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