Conference time!
Posted at October 17th, 2008: Uncategorized
Hello all! (Well, I’m most probably speaking to about 3 people, here…)
As you should know, if you’ve been keeping yourselves up to date with the blog, Young Advisors from the borough were recently charged with delivering this years Youth Conference. Which we did! Somewhat amazingly, I might add.
Yesterday (16th October) saw ten students from each school in Waltham Forest being invited to Waltham Forest Assembly Hall to take part in workshops themed around local democracy and participation. That’s well over 130 students, by the way. More shocking, however, is that for all intents and purposes, it was down to 6 Young Advisors to run workshops, make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be, host the day, keep to time, and on top of all that, to still retain the highest standards of education, safety and fun.
Well, I think it’s testament to the whole team that a) No ambulances were called, b) No-one decided to take an “informal break” from the conference, c) We got almost unanimous “Outstanding” feedback, with the remainder being “good” or “okay” and, d) We all enjoyed the day as well. So, really, a huge huge huge congratulations to all of yesterday’s team, and everyone else who made it happen.
Another reason that yesterday was so important, was because it marked the launch of the boroughs new Children’s Commissioner, Ann Tennant. She was interviewed and recruited by young people, a proportion of whom were Young Advisors - to this end, Young Advisors will be the interim steering commitee for Ann for the first year of her posting. Ann’s role will essentially be to help young people understand their rights, but equally importantly, help young people implement those rights. This includes advocating for young people and also promoting their image in the media, and in turn, society.
At the forefront of the latter aim is the I make a difference campaign, which was originally Georgia’s idea, and has been adapted and developed by the steering committee and Ann. I make a difference will be a campaign aimed at rewarding young people for all the great things they do, not just in school, but anywhere and everywhere young people are doing something to help their community. Young people can be nominated by anyone, be it parent, priest, teacher, youth worker, as long as young people are recognised for the things that really and truley deserve recognition, it really doesn’t matter. The nomination and award procedure will be backed up by a high profile media campaign, and the awards on July 10th 2009 will attain national and regional media coverage.
Ann can be reached at Childrens.Commissioner@walthamforest.gov.uk.
Lastly, our “special” embargoed piece of news that we couldn’t tell you last time…
Now, I really didn’t want to be the one to blow my own trumpet, but asking other people to write this at 8 on a Friday night seemed somewhat unreasonable. Anyway, little old me managed to get an extension to my job with Young Advisors - I’m now on Hazel Blear’s personal panel of Young Advisors, to advise her on policies for the Department for Communities and Local Government. The full CLG press release can be seen here.
Anyway, yay, go me, etc. It will be rather interesting, and I’ll keep you all updated!
That’s it for me, tonight,
over and out :]
Sean.
It’s raining, it’s pouring …
Posted at October 5th, 2008: Uncategorized
But our Young Advisors definitely aren’t snoring! (Sorry, that was a terrible pun, I shall go and punish myself suitably for it afterwards) This Autumn marks a big increase in work for al of us here at WFYA. As Georgia has told you, we’ve just secured our newest plan for the Myplace bid, and can now only hope that we’re successful. I’d like to reiterate just how exciting this is for all of us, it’s huge! As well as that, we’re hosting and running this years Waltham Forest youth conference. Young Advisors will be hosting the event, running workshops, and generally making sure nothing goes wrong! Linked with that, is our current work with the Educational Psychology team around how to roll out Educational Psychology to young people who can’t, or won’t access it through school. We’re working on how to break down the stereotyping of psychologists, and how best we can position the access points to ensure maximum coverage. One idea, if The HUB is successful, is to give EP the oppurtunity to use The HUB as an access point. All great news!
On top of that, we have some special secret news that we can’t tell you until Tuesday…
So keep reading!
Seany out!
Life & SOUL of the Party!
Posted at September 23rd, 2008: Uncategorized
First off, thanks to Sean for the title, my idea for a quirky one was slightly more inappropriate, his, as everything eles his does is perfect, seriously is there any ends to his talents? He can be quite overwhelming to us mere mortals ha-ha!
Well, seeing as I’m pumping up Sean’s ego, I might as well pump up everyone else’s. I think a big WELL DONE is due to all the people involved in the creation of the MyPlace bid. From every young advisor that was there at the initial brainstorming to the big important people that worked out the final finance issues- i want to say to you all how amazing you’ve been and how its really appreciated.
Well after many sleepless nights for Lyndsey dreaming about fulling in the application form, and being stuck in a room with me, Steven and others for over 6hours finalising the bid, I’d like to inform you all, its FINISHED. The decision is now officially out of our hands, its up the the fate of god (aka: the big lottery fund) It really looks amazing and we have got such a clear vision about what “The HUB” would achieve.
