The Campaign Company Blog

From Elliptical Galaxies to Potholes......

I have previously mentioned Grid Republic as a social network for a scientific or medical purpose, whereby a community of people across the world get together to use their spare computing power to do distributed computing with a capacity in terraflops - ie very big - through a rather clever screensaver download.

However this is a passive form of science where one just allows one's computer to be used for a wider purpose.

Yesterday evening I discovered Galaxy Zoo - a far more exciting piece of scientific endeavour where you can directly contribute to the scientific work online.

In this case you are helping astrophysicists to map distributions of various types of galaxy (elliptical and spiral are the two broad forms, but there are lots of sub-groups) by joining the online team (now 115,000 strong since the project started in July 2007) assessing photos of over 200 million objects taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This will assist with a far greater understanding of the lifecycle of galaxies, many of which go through mergers to move from spiral to elliptical - our own Galaxy's probable fate.

Whilst computers can be used to assess many things, when it comes to indistinct photos of two merging galaxies edge on to earth view the eye and the brain are still superb tools. However the sheer amount of data being generated means scientists and their students do not have the time to do this themselves and should they be wasting their discovery time anyway?

This is a project where anyone online at home can help.

You need no prior knowledge to take part in the work. Once you join Galaxy Zoo you are given simple online tutorials and in order to start assessing pictures you then take a short online test where you have to get 8 out of 15 pictures right - this is because they get up to 35 people to look at each photo and then recheck any disagreements between viewers.

Having passed the test you can then assess photos. For someone like myself who spent every non cloudy night from the age of 10 to 11 outdoors in the evening doing astronomy, this is a much warmer experience and could get quite addictive in a Sudoku sort of way! I did 45 galaxies last night and have resisted doing it tonight only so I could blog about it.

Apart from its benefits to astrophysics, I have started to think whether such a system could be used in other more terrestrial areas of activity.

A few came to mind:

• Assessing the millions of earth satellite photos to identify issues such as climate change and land use. On a more local level TCC has a project called Carbon Crime Stoppers and I wonder whether a photo assessment system could work with that?
• It could be used for community engagement where residents could both submit and assess street scene photos that either other residents had taken of the Council regularly took from its front-line staff going about their daily duties with handheld PDA's. This of course would be a culture change for local government where it effectively employed teams of online resident non-professionals. However creating resident buy in with the prioritisation of street scene issues could be a great way of developing community cohesion in the future.
• Assessing biodiversity in local authority parks and gardens through the taking and assessment of photos. Again this could bring together communities in worthwhile projects.

The above are just tentative thoughts and I would welcome further suggestions.

What is interesting is that this sort of project could give young people a strong and empowered role in any local activity. Galaxy Zoo says it has young people from 8 years old upwards assessing photos.

Therefore in years to come both science and community cohesion could strongly benefit from online communities collaborating to solve problems. What might have started as project to understand galactic evolution could be just the thing to massively expand the collaboration between local authorities and the communities they represent.

Registering to Vote - Making you Count!

Never having learned to drive, means I use the bus a lot which means I get a bit of extra time to devour more of a newspaper - that way giving me a few extra new thoughts on a wider range of subjects. Being in TCC also means I like looking at how other people get their message across and also how we can Make Democracy Work!

When you combine this together you get blog postings like this!

As I got off the bus stop I always look at the bus stop advertising. This is not because I am an avid consumer - indeed I am probably quite a non-materialist really. It is because social marketing campaigns - an area which TCC works in - are often advertised at bus stops.

This time I saw an advert for registering to vote for the London Mayoral election. I didn't think it was a good poster - it wasn't a great design and didn't really encourage you to register, though I suppose it was helpful as an information item. There is clearly a need to advertise registration as up to 1 million Londoners might not be registered to vote in May in the GLA elections. As I walked on to the library I then mentally challenged myself as to what I would do instead!

It struck me that what real incentive was there to make young people want to register? Having your say is hardly tangible in a mature consumer democracy like the UK. It is not as if a young person is going to struggle like many South African voting for the first time after a lot of queueing in 1994.

Many young people may also make the ostensibly rational consumerist calculation, that "will my single vote make any difference"? Until we teach more about the science of change at an earlier age and that small acts really do make a difference either by making a big change on its own or being part of an amplification of a change this rationalisation will continue to exist. As Bobby Kennedy said in South Africa in 1966:

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

In addition for some sort of Tipping Point to occur, such as the collapse of a pile of sand, it needed a single grain of sand to move.

Collapsing sand and Bobby Kennedy's soaring rhetoric might be an interesting explanation to me, but are not a great incentive for others leading busy lives in a reasonably secure democracy where voting and politics in general are lower down their priority list.

