Montreal-based Inuktitut radio producers plan Ottawa workshop

Nipivut radio show producer David Murphy, right, and Donna Patrick of the Nunalijjuaq Project which created Nipivut at Montreal’s Concordia University, go over details of this week’s broadcast at the university April 28. (PHOTO BY COURTNEY EDGAR)

SPECIAL TO NUNATSIAQ NEWS

MONTREAL—Ottawamiut listen up: Inuktitut radio might be coming your way.

Producers of Nipivut Radio, which broadcasts a bi-weekly Inuktitut radio show on McGill University’s campus radio station CKUT in Montreal, realized recently that a lot of their listeners were tuning in from Ottawa.

It made sense that Ottawa, with the largest Inuit population outside of Inuit Nunangat, also held the largest number of Nipivut listeners outside of Kuujjuaq and Montreal.

So, after the idea percolated for a while, the Nipivut team, based out of Montreal’s Concordia University, applied for a grant through Concordia to conduct workshops in Ottawa to demonstrate how easy it is to put together a radio show and to gauge local interest for such a program.

“The idea of the Inuktitut language in an urban setting is really cool and is something that could familiarize other people to the language and to Inuit culture as well,” Nipivut producer David Murphy said April 28.

“A lot of people are really proud that they can speak Inuktitut on the radio and we want to give them every opportunity to uphold the language. And it is very important, in my opinion, to have Inuktitut on the radio, on the airwaves.”

On May 3, Nipivut producers, in partnership with Tungasuvvingat Inuit, an Ottawa-based service agency, will hold their first broadcast skills workshop in Ottawa at the University of Ottawa, Montpetit Hall, Room 103.

The TI connection came from Donna Patrick, a co-researcher on the Concordia-based Nunaliijuaq Project and a volunteer at Nipivut.

Patrick ran into a TI employee at a November conference in St. Johns, Nfld, who mentioned to her that TI was interested in the idea of producing a twice-monthly radio show in Ottawa. She said TI helped recruit participants for the Ottawa workshop and is hoping to find money to support an Ottawa-based Inuktitut radio show.

The upcoming Nipivut workshop, open to anyone in the Inuit community, will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. It will focus on skills required to create a radio show including professional interviewing tips and sound editing techniques.

Aside from teaching the nuts-and-bolts of radio broadcast, the organizers also plan to hold discussions on the benefits of language and community development and then to take participants on a tour of the university’s radio facilities.

“We want to come back and show them simply how we edit,” said Murphy.

“We can go through the process of editing audio really quickly—not to teach them really specific details—but I guess the over-all message would be: really anybody can do it. It is very simple programming skills or editing skills that anybody who can log into Facebook can do.”

The plan is to generate enough interest so that, in November, Nipivut can apply for another grant, Murphy said, to expand the show to places such as Ottawa and other cities where there is a need for Inuktitut radio.

This might lead to sister stations—Nipivut Ottawa, say, or Nipivut Winnipeg.

For now, the Nipivut team just wants to just spread the word, generate interest and teach the skills required so that even if a group decided to start up their own show in another city, without the Nipivut name, they would still have the skills and knowledge to do so.

Nipivut has been running other radio production workshops in Montreal as well. The next one, scheduled for May 12, will be held in association with Youth Fusion and include youth participants from Inukjuak and Kangiqsujuaq.

“It is a continuation of our mandate in wanting to spread the capabilities and more specifically to youth,” Murphy said. “To give them an avenue to radio, and broadcasting in general.”