Thinking about summer plans? If you live in Montreal and are between the ages of 10 and 17, this is your chance to be the media! CKUT 90.3 FM is offering its first ever radio camp, a chance for future journalists, DJs, music enthusiasts, writers, and documentary makers to learn the ins and outs of radio. From the CKUT website:

Over a week long session campers (ages 10-13 and 14-17) will write, produce and act in a radio play, conduct interviews and create short documentaries, learn to dj and at the end of the week will produce and host a live radio show on CKUT!

This could be you. (venus collective)

This is an amazing opportunity for young folks to get involved with something that, for me at least, is inspiring, exciting, edumacational, oh, fine, I’ll just go ahead and say it - life-altering. Participants will learn such skills as how to make sound effects for radio, DJ skills like scratching and beat-matching, how to interview bands and artists, how to put together a documentary or radio play, and sound-editing. Plus you’ll get to hang out with other media-enthusiasts and wave-makers, and meet musicians, DJs, journalists, and all the other usual suspects who make for a vibrant media landscape. Who knows, you could end up karaokeing I’m Too Sexy with members of Les Georges Leningrad and Lesbians on Ecstasy (see image) - anything can happen.

Sessions are one week long and run all summer, from June 29th to August 21st. To find out more information and register, go here.

Whew! I’m still spent from last week’s rant on community radio. While I gather my energies for the next round, please enjoy this “music video” from Dutch band The Shocking Blue. I really appreciate that period in musical history (the 60s?) when someone had the idea of recording and broadcasting bands, but the whole thing was so new that you mostly just got a lot of awkward standing around in random locales (are they at a zoo? A medical laboratory?) with, like, two cuts, and “special effects” meant flashing an image of a record cover or Mariska Veres’s face really quickly to implant subliminal messages. Enjoy!

A number of Shameless staff members are off to the Women Action Media conference this weekend in Boston. We’re looking forward to meeting up with fantastic feminists from all over North America in a three day media/feminist geek out. Check out the WAM! homepage to see who is liveblogging the conference, or follow the #wam09 hash tag on twitter to get all the updates!

Every Thursday I profile a new incredible woman, each from a different walk of life. Different professions, causes, backgrounds, ethnicities, orientations, and anything/everything else!

So without further delay, let me introduce the awesome Lana Gay…

Host of Lanarama, Lana Gay rocks CBC Radio 3 with her knowledge of the music world and casual on-air personality. I mean, just take a listen. Doesn’t she sound like your cool friend who knows all the best bands? And with that awesome expertise, Lana was also a member of the grand jury for the 2008 Polaris Music Prize. Lana answers our shameless questions and tells us about how her passion drives her to share what she loves, including the best burrito she’s ever eaten!

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A couple of months ago I pledged to blog for Ada Lovelace Day, an initiative put forth by Suw Charman-Anderson, digital rights activist, journalist and blogger. The initiative seeks to challenge the notion that women are absent from science by shedding light on women who have excelled in science.

I have chosen to look at some of the achievements and theories of Governor General’s Award winner, U.N. Pearson Peace Medal Honouree, award-winning physicist and metallurgist Ursula Franklin, who has had a formative influence on how I see the world around me. I first read The Real World of Technology when I was 19, taking a class on the anthropology of technology, a course that I had only added to my schedule to fulfill a science requirement for my undergraduate arts degree. The course ended up being enlightening and transforming, mainly thanks to Dr. Franklin.

To go into all of Franklin’s achievements and ideas would require a textbook rather than a blog post, so I will focus only on two areas: her assertion that technology is a practice rather than an accumulation of objects and her theories on a feminist scientific method.

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I’m back Shameless! Had to finish some serious schoolwork, but I am now getting slowly back in gear. However, because that was a long semester full of big words, and big deadlines, I’ll probably just post the occasional funny until my grey matter has had time to rest up a bit.

Let’s start with this awesome video of Portia De Rossi apologizing for her big gay wedding.

That’s right Portia, it’s people like you who force haters to wear silly hats.

Over a year in the making, Shameless magazine’s very first book is set to launch in Toronto on June 23rd. For now, here’s a sneak peek at the beautiful cover (care of our very talented Art Director Sheila Sampath). You can pre-order the book online here, or ask for it at your local independent book store when spring has sprung. More details to follow!

More details after the jump.

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I have something a little bit unusual to share this week – instead of a music pick, I am putting forth what some may call A Rant. Nicole’s post about the situation at CKLN has got me thinking about community radio. It’s still not totally clear to me exactly what’s going on at the Ryerson station, but what is obvious not just there but everywhere is that the relevance of community radio is being questioned, mostly by students at universities, who are the ones who most often provide crucial funding to these stations.

Here’s how it works: Universities give campus/community radio stations a big chunk of the money they need to operate, and some (or all) of that money is gathered by charging students a fee – usually around $4 a semester – which in exchange gives the students membership privileges at the station, meaning they can use its resources and become volunteer hosts and programmers. Some universities have been giving students the option to opt out of these fees, and it seems like many students are keen to save a few bucks by withholding money from a service which they feel isn’t relevant, useful, or interesting. In a world where you can carry around 80,000 songs in your back pocket, get newsfeeds from the most reliable (or most obscure) sources around the world, and read highly entertaining, informative blogs, why would you bother tuning into a bunch of amateurs who are just learning when to press the On Air button, or even more so, why would you want to become one of them?

Okay, I too have been a broke student. I’ve re-used teabags, felt overjoyed at finding a nice pen on the sidewalk, gotten friends to cut my hair, and worn sweaters until they were more hole than clothing. I know saving bucks is important, and no one wants to feel like they’re throwing them down the (radio) tubes. I’ve also been a volunteer at a community radio station for close to ten years now, and I think I come from a pretty good position to talk about why community radio is worth supporting. So without further ado, here are my REASONS WHY COMMUNITY RADIO IS WORTH ONE LESS LATTE A SEMESTER.

1) Community radio creates a space for community and media engagement, not a product to be sold.
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Every Thursday I profile a new incredible woman, each from a different walk of life. Different professions, causes, backgrounds, ethnicities, orientations, and anything/everything else!

So without further delay, let me introduce the eco-fabulous Kelly Drennan…

Kelly Drennan knows that looking great can be eco-fabulous. Founder of Fashion Takes Action, a members-based organization whose mission is to have a socially and environmentally positive impact on the fashion industry, Kelly is also the Principal of Third Eye Media. Responsible for bringing about some of Canada’s greenest fashion events, The Green Gala and The Sustainable Style Show, Kelly is currently keeping Canada eco-conscious during Toronto’s LG Fashion Week.

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