Wot Amazing Work!

The young people of our city continue to amaze me in the way that they involve themselves in the projects and activities they spend time doing. Their commitment and dedication are to be admired. The last ten days have been like taking a ride on the Participation rollercoaster and is the reason I love my job!

The young people from Two Halves One Whole steering group, have been busy busy busy enjoying their new role. They have just submitted a funding bid to a project to help them design and deliver a number of training workshops to adults and professionals around working with young people from mixed heritage families. Members of the steering group met at Phoenix Square to make last minutes changes to the application. The young people will have a decision about their funding next week, so we will all be keeping our fingers crossed.

Young people with funding applications

Meanwhile the young people from the Integrated Working Advisory Board have been working hard developing scenarios for the children’s workforce. They recently got together to take a look at the 6 scripts that have been produced. The young people took the opportunity to discuss things such as locations, background noises, voice over’s, acting roles, and even cliff hanger endings. All the information has been collected and being fedback to adults and professionals. The project has attracted a lot of interest from professionals across the region and everyone involved is very excited about the work already achieved.

Everyone is really looking forward to the filming starting shortly. I am really looking forward to see the various roles the young people take on and what they get out of the whole experience.

Young people reviewing scripts

The Children’s Council have been continuing to work hard on developing the community based Wot Box media projects at local libraries across the city. The Children’s Council mentor’s are running sessions that are free for young people to attend, take part in workshops and learn how to become a young reporter. The project has already seen articles in Leicester Wave from young people in Beaumont Leys, New Parks, Braunstone & Saffron. Sessions have also started in Evington, Hamilton and the Central Lending Library on Belvoir Street.

Leicester Children’s Council has also been supporting adults and professionals to understand the views and issues that are real to them. The WAM Report has been a great success and been used in a number of ways including, helping local neighbourhood boards to gather locality data, informing the priorities for how extended service funding is awarded and supporting information included in the new Alcohol Awareness campaign by Leicester city Council .

This is a truly fantastic piece of work achieved by the young people, and goes a long way to show an appetite for young people to want to get involved and play a part in letting other young people know that you can have a voice and make change happen.

Members of Leicester Children's Council

Talking of change, members of the Children’s Council were taking part in Takeover Leicester on Friday 12^th November. They recently visited the Watershed to get their packs, T-shirts, badges and their recording booklets to enable them all to be accredited for their work during the day.  They were very excited and have some great jobs.

I went to the Nottingham Evening Post last week to discuss supporting them to start a newspaper for young people. The young people and all the adults involved in WAVE are very excited about the thought of this happening. It would be a brilliant project for the young people of Nottingham City and County.

The 10^th Edition of Wave was another brilliant one, with so many great articles, that again are a clear example of our young people’s positive contribution and commitment not only to the newspaper, but to each other by pulling together to make it happen.

Last Monday’s WAVE meeting was part of the Citizens’ Eye Community Media Week and all the young people took the opportunity to sign up to the “Community Reporter 2012” project. The project will see the recruitment of 2,012 Community Reporters for 2012. The young reporters from WAVE are very excited about playing an important role in the 2012 Community Media Centre at Phoenix Square during the Olympics and Paralympics. 

The plans for the WAVE Awards evening are well underway with nominations and guest confirmations arriving daily. The event will see adults, professionals, parents and most importantly, the stars of the evening, our amazing young people come together to look at the last 12 months of the newspaper and celebrate the fantastic contribution made by the children and young people who have made it happen.  The event will take place on the 13^th December at the Central Lending Library 7.30-9.30pm.

Willowbrook Primary School have been learning about the media recently. We visited their school, where they all took part in a mini young reporter session. The whole class worked hard to each learn how to write a news article. The class produced 15 mini articles about all the different activities that happen at their school. The work didn’t finish there asthe whole class visited the Leicester Mercury a few days later, where they looked around the news room, had a Q&A session, proofed their articles for WAVE and then put all their new skills into action and produced an article about their visit to the Leicester Mercury called “Mini Mercury Madness”.

After sharing all of that work I feel exhausted and know that once I have posted this Blog I will think oh…… no!!!

Have forgot this and that……! Anyway I hope you have enjoyed my little rollercoaster ride, join me again some time for more updates and examples of the brilliant positive participation that takes place across out city.

Enjoy!