The insight I had at the bus stop and on the way to the library - where I am now typing this blog posting - was that it was the act of registering itself that was the problem. For all the centuries of developing democracy, is a vote every few years a great return on filling in a form?

Unlike the past when the registration form was one of the more important things you filled in every year, we all now fill in hundreds of forms a year, many online and many much more exciting or important than the humble electoral registration form. In other words, in an era of mortgage applications, bank loans and overseas holidays, the poor old electoral registration form had fallen down the hierarchy of important acts that you do.

What we need is to make registering to vote a lot more of a key thing, not just for young people but for citizens of all ages.

In recent years the main debate on registration has been on security and voting fraud and whether there should be individual registration or household registration. As one can imagine, this has not been a great encouragement to either registering or voting.

I think this is a false choice as with all the digital databases we now have we can actually have both types of registration, with one acting as a check on the other. Where an individual registration conflicts with a household return, the local authority electoral registration unit should check the issue out. This might require greater resources to operate, but my other suggestions below also recommend more resources being spent on this key entrance point to democratic participation.

Below are a few of my ideas for reforming the electoral registration process for all voters that not only assists with registration itself but also encourages voting:

• Should first registering to vote be done at schools like an internal Citizenship ceremony. With the school leaving age soon to be 18, this could be a key role for them and the culmination of years of PHSE lessons.
• The registration form should come with a standard booklet explaining all your opportunities to participate. Some would be things that already exist. Some extra forms of participation are suggested below.
• The registration form should offer you text message and email notice of public debates hosted by your local authority where Councillors are available to answer questions a few times a year.
• Many people say they want to have their say. The registration form should offer you an online local authority level discussion area where the local strategic partnership and your MP will hold online sessions so they can be questioned, with online votes on issues etc.
• It should offer you an opportunity to register for annual free draws to meet the Prime Minster and the cabinet and opposition party leaders perhaps with a few days holiday in a London hotel thrown in to make it more of a holiday.
• For young people how about a free draw to enable some to have their child trust fund topped up or your university tuition fees written off. Over the next few years we will see people realise how valuable the child trust fund is and that adding to that will become an increasing incentive to many families.
• You could request to join a political party and specify which one you wanted to join. This would have to be a party registered with the Electoral Commission, but the local authority would then pass your name on to the relevant national party to follow up if they wished.
• You could request to become a school governor or to sit on a local government outside body or a local community group or charity. The local authority could then add you to a list that the Councillors could use to draw from a wider range of experience. This approach might even help with improving political party recruitment and making them more representative of their communities.

Some might disagree with some of these ideas or might have other, even better, suggestions. My fundamental point is that filling a form for a single democratic purpose that has been unchanged for many years, is not enough in these more complex times. The form should be transformed into a gateway into a whole range of participatory democratic activity. That way we all should have more opportunities to make democracy work!

You tube becomes "Viewtube"!

Youtube has brought all the UK Political Party Youtube sites into one portal to make them easier to find.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown launched the site appropriately through a Youtube Video!

This should be a useful resource to all citizens or "netizens" in the coming years and is likely to receive a lot of hits at the next General Election. It should reach out to groups such as young people, who are hard to reach through other campaign techniques.

It will be interesting to see whether unofficial videos made by individuals rather than political parties are also placed there?

TCC uses web 2.0 systems such as Youtube and wiki sites for community engagement where the public can add their own content on websites. We believe this has a lot of potential for social marketing and community cohesion work as well as more general campaigning.

As online video becomes easier and cheaper to upload, we could see entire debates conducted through video blogging (Vlogs) and through sites as Youtube. This has potential to revolutionise how the public express their views and could make politicians much more accountable to the public they serve.

Shameless Marketing

The Chatsworth estate is heading for its second election (remember shopowner Kash was elected to Chatsworth Council at the end of series 3) and this time, if I've viewed the preview clips correctly, this gritty Mancunian housing estate will be electing their own Young Mayor.

As a programme, that I'm a great fan of, which has taken social commentary to, occassionally unbelieveable, dramatic heights I can't help wondering what might be in store for our candidates and what the writers have decided should be the moral tale told with this next election.

Previews of story lines for the episode (5) suggest that 'Debbie spots a chance to provide free egg and chips to everyone on the estate' (courtesy of the Radio Times) - could it be a bribe to help her chosen candidate get elected? Well, like me, you'll just have to wait and see whether the writers have decided that participation in elections should be equated with spoils politics - even if the spoils, in true Shameless style, is free egg and chips.

