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.
Talking of change, members of the Children’s Council were taking part in Takeover Leicester on Friday 12th 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 10th 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 13th 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
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