You can contact Wot Box on:

tina@wotboxcons.co.uk

0116-2422940

07521289520

   

Wot Box Witnessing Miracles

When working with young people you witness, what I like to think as "little miracles", the change and development of a young person, who is growing in front of your very eyes. I am lucky enough through the work that I’m apart of, to experience our cities young people turning into the future of our city, and it is for this reason that I am passionate that our young people are supported to be actively involved in working alongside the adults and decision makers of the city.

Young reporters getting ready for Play day

For many of our cities young people national politics is something they are not interested in, because in their world it all seems to be done so far away and out of their control. But what if we excite young people from an early age, about being able to effect change locally, supporting them to do things such as clean-ups, local campaigns, friendship groups, activity and social groups, that feed into both the Children's Council & Young People's Council. This would help us to energise a new generation of informed, involved community activists who want to have a say and play a more active role in the way decisions are made about issues that are important to them. I always think that if a young person i work with, who is 7 years old now, turns out to vote when they turn 18 then i have done my job.

Why? Because her parents and grandparents have never voted. I have a picture in my office that read’s "The most valuable resource in any country is it's children" …. this works for cities too.

A Wot Box

What if young people attended councillors surgeries on a regularly basis and attended Ward meetings to present news bulletins about issues that are important to young people. What if young people could help to inform the children's workforce professional’s and work alongside adults in a professional way it produce training tools. What if young people plan and delivery round table discussion events with professionals to talk about issues that are real to them. What if young people are becoming reporters and writing for the countries only newspaper, written, edited and sourced by young people?

Well look no further; over the last week I have witnessed so many miracles I have on several occasions had to pinch myself.

I have been working on the ‘Two halves One Whole’ project (part of Family Action) and we had our first meeting to look at the idea of developing a steering group for them. On our first meeting the young people worked on designing the projects leaflet and also worked on a funding bid.

Members of Two Halves One Whole steering group

 They are working towards putting together a training workshop for professionals around working with young people from mixed heritage backgrounds. They were just brilliant to work with. Then later on in the week the young people had the chance to be young reporters at Action for Children's Diversity Day event, where they interviewed and captured images of the event, (Check out Maria's & Chloe's coverage of the event at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/citizenseye/sets/72157625066814710/

 Two Halves One Whole reporter badges

During Local Democracy week there were a number of events that took place across the city as part of Leicester Speaks. Leicester Children's Council planned and delivered their own round table event that saw them take the main issues out of their recent consultation (We All Matter) WAM Report.

Discussions at the round table event

 Professionals were invited to spend the morning with around 30 young people and the event was a fantastic success, with lots of important thoughts and ideas being shared and taken away by professionals.

Young people taking part in the round table event at Phoenix Square

I am very proud to co manage the Children's Council and they have done some fantastic work over the last 1.5 years and are all a credit to themselves and Leicester.

The young people have been working really hard on the October edition of WAVE which is out today with some fantastic articles.

Our very own Will Sturgess received a letter from the Queen.

Front Page of Octobers leicester WAVE

 I am currently working on organising the Leicester WAVE AWARDS which are going to be taking place on the 13th December at the Central Lending Library.

Will with his letter from the Queen

 It will be a great time to celebrate the fantastic work our cities young people have contributed to the newspaper! They have all been amazing - every one of them.

Finally, members of the advisory board have been working with strategic leads and professionals from the police and health, scriptwriters and a filmmaker to develop a series of short training films to help with the induction and personal development of the 

Young people working alongside professionals 

Children's Workforce. The young people took part in workshops to develop short scripts that are due to be filmed over the next 2 month. These short films will be part of the development of a toolkit designed by young people.

  

Phew all in all another clear example of the little miracles in action and the work they are doing all across our city!

Well done everyone, you truly are inspirational to us all keep up the great work!

Wot Great Work!

Hello again and thanks for returning to hopefully catch up on the amazing work being done by young people.

Over the last two weeks it’s been like a whirlwind of activity, are you ready for this . . .

I was lucky enough to travel to Manchester to the Abandon Normal Devices (AND) festival at the superb CornerHouse where I was able to support John Coster from Citizens Eye deliver a presentation on the Leicester’s “2,012 Community Reporters by 2012” project. This is going to see 2,012 community reporters being recruited and trained for the London 2012 Games. The whole conference was a great experience and it was packed with professionals from across the world from places such as Canada, Brazil and Russia. I was just totally amazed at the fact that Leicester is actually at the cutting edge when it comes to community media and community reporters. The whole concept of Citizens Eye and the work we have achieved through Wave just blew everyone away.

