the “Bum Campaign” created by the ‘Whine into Water’ group, whose purpose was to bring attention to the water issues in Grahamstown. Their particular display offered water tasting from Joza and from the “middle class” areas and the difference in quality was shocking. This was according to a brave friend who tested the water, while I cowardly stood back shaking my head in disgust but also because I had spent a difficult 45 minutes in the isiXhosa test because of something I ate in the dining hall. When we went back to the display after the show almost all of the “middle class” water had been drunk and barely any of Joza’s water. The next group, ‘Take a Leap’ focused on brining awareness to the municipality and showed distressing footage of children who have shingles from playing in their faeces because the municipality no longer collects the rubbish. ‘Ukulima Grahamstown’, talked about cultivation and food gardens using a character called Dr. Green Thumb, which is also a character Cypress Hill sings about but with completely different connotations. ‘Common Ground’, had the difficult task of bringing attention to the cow issue, where farmers are having problems with their cows escaping and walking the streets. The next group, Green Inc. also struggled to bring across an interesting message about awareness and participation in green industries but did bring publicity to ‘Kisma Kreative’, which is an ‘upcycling’ shop in Grahamstown. ‘Upcycling’ is different to recycling because you take junk and create something new and creative instead of creating the same or similar product again through recycling.

Shamefully we slipped out after this because our journalism projects called for attention but it was both exciting and scary to get a taste of what is to come in third year. Every journalism student who hates group work should have gone and watched because each group consisted of 12 or 13 members. I could barely keep our group of four together so do not even want to begin to think of the difficulty of pulling 13 heads into one. It also helped to see exactly what is to be avoided when creating a visual audio show and what works, which is always helpful and which is why journalism students need to attend events outside of our “journalism comfort zone” even if it means missing the snacks and having to sneak out near the end.