On a more serious note though, well done to the Shameless team for a piece of Shameless marketing for youth empowerment and participation. With any luck there'll be new young mayors or young leaders springing up in local politics all over the country - joining those already in post in places like Lewisham and Newham. And, as its the biggest focus in the UK for all those politicos this year, we can only hope that the candidates for this years London Mayor and Assembly elections are tuning in and thinking of new ways to involve young people, not yet able to legally vote, in the decision making that affects their lives.

Students are not Revolting?

An article in today's Guardian Education section starts off by posing the question: "are students these days too cool for political protest or are they simply finding new ways to do it"?

The government's minister for higher education Lord David Triesman features in it as a 60's radical student leader and will probably be grateful for the coverage on those days rather than the recent coverage on political donations that has featured his name as a former Labour Party General Secretary!

How accurate was York student newspaper Nouse when it ran an article headed "Apathy: a modern form of protest?" following the flop of the top-up fees protest last year?

What the article doesn't cover is the fact that the composition of higher education students has changed from 10% of 18-21 year olds at university in the 60's to up to 43% of that age group nowadays.

It is therefore likely that student political involvement is more likely to reflect wider changes in society. Less trust and direct involvement in organisations reflect what is happening outside universities with the general public.

The article recognises the greater use of online protest such as the use of Facebook and this Blog covered the National Union of Students (NUS) led victory over the HSBC Bank on interest free overdrafts in August.

However we must also recognise that for every Facebook victory there are likely to be a proliferation of campaigns that are less successful.

Clearly there is no single solution to encouraging student political participation. What is needed is a range of engagement activity that includes active organisations, individual participation and online involvement.

The NUS is currently debating how it can improve the way it operates and last week voted to overhaul its governance arrangements to increase student participation. Encouraging student involvement is also a challenge for the government, pressure groups and political parties.

This is vital as today's student's will eventually be the David Triesman's of tomorrow!

Young people in Lewisham don't need burgers to vote!

The recently published "Representing the Future" report from the Councillors Commission, suggests that voters should be offered incentives such as council tax discounts or fast food vouchers to persuade them to vote in elections.

However, the results of our most recent Young Mayor for Lewisham election prove that incentives aren't needed to get young people interested in democracy. With a turnout of 45% - well above the 34% turnout for Lewisham's adult mayoral election - this election continues to show that the following are the key ingredients for successful engagement:

1. Involve young people from the start - it's young people's slogans, designs and ideas on how to raise awareness that inform the election communications
2. Make it real - young people are voting for a Young Mayor who has a budget of £25,000 to spend on improving the lives of young people in the borough. They will have real authority.
3. Feedback on achievements - the Young Mayor and the Young Advisors who support him / her let their peers know what they are doing and how previous Young Mayoral budgets have been spent. If young people can see that their vote has made a difference they are more likely to listen and learn. (visit www.binvolved.org.uk to find out what the Lewisham Young Mayors have been up to over the past few years).

So adults listen and learn!

Internet TV - An aid to Democracy?

Two websites have just been launched that cover political campaigning and political participation by young people. Both are internet TV channels. Is this a new trend?

Catch 21 is described as "the political internet channel run by young people for young people".

CampaignTV is a broadly pro-Labour site that has just been launched and featured in an article in the media section of the Guardian today.

Sites like these join established political internet TV sites like 18 Doughty Street.

With a General election now unlikely for at least 18 months and with the speed in which websites can become essential to use in just a few months, will Political internet TV be a key communication medium by then?

The Power of Facebook!!

Illustration today of the power of online protest when the bank HSBC today agreed to reverse it's decision to charge full interest on graduate overdrafts.

HSBC had planned to scrap a three-year interest-free overdraft deal for graduate accounts claiming this was a "commercial decision", made in response to bad debt and the misuse of such accounts.

In response students claimed they joined the bank in the belief that they could take advantage of such a free overdraft to tide them over between leaving university and starting work.

Instead of using traditional campaign techniques, the student protest developed through Facebook, with the "Stop The Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off" group having so far secured over 5,000 members by the time HSBC caved in. The campaign was initiated by the National Union of Students (NUS) and creates a new image of student protest in comparison to stereotypical images from the 60's and 70's.

As a result of the campaign today HSBC issued a statement that said:

“Like any service orientated business we are not too big to listen to the needs of our customers. Following the feedback from our graduate account holders, both directly and via the National Union of Students (NUS), we have taken the decision to freeze interest charging on 2007 graduates’ overdrafts up to £1500 and refund any interest charged in August. We are also pleased that we will be working with the NUS to enhance our new account offer so that it fully reflects the needs of recent graduates”.

