BMC-run studio for hire

MUMBAI, June 1: A department which has concerned itself with education now prepares to enter the commercial market, officially. The Brihanm...

MUMBAI, June 1: A department which has concerned itself with education now prepares to enter the commercial market, officially. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation8217;s BMC education department has finalised a scheme to hire out its studio at Grant Road for commercial purposes, informed the BMC education officer D U Dandavate. The finer details of the programme have yet to be worked out.

In existence at the Gilder Tank municipal building since 1974-75, this studio is currently being used by the Language Department Project LDP, a project which makes educational video and audio cassettes, specially the recording of poems from textbooks of different languages for the lower and upper primary classes.

8220;The studio is not required all the time by the LDP. Hiring it out at a competitive price will fetch money for the municipality,8221; said Dandavate. As a source pointed out, it is the studio that needs the money more than anyone else. The innovative LDP programme has been obstructed all these years by a lack of funds and inadequate eqiupment.

The studio got technologically sophisticated only some years back. The antideluvian Ahuja amplifier, costing Rs 500, was supplemented by acoustic treatment and audio equipment totally worth about Rs 18 lakhs. It is run by only one technician alongwith two helpers, and it needs a recordist, a projectionist and another helper. No money has been earmarked for the maintenance of these machines, the source added.

The LDP also needs more office personnel to cater to the needs of about 13,000 municipal schools. For example, only 600 cassettes and 122 poems for standards V,VI and VII in Urdu, Marathi, Gujrati, Hindi and English are being recorded.

The hiring out of this studio is thus seen as necessary to revitalise the LDP. The funds from this commercial hiring will be earmarked for the purchase of a digital system and an eight track recorder to produce more tapes and of better quality. It will also be used for adopting more diverse educational programmes like dialogue, dramatisation, story telling and model reading.

LDP also supplies audio tapes based on catchy tunes for the central government sponsored competency-based programme, which attempts to curtail dropout rates at the primary levels of schooling. This year, the studio also plans to produce cassettes for standards I and II in Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Urdu.