I don’t think that you’ve been updated since Sean’s last blog, since then we are now working in partnership with not only the YMCA but The SOUL Project (Supporting Our Unique Londoners). Its a fantastic project that includes the popular Tumble in the Jungle as well as a working with excluded pupils. Its fronted by such an amazing guy called Steve who’s really into the whole project, basically its a really positive partnership.
But the icing on the cake has to be the building, the only word to explain it is WOW. The SOUL projects main building has most of its second and top floor empty, ready to be used by us! As it is an old warehouse the size of the place is outstanding! The space in which we proposed would be the gig venue is spacious and ideal for everything we dreamed about. The place in which the cafe is supposed to be built is perfect, and it would be relatively easy to construct a glass dome surrounding it- making it WORLD CLASS! Not only would we have most of the space in the main building, the bid also includes ownership of the building beside it. This building is another warehouse, and is for sale for 1 million pounds (the price indicates the size of the building!). In this we would be able to have the ICT suite, recording studio, mini gig venue, culture room, games room and many more. We are also going to construct a link connecting the two buildings together to ensure that all the services are under one roof!
My writing has most probably become erratic and disorganised as i get overcome with excitement when talking about this, it really is such a positive and brilliant project.
Young Advisors are also busy with other things at the moment! We are the steering group for the campaign being fronted by children’s commissioner Ann Tennant, its focused on highlighting and publishing the non academic achievements of young people in our borough. But that is still in the initial brainstorming process, so either me or Sean will update you about that when we get more concrete stuff organised.
Then there’s the youth conference that on the 16th of October, that young advisors are supposed to be hosting :) Also we are having involvement in the joint school council meeting and are working with educational psychologists to make their service more accessible, basically busy busy busy us!
I hope this blog will do, I know its not as good as the almighty Seans, but hey give me a break its my first one. Of many hopefully!
Im going to love you and leave you, off to bed! I’ve got work experience with the wonderful Ms.Lyndsey tomorrow 
I’ll write soon!
Georgia xox
Just like Clockwork!
Posted at August 29th, 2008: Uncategorized
Well, howdy there!
Hasn’t been an update for quite a while, this is mainly due to people being on holiday and whatnot, but we do have some good news now! Today, we had an extra special late August meeting to discuss and begin to pull together the proposal for the myplace bid. What made it extra special was meeting our newest partner, Forest YMCA!
It turns out the the YMCA are also making a bid for the money, so we decided to join forces. Along with the 50 flats for homeless Young People that the YMCA are already building, they wanted a super youth facility, armed with similar ideas, we met the head of Forest YMCA at our meeting to discuss how to combine our efforts. The Clockworks Development is a disused clock factory just off Forest Road, and in close proximity to the YMCA hostel, and the Church Hill area. It consists of 10 warehouse units (Four large, Six small) and a 5 story wing where the 50 flats are being built. Our proposal, as a joint venture, is to secure funding to refurbish the warehouse units for use as a state of the art youth facility, complete with cafe, gig venue, IT and Media suites, and much more, and to aid the refurbishment of some of the already existing YMCA facilities that can be further incorporated into the facility (which we’re hoping to call ‘The Hub’).
The Hub will then be accessible to the 50 young people in the YMCA flats, as well as the 185 young people in the YMCA hospital, further targets include young people from the Waltham Forest College, just across the road, and the Church Hill Area which is just behind it. The Hub will serve, essentially, the Hoe Street Ward, which is one of the five most deprived wards in the country.
The Hub will be open to all young people, and the community in general, with the aim of providing a safe, relaxing, fun place to be, and to assist young people in whatever they choose to do. Medical advice will be available, as well as a health advisor or nurse. Waltham Forest Young Advisors will be part of the management panel and will, in effect, manage the enterprise on both a corporate, and day-to-day basis.
Essentially, it’s gonna be a really awesome place, and we’re very excited! After our little guided tour around the YMCA owned assets, and a brief viewing of the Clockworks development (we were amazed to see that work was already underway on the flats!) we said goodbye to Tracy (Head of the Forest YMCA) and headed back across the road to the town hall to continue our plans. With myself and Georgia on work experience for the next month with Lyndsey, we’re hoping to get the final proposal in on time, and to make it great.
All is going to plan, just like clockwork 
Watch this space,
much love, Sean.
CYPP and CAKE
Posted at July 7th, 2008: Uncategorized
Well, actually the latter isn’t an acroynym for anything but there was lots of it. Our last team meeting on Tuesday 1st July was mainly focused around reviewing the Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP, geddit?) pack to be given out to young people in thr borough in order to gather opinions and thoughts on what they want in the Plan.