Examining what happened, it looks like the campaign was successful because:

1. Facebook enabled them to assemble a large number of people very quickly. Students and recent graduates writing on the Facebook website threatened to switch to other banks and called for boycotts at freshers' fairs as well as wider days of actions aimed at banks.

2. The timing of the dispute was particularly embarrassing for HSBC - as banks are seeking to recruit new student customers - who they hope will stay with them in the long-term - at the beginning of the academic year.

Whilst Facebook is in the news for other reasons from time to time, today's student victory over HSBC illustrates the power of online social networks to affect change. This will not be the last we hear of the power of Facebook!

Young People to lead on environmental change

A new report from the Sustainable Development Commission, Every Child’s Future Matters, calls for local authorities and young people to lead on environmental change, and calls for schools, youth services and community groups to empower young people to do this. TCC has recently been working with schools and youth groups in EC1 on recycling and climate change – aiming to empower children and young people to be recycling champions in their local areas. In East Sussex we have also been working with the County Council, young people, and the wider community on participatory budgeting projects which are seeing young people having a genuine say and making a positive impact on their local environment. The SDC report explores the influence of the environment as a whole - from road traffic to green spaces to climate change - on children and young people’s well-being, and provides evidence that the environment can deliver the Every Child Matters outcomes. Does anyone have any other examples of how local authorities and other bodies are working with young people on environmental change? Read the report here

Young People and Participatory Budgeting

Over the last few months we have been working on a project for East Sussex County Council to help young people to participate in deciding how to spend £20,000 in two projects in Peacehaven near Brighton and Hollington in Hastings.

We think this is really important work and reflects important trends in both youth engagement and local government participatory budgeting as was shown by recent speeches by ministers Hazel Blears and Ed Balls. Indeed the Prime Minister has taken a deep interest in this subject recently hosting a "Youth Cabinet" where the Young Mayor of Lewisham - a project we have helped develop for that Council - took the chair in the Cabinet room!

The current East Sussex project follows on from a previous TCC ‘Emotimapping’ exercise there. Over a month-long period local residents from the two areas - including many young people - told the County Council how they felt about their area. Using large scale maps and MSN Messenger-style ‘emoticons’ - expressing emotions such as ‘feel safe’ or ‘feel scared’ - young people identified local places and described how they felt about them. They then went out ‘on location’ to film and interview one another talking about these places and what they thought could be done to improve them.

Common themes were identified in both areas and young people had various ideas about what could be done to improve their neighbourhoods. Suggestions ranged from making public transport cheaper and more accessible, to improving street lighting, cleaning and litter and graffiti, and providing more constructive activities for teenagers.

As a result of this consultation work the County Council agreed to provide money to enable residents in the Peacehaven and Hollington areas to practically address some of the issues they identified.

Following consultation with local residents, Councillors, MYPs (Members of the Youth Parliament), school pupils, community groups, and other stakeholders, a short list of ideas was drawn up for each area and a vote held.

More than 1,000 young people cast their votes in a ballot for how £20,000 of County Council grant should be spent improving their communities in Peacehaven and Hollington. In Peacehaven it has been decided that the money will be spent on organising a community event which will include cleaning up local parks and producing artwork for the local shopping centre and youth club. In Hollington the budget is likely to be spent on play equipment for a local park, improving the local youth centre, and holding a Community Sports Day.

In the coming years participatory budgeting is likely to be an expanding activity for youth services and local government. We are pleased to have assisted East Sussex County Council in leading the way in giving local people a say!

Communities on the Web

It is quite likely someone will have mentioned the online social network Facebook in some context to you, whether to wax lyrical or to warn you of its dangers.

Not to be outdone the Campaign Company now has a page or two on there. We are interested in exploring the development of these online social networks and I'm sure we will publish our views and conclusions here in due course. We are are also developing wiki systems to make this blog and website much more interactive. More on that in the future.

Its not just Facebook, where communities and social networks are developing. Second Life even has its own money, exchange rate and developing market economy. If you meet "Campaign4 Yue" on there, that is me, though I am still finding the processing power required to move around a bit daunting!

Some may think these communities are escapism or frivolous, but it can be argued that they add to the richness and complexity of social relations. There are also online communities that work together on cracking serious scientific number crunching issues through linking together down time on computers and using screen savers for practical purposes to build what is currently a 4 terraflop global supercomputer. If Facebook is the Face of 2007 then Grid Republic could be the story of 2008.

What all these sites illustrate is that people want to engage with each other in a range of social interactions - some fun, some serious. It sounds a bit like real life to me!