John Coster taking part in a panel discussion around 2012

So with the start of my week already having a great boost could it have possibly got any better, well when you get to work with the young people I do, then yes of course. Hollie, one of our young reporters attended the Western Park ward meeting and delivered a young people’s news bulletin about issues that are real to young people from the area. This is something new we are working to develop and we hope that lots more young people will get more involved in local Ward meetings by working alongside local councillors to become more engaged with local decision making. Hollie did a great Job and we really need to be making sure that more of that kind of work happens.

Myself and Kate Stewart the editor of Wave attended a presentation event by some young people at a project I am working on called “Two Halves One Whole”. The project supports young people from mixed heritage backgrounds in many areas from identity to assertiveness. We had a great time watching the young people present to their parents everything they had learned from the course. It can clearly be quite difficult to look different and have different hair and skin than your friends, parents and other bothers & sisters, also not having people around you to answer questions about your heritage and family history.

Young people from Two halves one Whole 

It was very clear that the project works well to support the young people and their parents. Young people from the project are currently working on developing a training course for professionals about the importance of staff and professionals working with mixed heritage young people and understanding what it is like.

Maria said, “I really liked thinking about positive role models, mine were Leona Lewis and Martin Luther-King and its great that I met with other young people just like me!” Personally I am really looking forward to supporting the young people to design and deliver their training for professionals, I think it will fantastic to see what happens and it will be delivered by the young people who actually know.

Supporting and developing young people to be able to support the development of the skills and awareness of adults and professionals who work with them is a subject that I am really passionate about and for the last 12 months I have been working with a group of young people on a number of things that enable them to get involved in decision making and sharing the views of young people at a community level.

These young people are involved in a young persons advisory board. They have been working to develop some scenarios of real life situations that young people find themselves in. These scenarios are now being worked on by a number of scriptwriters and a filmmaker to produce a training and development tool, which will support the training and development of the children’s workforce in Leicester. We are going to be working on this over half term and I think it’s an amazing project and once the final product is produced, it really will show the value of working and listening to young people and involving them in shaping their own futures.

Over the last few week Leicester Children’s Council have been busy starting their local Wot Box media projects. 8 libraries across the city will each be having their own Wot Box media project, which is being delivered by one of our Children’s Council Mentors. The aim is to recruit and train young people within their local communities to become young reporters and to produce news articles about things that they are passionate about where they live. The projects have been a great success with articles from Braunstone, New Parks, Saffron and Beaumont Leys already featuring in Wave. Hamilton & Evington are starting at the end of the month with St Barnabus and Central Lending Library starting soon afterwards. I am really excited because it will mean that there are lots of young people are going to be getting involved and having a voice about their local community.

The Children’s Council held a Round table discussion event today (15^th October) as part of Leicester Speaks programme of events for Local Democracy Week. The event saw about 35 young people and 12 professionals discuss issues that are important to young people in line with the findings of the WAM ‘We All Matter’ report which they have been working on over the last 6 months. The event was a fantastic way of getting people together to discuss and talk and listen to what young people had to say. The young people are going to be gathering all the information from the event and the feeding it back to strategic leads and Members of the Cabinet.

Leicester Children's Council - Round Table Event 

October’s edition of Wave (Wednesday 27^th) is coming on well with lots of fantastic articles already submitted. These include Will Sturgess getting a letter from the Queen and update on the Leicester Marathon, which I may add I am still a little sore from but we will not go into that due to the fact that Hollie, the deputy editor of wave did her 3.5 mile section on crutches so who am I to moan!

Other articles include the Freedom Project, a day in the life of… creative writing, Ed Milliband, charity school work and loads more. Our young reporters have been so busy and they make me so proud. They have also been out with the new WAVE TV & Citizens Eye TV news team at the film premiere of Pusher. It’s going down a storm and really getting the young people excited.

I am off to sleep now, as just typing this Blog as made me tired and it is probably the longest time I have stayed in one place for the last 2 weeks!


You can contact me on:
Tina Barton
Wot Box Participation
Phoenix Square
Workspace 19
4 Midland Street
Leicester
LE1 1TG
0116-2422940    07521289520
tina@wotboxcons.co.uk

Wot a Week!

Hello everyone and welcome to my Blog! It seems by all accounts that Blogs are the new Black!