The CYPP is a plan that every Local Authority must produce in order to set down a framework for the involvement of young people in decisions made about them. In Waltham Forest, we’re putting together the plan for 2009 - 2012.
Anyway, this blog is deviating almost as much as our meeting did. We spent 45 minutes reading through it(with countless anecdotes from Steven about the the charity he’s starting, and about the bid he’s doing for something else - which only served to confuse us about our own bid..), and being generally impressed.
The rest of the meeting was spent going back through and adding things to our bid that would be necessary, and to conform to the beaurocracy that seems to become ever more oppressive. At any rate, we’ve got a good chance. But we did realise one problem - our bid is almost entirely concieved from our own ideas. We needed other young people and the wider community to give us their ideas and thoughts. So, we’re hijacking the Green Festival!
We’re planning to be at the festival in Lloyd Park, Walthamstow on the 13th of July to do some video consultation for the bid. So, if you’ve got any ideas you’d like to put forward, or you fancy coming down for a chat, please do come along and speak to us!
On top of this consultation, we’ll be going back over other consultations that have been carried out in the past to try and glean what we can from them. This means that young people who won’t be at the festival on Saturday have a fair chance of getting there opinions recognised as well.
While there is none scheduled as such, do watch out for us while out and about, because we may pop out from behind a tree and ask you things, or even better, we’ll fall from the sky.
With that over with, it’s probably worth mentioning that two of our Young Advisors (namely Joanne and myself) will be hosting and facilitating a regional conference next week in Croydon, along with Southwark Young Advisors, and The Yarn - Luton. So, more info on that when I find out myself, and I’ll try and get a few pictures (as there’s a distinct lack of them in this blog so far!).
Remember, keep up to date with everything with the new Upcoming Events page (look to your left, and you should see it), which will be kept as up to date as possible, but obviously we’re only human!
Sorry it’s me again, but alas I have failed to remember to ask someone else to do it. MyBad.
Lot’s of happiness and have a good week, Sean :o)
Inspections and reflections.
Posted at June 8th, 2008: Uncategorized
Hey there =]
If you’re reading this, you are officially cool, like the fratellis. And Lisa.
As you may have noticed, I did manage to persuade someone else to make a post, albeit quite a short one Which gives me justification to assault your eyes and minds with my ramblings, once again. On June the second we had another team meeting (they’re on the first Tuesday of every month, in case you haven’t spotted the pattern), this one was inspected by one of the JAR (Joint Area Review) inspectors. We decided to get started on our bid for the DCSF grant (something between £2.5 million and £10 million) for the world class youth facilities. We pondered the idea of building a centre of musical excellence, before realising that this was probably a bit narrow, because not all young people want that.
So, after much deliberation, we came up with the idea of a multifloored building (4 floors in total), with different floors devoted to different areas, such as music, sport and technology, and to top it off, we want a nice lounge/cafe bar thing at the top, with a nice view. Because we can’t make this bid alone (it’s stated in the guidelines for application that we need partners), we started thinking about who we could ally with. The idea of having a nice view, plus further funding and more oppurtunties led us to decide that Lea Valley Park would probably be a good partner, if we can persuade them! Also, local schools, and possibly charities that work with young people.
Because this facility has to be world class, we started thinkng about what would make it so special. We decided that things like a state of the art recording studio, gig venue and a building that looked interesting were probably good steps towards this. We then thought about where to put it…
- Leyton isn’t very central
- Walthamstow central area is expensive, and there is very little free land
- St James street area hasn’t got great transport links
- Chingford and Highams Park aren’t very central either
This left the Blackhorse road area, which is close to Lea Valley, enabling good links with potential parnters, it’s well connected by the North London line, Victoria line, and only a short bus/train ride away from Walthamstow central, it has bus routes that span across the borough, as opposed to directly north/south, this enables easier access from other boroughs, routes like the 158 enable easy access from Chingford, Leyton and Stratford, and it would serve the Higham Hill/Priory Court areas very effectively.
That’s not to say that it will be there, but for the moment, it’s what we’ve got.
When the inspector left, we had a really nice chat about everything we’d done so far, and looked back at our training and how we’d all changed since then. It was really nice :3
Anyway, that’s it for now. More coming soon, I’m sure…
Sean.
Good luck
Posted at May 29th, 2008: Uncategorized
Ok, so apologies for the lack of purpose to my post but I just wanted to write something! And say hi to everyone and a big GOOD LUCK to everyone who has exams left and a big thank you to Sean for all his work on the website. Look forward to seeing you all next week.
Lis x
This is it!
Posted at May 23rd, 2008: Uncategorized
Hello! It’s me, Sean, again. I do apologise!