Many of these online communities reach out to groups that are sometimes difficult to engage with by traditional means such as young people.

Just as democracy is the "least worst system" for resolving differences in real life, then there will need to be similar systems of deliberation and choice online to resolve issues.

If we want to make Democracy work well we have to apply ourselves to all situations whether its a local community or an online community.

Polishing for a Pittance

The Campaign Company has been working with YWCA on their ‘More than one rung’ campaign which is highlighting the barriers young disadvantaged women are facing in the employment choices they are given and the poor pay that characterises traditional female dominated apprenticeships. ‘More than one rung’ calls for the career ladder to be opened up to young women and stop them being faced with a life in which they are kept on the bottom rung of the career ladder. We are delighted to have worked with the YWCA and are currently creating a short film to highlight the campaign.

The day was a busy and varied one and started bright and early with a crowd of young women from YWCA projects across the country converging at Westminster station all dressed in vivid yellow.  The aim was to hand out dusters to bemused commuters at Westminster station bearing the slogan ‘Polishing for a Pittance!’ The dusters were a great symbolic gesture and certainly caught the attention of the commuters who took a great interest in what the young women were doing.

After the large supply of dusters had been quickly depleted, attention moved towards Parliament where the young women had the opportunity to lobby MPs and share their own personal experiences.  The MPs being lobbied included Jenny Willot, Nia Griffith, Dawn Butler and Sally Keeble. Baroness Estelle Morris also was present and took questions from the floor. The questions were both interesting and shocking and highlighted the plight that many young women face when they enter the world of work and they limited choices which young women from disadvantaged backgrounds face. However the event was very much a positive one with young women passionate and determined to bring about change.

Many of the young women from the YWCA projects across the country also gave interviews to publicise the problems they have faced and how these barriers could be removed.  Their stories were both moving and inspiring to other young disadvantaged women. The footage is in the process of being produced into a DVD which will be used at Rise to create awareness of the campaign.

Power to the Young People

Launching his campaign for leadership of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown has called for a ‘servant state’ which would include ‘youth budgets with young people making their own choices’. The Young Mayor for Lewisham and South Kilburn NDC Youth Board are great examples of young people being empowered through making real choices about real budgets to improve their local areas. I’m currently also working on a project in East Sussex which involves young people being given a budget in order to improve their local environment. It’s a follow-up to a previous piece of Emotimap work we conducted for East Sussex County Council a few months ago. As a result of that project – which has been blogged about on these pages before and involved young people ‘mapping’ their feelings about their local neighbourhoods, ESSC is now able to provide some money to enable young people in Peacehaven and Hollington to practically address some of the issues they identified. Young people will oversee this budget, select which parts of their areas they want to improve (through a vote in local schools and youth clubs), and work in partnership with the wider community to effect real change in their local community. So far lots of great ideas have been suggested, ranging from making the local shopping centre more ‘youth friendly’ by brightening it up with art work, through to cleaning up local parks and streets and having a big event for young people and the wider community. I’ll update these pages as the project progresses so watch this space!

Links on Sunday

1, http://www.barackobama.com/

For a good example of a political web site which is taking full use of social networking check out Barack Obama's site. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton announced their candidacy for the Democratic nomination on their websites which is perhaps a small land mark in the mainstreaming of the internet as a communication platform.

The social networking opportunities are I'd imagine particularly important to Obama given he's an outsider without the big money and institutional support of Clinton. Web 2.0 sites such a YouTube, Flickr and FaceBook all of which he links to from his site provide ready made infra-structure for at least the networking part of grassroots movements and campaigns. They also provide access to young people only 24% of whom voted in 2004 (and that was a good year). I hope he gets the nomination if only because I can't see Hillary mobilising a huge youth vote.

2, http://www.tom-carden.co.uk/p5/tube_map_travel_times/applet/

A re-imagining of the Tube map with travel time factored in. Quite practically useful and made me think that the about the possibilites for personalising maps and route finders are offered by computerisation are still immense. Multimap, google maps and sat navs are surely only the beginning.

3, http://www.thankyoutony.com/index.html

I'm having difficult working out whether this is real or final and unequivocal proof that Americans have a subtle sense of irony which has been cruelly denied by the rest of the world.

Global Cool

‘Global Cool’, a new 10 year environmental initiative was officially launched earlier this week. The idea of the campaign, says its founder Dan Morrell, is that:

‘Over the next 10 years the solutions-based campaign of Global Cool will be launching a series of educational and entertaining programmes, and inspirational and upbeat global events, aimed at empowering individuals to make a difference.’

