Starting a new job
Today I'm starting a new job as temporary Youth Participation Worker for Westminster City Council. One of my main tasks during this two-month period is to organise the UK Youth Parliament elections and I'm really looking forward to it. Recently I helped co-ordinate the same thing for Hounslow, my own borough, and it went really well with many records broken (nine candidates, over 4000 votes). So I'm hoping to continue that success with this new challenge...
But it will be a difficult task. Among the main obstacles to high turnout is the fact that only 40% of young people in Westminster attend its own schools. The rest go to private schools or study out of the borough. Since the youth service is part of the Local Education Authority we are somewhat restricted in working with the private sector.
Therefore a lot of outreach work will need to be done, visiting local youth clubs and projects to recruit candidates and collect votes. My plan to tailor the election process for this dynamic is using a heavy reliance on interactive and video methods.
Westminster has a fantastic Digital Media Unit (DMU), which I hope can give assistance. The plan would be to, first of all, film the old Youth MP and Deputy Youth MP talking about why they got involved, what they've achieved and how they view the experience in general. It would be great if we could get some on-location footage of any places where they've made visible positive changes.
We would then compile a short DVD and take it round schools and youth projects, hopefully encouraging young people to take an interest and think about standing as a candidate this year. Once the deadline for this has passed, they can have a training day to compile their manifestos, learn about the UKYP and plan out ideas for their own 15 minutes of fame in another short film.
This one will feature each candidate (hopefully about five in total) explaining their points for action and illustrating them with snappy one-minute sketches. If we had five young people in the race with three pledges apiece, the film would be about a quarter of an hour long. That's about the most I think it could be if we're showing it to young people - wouldn't want them to get bored or disinterested.
And finally, once all this had happened, I'd like to put on a big event where the results would be announced. It would include "serious" activities during the day and then have musical performances and fun stuff in the evening.
So, that is the grand idea for this task. Later this week I'll have to get in touch with the DMU to ask for assistance; once that's done, I will to speak to the current MYP and DMYP to see if they're happy with the idea. Then we can proceed.
On a lighter note, today I also learnt that temp workers will get blamed for everything that goes wrong around here (!). Apparently that's always the case, but if I'm really good it might be avoidable. And one random event was uncovering a not-very-well-hidden stash of explicit "gangsta rap" music on a staff laptop. Annoyingly though I am not able to access my email server on the Westminster network: will have to get in touch with the computer nerd people to sort that one out quite soon.
Later today, after I finish up here, I'm going to head down to the South Bank again for another free show in the National Theatre foyer. It's a guy called Martin Byatt who, according to the NT's website, plays "acoustic guitar originals, folk and blues" - not a lot to go on. I've never heard of him, but it will be interesting to discover yet another new artist and I'm hoping he will be decent.
But it will be a difficult task. Among the main obstacles to high turnout is the fact that only 40% of young people in Westminster attend its own schools. The rest go to private schools or study out of the borough. Since the youth service is part of the Local Education Authority we are somewhat restricted in working with the private sector.
Therefore a lot of outreach work will need to be done, visiting local youth clubs and projects to recruit candidates and collect votes. My plan to tailor the election process for this dynamic is using a heavy reliance on interactive and video methods.
Westminster has a fantastic Digital Media Unit (DMU), which I hope can give assistance. The plan would be to, first of all, film the old Youth MP and Deputy Youth MP talking about why they got involved, what they've achieved and how they view the experience in general. It would be great if we could get some on-location footage of any places where they've made visible positive changes.
We would then compile a short DVD and take it round schools and youth projects, hopefully encouraging young people to take an interest and think about standing as a candidate this year. Once the deadline for this has passed, they can have a training day to compile their manifestos, learn about the UKYP and plan out ideas for their own 15 minutes of fame in another short film.
This one will feature each candidate (hopefully about five in total) explaining their points for action and illustrating them with snappy one-minute sketches. If we had five young people in the race with three pledges apiece, the film would be about a quarter of an hour long. That's about the most I think it could be if we're showing it to young people - wouldn't want them to get bored or disinterested.
And finally, once all this had happened, I'd like to put on a big event where the results would be announced. It would include "serious" activities during the day and then have musical performances and fun stuff in the evening.
So, that is the grand idea for this task. Later this week I'll have to get in touch with the DMU to ask for assistance; once that's done, I will to speak to the current MYP and DMYP to see if they're happy with the idea. Then we can proceed.
On a lighter note, today I also learnt that temp workers will get blamed for everything that goes wrong around here (!). Apparently that's always the case, but if I'm really good it might be avoidable. And one random event was uncovering a not-very-well-hidden stash of explicit "gangsta rap" music on a staff laptop. Annoyingly though I am not able to access my email server on the Westminster network: will have to get in touch with the computer nerd people to sort that one out quite soon.
Later today, after I finish up here, I'm going to head down to the South Bank again for another free show in the National Theatre foyer. It's a guy called Martin Byatt who, according to the NT's website, plays "acoustic guitar originals, folk and blues" - not a lot to go on. I've never heard of him, but it will be interesting to discover yet another new artist and I'm hoping he will be decent.
posted by Frederick at 19:00
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