Interview: Seán McDonnell - Radio YNP, November 13th 2018

Interview: Seán McDonnell - Radio YNP, November 13th 2018

YouthAction Northern Ireland has been operating for over 70 years, working with locals aged between 10-25 and making significant, tangible differences in their lives. Mostly working with youths from disadvantaged areas, in recent years there has been a conscious step towards development in different areas of employment. One of these areas, Radio YNP (Youth Networking For Peace), is a radio station operated entirely by young people. Local musician Seán McDonnell is the station manager and the organiser of a number of events, including a recent networking panel for young musicians who feel their voice is unheard. I sat down with him to learn more about this.

Walk me through what YouthAction actually is.

Seán McDonnell: YouthAction is a youth organisation based in Northern Ireland. It’s been operating for around 75 years now. It’s a collection of youth organisations across Northern Ireland. We’ve got a number of regional offices, one in Derry/London Derry, one in Newry, one in Kilkeel and one here in Belfast, which is our headquarters. In there, we've about 30 workers: full time, part time, placement, student. They are our youth facilitators, and they do a whole load of good work. There are guys working with mental health groups, there's personal development youth work that is trying to get young people trained up, there’s lots of arts and theatre stuff such as the Rainbow Factory. That takes in about one hundred young people every week to learn drama skills and musical theatre. There is also the technical side of that where young people can come in and learn sound engineering. 

The part that I work with it the Youth Network For Peace team, specifically Radio YNP. It's an online radio station that we broadcast from the building.

Tell me about the radio station.

S: Radio YNP is an online radio station that is youth led. I manage the station but it’s mostly run by the young workers who come in, our team gets trained in broadcasting skills and are given a slot to produce their own radio show and talk about whatever they want. They are given complete creative freedom, whether they want to talk about politics, news, music, sports. It runs 24/7 but there's only content for selected time slots during the day. If anyone is interested in listening or even getting involved they can go to the website and get all the information on there.

You’re putting on an information night for young musicians, tell me about it.

S: I mentioned YNP, while I work on the broadcasting side of it, the other side of it is dialogue events which we also lead on. For one of these events, our young people decided they wanted to have a dialogue about the local music scene. They wanted to have an opportunity for them and other young people to make their voices heard about the issues surrounding the local music scene. The event (held on the 16th November) will be in the Rainbow Theatre and we’ll have facilitators and local influencers coming in to speak to the young people, tell them what they do and help answer some of their questions and try to help resolve some of their issues. We also have some local bands playing. We’re hoping it’ll be an eventful night.

You obviously feel strongly about this event you’re putting on, why so?

S: I was very pleased, personally, that this is the direction that we decided to go in. It’s something I’ve been involved in from an early age and fell in love with. Having played in a band myself, I have a lot of issues that I would love to have my opinion heard on and I would love to hear other peoples opinions. This event really gives us an opportunity to work together and make some progress towards making the scene more inclusive, progressive and easily accessible.

On that note, as a local musician yourself what type of things would you voice at this event?

S: One of the things that I feel strongly about is access to underage venues for young musicians. I have less of an issue now as I’m over 18 and I’m allowed to play in bars but for years, as an under-18 year old, there were very little venues that my band could play in. There were lots of bands at the time in the same boat and it’s still something that hinders them. While we have some great facilities, like the Oh Yeah! Music Centre, the Rainbow Factory and others that welcome local artists in to play, there's a lot more local artists than there are willing venues. That’s something I would want to address.

The event page mentions you want a strong support network for young musicians. What does that look like to you?

S: I think a lot of young people aren’t aware of how many people there are like them across the city. I think that’s something that really opened my eyes when I first got involved. When I started my radio show, I ended up taking note of how many bands and artists I came in contact with. I made a spreadsheet and I think in Belfast alone I had about 400 bands and artist. It sounds crazy! But that was active artists who were playing regularly, original artists as well so that’s not even counting cover bands.

I think a better support network looks like young people being more aware of how many people there are out there that can help them and of the opportunities they can have to collaborate with each other. At the end of the day, there are very little that you can expect in the way of support from the government or establishments. I think the best way to push yourself forward is to work with other artists, with other independents in the industry, having the mindset of “We want to do this, so how do we make it happen?” It’s hard to do that on your own but if you have other people around you, which is something I’ve experienced in the past, you can achieve a lot of things.

Do you think the scene has a capacity to change?

S: I do, I think there’s a lot of flickers of hope, things that make you think “There are things that can happen here.” The likes of ZOOL Records and their DIY approach, and what a lot of locals in the Blackstaff are doing, that is the sort of ethos that I value. No matter how few facilities there are, how little attention this part of the world receives, it still continues to persevere and produce world-class musical acts. There’s no killing the NI music scene, it’s something that all continue to grow and people will keep continuing to make music.

How would convince someone unsure of this?

S: I understand why they would be, there are loads of events like this that come up on my Facebook, but what we can promise is that the voice that you express at this event is not going to be blowing in the wind. The purpose of these dialogue events is to get these voices recorded and put in front of policymakers, influencers and people who can change this place into something that people want. That’s something that we can ensure, that if you attend these events that your voice will be heard.