The campaign is backed by a host of celebs who plan to ‘bring entertainment to the environment, put on shows and make programmes and send you playful texts and generally sing to you and tell you stories and tease you until you care.’ The website’s quite fun – particularly like the ‘CoolTube’ video section.

Getting Ready for V

As part of it's on going relationship with Connexions South Yorkshire, The Campaign Company recently worked to organise a reception for the public and non-profit sector in South Yorkshire called 'Getting ready for V'.

The purpose of the event was to introduce organisations to V, the new charity which is replacing Millennium Volunteers as the national framework for youth volunteering. Vs goal is to work in partnership with the public and private sector and with voluntary and community sector organisations to develop and share best practice in and increase opportunities for youth volunteering, particularly in deprived communities. The charity is launched with £50 million of funding to help organisations build new volunteering projects and extend existing ones.

David Miliband MP, the Minister for the Third Sector was the key note speaker at the event, in his address he commented that:

'Youth volunteering is a huge part of the solution to many of the problems in our society, it builds bridges between generations'

and

'V represents a huge opportunity to build up our communities'.

Rod Aldridge the chair of V commented that:

'V will be trying to change the attitudes of young people to volunteering and to rebuild communities'

Philip Udah a young trustee of V also outlined the 'youth fund', a section of funding specifically available to young people to set up their own projects. Through involving young people continually in the development of the charity and it's on-going management as well as through initiatives such as the 'youth fund' V is striving to be youth led and innovative.

V represents a new and substantial injection of money, energy and political impetus into youth volunteering nationally. The only question left to those of us working in public or private organisations around the country is do we rise to this challenge and make use of this great opportunity?

Bridging the Participation Gap

Ben and I dusted off our hard hats and went up to Huyton, Knowlsey, last night to do a spot of bridge building with members of the Knowsley Schools Council. The bridge illustrates the hard work the young people have been doing on formulating their charter for Participation Standards. One pillar shows what happens when there are no particpation standards, i.e. 'tick box exercises', and the other shows what happens when there are, e.g 'positive engagement', and 'good communication'. The bridge will form the centrepiece of the Knowsley Participation Standards Launch '07 event, which has been designed and organised by young people themselves, and takes place this evening.

Youth of SK have their say!

We have previously blogged about the South Kilburn Youth Festival. Footage taken in the Videoqube at the event can now be viewed online:

Festive Fun in South Kilburn

The South Kilburn Youth Board had an evening of festive fun earlier this week at their Christmas Party.  We all had a great time.  The second Youth Board, who only took their seats in September, have worked really hard in preparation of the South Kilburn

show case, planned for February next year.  I’ve had a brilliant time working with them on this and other projects, its been challenging, fun and I cant believe how much they have already achieved in just a couple of months.

And, since I’m leaving I will look forward to reading these pages for updates on their future work and seeing how they will contribute to changing the lives of young people in South Kilburn.

a little Respect...

Online Youth website YouthNet, and the British Youth Council have joined forces to influence Labour Party policy. They are asking people to pledge to put more pressure on the government and media to portray young people in a more positive light and stop the stereotyping of all young people as 'yobs.'  You can pledge your support at Labourspace.com.

We work with a lot of young people who totally defy the negative stereotype of young people all too often portrayed by the media - and are being proactive about doing something about it! A few months ago the South Kilburn Youth Board decided to organize a Youth Select Committee on Respect and Crime and Safety. A lot of the Board members had highlighted these issues in their election manifestos. They wanted to find out about the fears young people have about crime and safety, as well as those that adults might have of young people. Over a period of 3 months they questioned a number of people, including local elected members, Government special advisors from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Brent Youth Service, local Police, Community Wardens, local residents, a local businessman, and a journalist who works on the local newspaper. They produced a report (Download skyb_select_ctte_report.pdf)  of their findings which has been presented to the NDC Board and other stakeholders.

Does anyone else have any stories to tell about young people doing something to tackle the negative portrayal of young people in the media?