I am very excited about my new blog and what it will help me do. I am going to be sharing with you every week some of the fantastic work that I am involved in, with the people that make Leicester & Leicestershire what it is… our great and inspiring young people. I will be sharing with you young people’s contributions to Leicester WAVE (the UK’s only written, edited & sourced newspaper), the work of Leicester’s Children’s Council (the platform for the voices of young people aged 7-13), keeping you updated with the going’s on in our Wot Box projects within Leicester Libraries and much much more.

Yesterday saw the 9^th edition of Leicester WAVE hit the shelves inside the Leicester Mercury. It is by far the strongest edition and the young people involved of all ages, backgrounds and abilities have shown what they are capable of. I have the pleasure of supporting all the young people involved in WAVE and it has to be said its been quite a journey of the last 9 months, but when I see the finished product it makes everything worth it.

I receive some great feedback from adults, parents and young people about WAVE and yesterday evening a young person sent me a text which said “Thanks so much for publishing my article, it’s quite amazing to be able to walk into a shop and see your own words in print, I really appreciate it thank you”.

The work and commitment that is put into the project by the young people is by far the most amazing thing and my response to such statements are that YOU the young people own this newspaper and it is there for you to have a voice and express the things that you feel passionate about.

Mo Farah with Hollie From Wave & Dan from Inspire LeicesterShire

Another event that is getting all the young people excited at the moment is the build up to the 2012 Olympics. Lots of young people I work with are very enthusiastic about getting involved in projects and events like The Mighty Creative Journals project, Phoenix Square’s 2012 media centre being run by John Coster from Citizens Eye and also all the opportunities to interview athletes like Sam Oldham (who appears in this issue of WAVE) and Mo Farah, who was at Victoria Park on Sunday to support a 5K fun run for the Kashmir Orphans Charity KORT. Although it is still just under 2 years away, the word is out and young people want to be part of it.

Sam Oldham - Provided by Inspire Leicestershire

Leicester Children’s Council are busy planning a round table event at the Phoenix on Friday 15^th October during the Local Democracy Week programme called Leicester Speaks. It’s to build on the work of the huge citywide consultation they conducted called We All Matter, where they spoke to 1,132 young people from across Leicester. They are aiming to speak to key decision makers and professional from the local authority on the 2 main issues that young people said were important: drugs & alcohol and not enough things to do. The event has been organized by the Children’s Council Mentors who are bringing together 40 young people to take part in the event.

I get really passionate about young people having a voice within their local communities and have just started to plan to arrange ‘news’ style bulletins by young people at Ward Meetings. The whole approach will see young people deliver a 10-minute news slot about issues young people have, within their local 

areas.

The 1^st session is going to take place at the Westcotes Ward meeting on the 6^th October. I am sure it will be interesting and will be sure to use my new blog to keep you all updated.

One of the ways I have been working to develop capturing the views of young people within their local communities is through Wot Box projects. These projects run out of Libraries across the city and enable local young people to learn how to become young reporters through accessing training workshops and equipment. This then helps them to write news articles and conduct interviews in and around their local area about things that are important to them. The last 6 weeks have seen new projects start at the Braunstone, Saffron and Beaumont Leys library and to prove that it works, 7 mini articles that featured in this issue of WAVE, came from young people new to the project.

I want to complete this weeks blog by saying thank you to everyone who has contributed to WAVE this month. Please keep up the fantastic work, and to every young person I have spoken to and have worked with, please continue to make my job one of the best in the world and the reason why I continue to get out of bed every morning.

Take care

Tx

At Wot Box we believe…

...we believe in nurturing effective participation from the fresh organic ideas and creativity from children and young people,   using their natural willingness for “wanting to get involved and be heard”

…we believe in working with children, young people and adults that support and encourage participation to the highest levels

…we create and tailor our own work to ensure it’s fresh and contains no barriers to participation

…we believe in happy children and young people and this only happens when people listen to them

…we believe in joint decision making, sharing ideas and working together creatively to ensure the best possible outcomes for children and young people

…we also believe that the words “Participation” and “Involvement” have an honest meaning beyond “Saying” alone!

By Demi 14 years

For further details please contact Tina Barton at Wot Box Consultants:

The Community Media Hub, Learning & Information Library, Bishop Street, Leicester LE1 6AA

Tel: 0116 299 5413

Email: tina@wotboxcons.co.uk