But, I have good reason! The new website is now online. I scrapped the idea of keeping it looking similar, and went for a complete overhaul. With that, came the need to restyle the blog as well…
A few cool things about the new site:
- It has a feedback form for comment/suggestions.
- Young Advisors and YA Leads can now log in to the site and use the new tools which include: Page editing, adding new pages, uploading content, viewing feedback, using the new message board to communicate and password and [eventual] profile changing.
- It has an intuitive and simple navigation system.
- The style remains solid throughout.
- It works well in all internet browsers.
These are just the main points!
That’s all for now, my showing-off-session is over.
I will be back at some point, but I really must pester someone else to write a post …
Sean :o)
Ready, set … go!
Posted at May 18th, 2008: Uncategorized
While the title is fairly irrelevant (what else do you entitle a blog update at 10:44 pm on a Firday night!?), there certainly seems to be a sense of anticipation and readiness among everyone at Young Advisors recently. At some (undetermined, as of yet) point in the near future, Waltham Forest Young Advisors will be “officially” launched, and everyone’s looking forward to it. We’ve got the final version of the website soon to be added to the interwebs, we’ve just had a JAR inspection, we’re putting together a bid for the government grant below (from the DCSF), we’re soon to engage in a long term piece of work with Team Leyton which will hopefully benefit the southern end of the borough, and we’ve got more video making coming up! (I think we need to steal the name “The DISC Agency” off the Bristol YAs…) Anyway, I suspect you’re intrigued by the final website that’ll be online soon (aiming for next week, hopefullly!), and rightly so! We’re adding all sorts of new features, such as a feedback form, easier maintanence, and a smoother mavigation. So with all that to look forward to, it’s time to get your applications in to hire YAs!
Last weeks meeting (May 6th) saw us discussing our bid for the DCSF funding - we’re still going with the idea of gig venues for young people, if anyone has any ideas, leave us a comment - and how best to present it, we had a little photo session for marketing, were given a small hillock of work (I’d say mountain, but I want to wait for a meeting where I can legitimately say that!), and we ate lots =] What’s more, because it was such lovely weather, we had our meeting outside in the grounds of the Town Hall, much to the amusement of passers by, I’m sure.
Yesterday, (Thursday 16th), Waltham Forest was inspected on how well its participation policy was. Along with other young people from Forest Flava and the Olympic Youth Ambassadors, we answered questions about how well the borough listened and worked with us. Apparently Waltham Forest is pretty good! Which is good to hear, we’ll keep them from getting too over-confident, though .
With that, I leave you, for I am off on a Duke of Edinburgh expidition tomorrow, and I need some sleep!
Lot’s of happiness and young-advisor-ness,
Sean.
Money for the gig venue
Posted at April 23rd, 2008: Uncategorized
Guys, just got this email through from Jane. It’s about money available for doing places up to make them more youth-friendly. Seems to tie in perfectly with all your ideas around getting together an underage gig venue for young people in Waltham Forest. What d’ya reckon?
Lyndsey.
When Young Advisors goes out to deliver training, you can bet that the first thing our trainees say about their local area is “There’s nowhere to go”. It doesn’t matter which region or who’s hosting them, the main issue is always the same. And if they do have somewhere to go, they can’t afford it (expensive cinemas, up-market gyms), it’s inaccessible (no public transport), or they’re not made to feel welcome (dominated by one particular group or clique).
DCSF have opened up a massive new part of funding to address the key issue of young peoples places. The fund is being managed by the Big Lottery and bid details will be available on May 6th.I went to the national briefing on Monday and aside from it just being a fab opportunity all round - the following points are probably the must important for us:
This is a BIG pot of money - to refurb or build young peoples facilities - grants between 1 and 5 mil.
50K will be allocated for ‘business development’ to projects that receive an ‘in principle’ yes (this means that although Big L will require heaps of planning and prep for before the final “Yes” - they actually pay you to get it done.
They will be looking at co-financing - but this is not a requirement.
They will consider income generation from non youth-related projects - ie; your facility could also host commercial units for revenue
generation. Might tie in nicely with units for social enterprises or youth businesses?
They’re looking for organisations to work in partnership on the bids -
- no one agency could hit all their criteria,
- ideally social enterprise/community (YAs) alongside LAs and private sector.
- This is a foot in the door for YA schemes.
- Chances are your local authority wont bid for it alone -
- your scheme could manage the bid, take it off their hands,
- lay down your ground rules about what you expect of them in return,
- get them to sign into a partnership agreement -
- potentially raking in more work from them along the way?
- Where you don’t already work regularly with your LA this is a fab way to prove what you can do,
- raise their profile, earn brownie points
- aid their reaching LAA targets - sky’s the limit really