UKYP TV

The UK Youth Parliament has recently launched UKYP TV – a section of its website featuring short films produced by MYPs. The films address issues such as knife and gun crime, Fairtrade, and sex education – you can view them online here

I was also fortunate to meet 3 East Sussex MYPs last week who told me about what they were up to locally. They clearly enjoy their roles and are doing a great job on behalf of their constituents, lobbying for better transport and more facilities for young people, amongst other things. I think the UKYP does a great job, and the MYPs I’ve met and these films are great, but I can’t help thinking how much more effective it could be if more was done to ensure that MYPs are really genuinely empowered – if they had real budgets to make real decisions about, for example. What does anyone else think?

smilies and frownies

Jack and Emma have recently blogged about our Emotimap work with young people in East Sussex. Over the past few weeks over 60 young people aged 7-19 from two particular East Sussex neighbourhoods – Hollington & Peacehaven – have taken part in this project. Using large scale maps and MSN Messenger-style ‘emoticons’ - expressing emotions such as ‘feel safe’ or ‘feel scared’ - they identified local places and described how they felt about them. They then went out ‘on location’ to film and interview one another talking about these places and what they thought could be done to improve them. Common themes were identified in both areas and young people had various ideas about what could be done to improve their neighbourhoods. Suggestions ranged from making public transport cheaper and more accessible, to improving street lighting, cleaning and litter and graffiti, and providing more constructive activities for teenagers. I presented the findings of the project to East Sussex County Council’s Stakeholders conference last week, and showed them the video that we produced in conjunction with the young people involved. The Council will work to ensure that the young peoples’ views are addressed in their key strategic plans. You can also view the video here, and the full report can be accessed Download east_sussex_emotimap_report.pdf .

It’s a constant challenge to engage with young people in a meaningful way, and we are always looking for new and innovative ways to do it. We’ve found that the Emotimap approach is particularly effective because it has the dual benefit of providing a visual interpretation of young peoples’ views about their area, and is also a really good way to stimulate discussion and debate about local issues that are important to young people. Does anyone know of any other examples of young people demonstrating their views about their local environment?

Cop a look at YouTube...

West Yorkshire Police force has embraced the YouTube revolution and started broadcasting videos of police officers in action over the site in an attempt to improve the force's image, reach new audiences and attract new recruits.

The Guardian today reports on how videos of west yorks officers patrolling the streets and talking about their work are juxtaposed against other YouTube clips with titles such as "policeman shoots himself in foot" and "f*** the police". But the force is comfortable with this, with web communications manager, Patrick Brooke, saying “There was a time when we would have insisted our videos were safely tucked away on our own site, but not now….This has certainly opened up a different audience for us. People going to the YouTube tend to be younger and not fully aware of policing issues. This enables us to communicate with them in a new way."

Is anyone aware of other organizations using YouTube in a similar way?

Tackling gun crime in Lewisham - the Young Advisers speak out

Last night I caught up with the Young Advisers in Lewisham, to see what the new Young Mayor and Deputy Young Mayor had been doing since they were elected last month.  The evening was great, the local police were there to give information on local crime, and Siobhan has been approached by Trident, an agency which helps prevent gun crime among the black communities in Britain.

tgfhfsghs

Luziane and Siobhan also met Ken Livingstone last week and later handed out awards at a care leavers ceremony, where young people were leaving their care homes to go back into their communities.

dfgadfas

There were a few new faces among the Young Advisers as well, including Daniel, Elliot and Maddy who were all candidates for the election. 

fdgadg

Siobhan and Luziane have just started a blog, which is on the website www.binvolved.org.uk – and on the website there is also more information on the Young Mayor and her advisers, and what they aim to achieve over the year.

“Hard-to-reach” or just ‘Seldom Heard’?

I went to a conference about ‘Engaging the Hard-to-Reach’ last week. The event, run by The Consultation Institute (TCI), was attended by a variety of delegates from local statutory, voluntary and other organisations. Presenters came from the Ethnic Minority Foundation, Westminster City Council, The Foyer Foundation, Ipsos MORI, the Federation of Small Businesses, Age Concern and Transport for London and talked about their experiences of engaging with ‘hard-to-reach’ groups such as ethnic minority communities, economic migrants and asylum seekers, young people, older people, and small businesses.

Elizabeth Gammel from TCI also talked about the term ‘hard-to-reach’ and what it actually means. Some research she carried out recently amongst TCI members showed that 50% of them use the term and 50% don’t, and even those who do don’t like using it, so she suggested that perhaps ‘seldom heard’ is more accurate - they're not necessary difficult to engage with, but simply require different approaches from traditional consultation techniques. What does anyone else think about this and does anyone have any interesting case studies about working with ‘hard-to-reach’/’seldom heard’ groups?

Wakey Wakey and Write on the Wall

I blogged a couple of months ago about a Beacon Open Day event on 'Enabling Positive Youth Engagement' that Kasia and I debuted our new Writing On the Wall product at. This newsletter explains a bit more about what went on at the event, and includes pics of the Writing on the Wall as well as the Democracy Wall we piloted there during last year's Local Democracy Week. Download pye_event_newsletter.pdf

maps are still cool

Jack and Sarah have recently blogged about our Emotimap work in East Sussex. In the meantime, Londoners have also been mapping their area through the Museum of London’s ‘Map My London’ project – a kind of online variation of our emotimap which invites Londoners to map their memories of their local neighbourhoods. Check it out at www.mapmylondon.com. At a conference I was at today, a representative from Transport for London also talked about a similar-sounding new project they will soon be launching which will also involve maps and people sticking flags in particular areas to describe what they think needs doing there. So GPS Satnavs might be all the rage right now, but the trusty map lives on in the consultation world!

emotimap hits East Sussex!

TCC have recently begun our work producing a series of 'emotimaps' with East Sussex County Council.  Emotimap is a community engagement product developed by TCC, largely aimed at younger age groups.  A large map of the area in question is produced, and the participants place a series of 'emoticons' (smiling, sad, bored etc.) on the map in areas that they apply, along with separate pictoral icons to represent other aspects of their lives in the area.

It's a good tool with younger people, especially as they're usually familiar with emoticons from MSN Messenger, or similar messaging programs, and they find it an easy way of saying how they feel about the area. 

The only problem we face is that keeping up with a bunch of kids is amazingly tiring for the staff!  I took part along with two colleagues on Monday and got some really good responses out of the kids, who were aged between 7 and 11.  However, even with a relativly small group of 10 and 3 members of staff on them, we were all left exhausted.  It was a real shock to realise how difficult such small numbers of young kids can be, even for a relativly short period of time (around an hour) - especially as we're all used to working with younger people.  With 20-30 kids for a full day at a time, it really drives home just what a difficult job primary school teachers have, and how well they usually manage to deal with it.

txt 4 info

This is a variation on our Lewisham Txt Bk – with advice and support from The Vodafone UK Foundation and The Big Lottery Fund, YouthNet has made its Local Advice Finder (LAF)  database accessible on mobiles, giving young people access to their advice service without needing internet access. The info service can be accessed anonymously and offers practical advice and solutions.

People and Politics

I went along to People and Politics Day yesterday. The event, run by Unlock Democracy (a new campaign launched by Charter 88 and the New Politics Network, and supported by the Electoral Commission) was designed to give young people the chance to meet politicians and debate the hot political issues of the day. Activities included:

·           Question Time with MPs Alan Johnson, Peter Ainsworth and Vince Cable with probing questions from young people on all sorts of issues including Votes at 16; Climate Change; Iraq; Tuition Fees; Darfur; Europe; and Faith Schools.

·           The presentation of the Democracy Coalition’s FYI (For Youth Involvement) Awards which went to David Kidney MP for his work with young people in care;

·           Panel debates on Climate Change; Getting Involved; International Development; Education; Women in Politics; Democratic Renewal; Youth & Crime; and Europe.

The standard of debate and questions raised were very high and showed that young people have plenty to say about what goes on around them. They raised some compelling arguments for Votes at 16 (including that at 16 a person is considered old enough to pay taxes, to leave school, to marry and join the armed forces, but not old enough to vote for the people who spend the taxes or send them to war). However Alan Johnson made it clear that he wasn’t convinced by the case– arguing that if the voting aged was lowered to 16 and then under 18s didn’t vote this would be disastrous and lead to further disengagement. The House of Lords, National Assembly for Wales and committees of the House of Commons and Scottish Parliament have all backed a lower voting age, but the Electoral Commission concluded their review saying they would not yet back such a reform. What does anyone else think?

Child Poverty Matters

Footage from the Child Poverty Matters consultation event we organised on behalf of the DWP can now be viewed online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1drEcXYzpPQ . As you can see the young people had plenty to say about Child Poverty and what they think the Government should be doing about it. You can also check out the report hereDownload child_poverty_matters_report___final.pdf  – let us know what you think!

Volunteering vs Active Citizenship

I went to the first meeting of the Post 16 Citizenship London Regional Network on Friday, run by the LSN (Learning Skills Network). The network includes schools, colleges, training providers, and youth and community groups, including for the hard-to-reach, and offenders. Lots of interesting issues were raised and discussion had, including 'is there a difference between active citizenship and volunteering?' Views were mixed but my group decided that whilst there is a lot of crossover and volunteering can act as a catalyst for active citizenship, they are not one and the same – volunteering is providing a service, whereas active citizenship is doing this whilst being aware of the wider context. What does anyone else think?

LSN also provides lots of free resources that can be downloaded or ordered from www.post16citizenship.org

Have you Seen & Heard about this...?

I’ve previously blogged on these pages about our youth engagement work with BarnsleyHospital. Last night the Lord Mayor of York presented David Brannan and Brian