We have come up with a way to get the local school children involved in the a project we are running about learning and understanding their heritage in the local environment.

We have asked them to produce a leaflet in conjunction with “the older members of the community”. If this is successful we hope to follow this with various activity packs and workshops to encourage discussion between us oldies and the younger ones!!

Anybody else tried this? Any young people any other ideas for involvement? We are thinking about seeking additional funding so advice would be very welcome

One project we undertook to engage with a younger audience which worked excellent I may add was to run a “design competition” for students to get them to used their knowledge and “young ideas to transform one of our local parks” and boy did we get some ideas!!!! The brief was simple, we just wanted students to ‘look’ into the future and come up with ideas which would transform the green space into an attractive area for visitors and locals.

The aim was to encourage concepts which will revitalise the local park which could provide public use for leisure, recreation and tourism, in an attractive, high-quality and appealing setting. I feel the submissions we recieved had shown “quality of work well beyond their years” and is an iniative I think other groups should use. The only real negative aspect of the project is the actual ideas will not be getting implemented!!!

It has been a good eye opener for some of us more senior members of the Society and indeed 2 students have since continued to attend meetings.

You may be interested in viewing the work from Birmingham Civic Society

http://www.birminghamcivicsociety.org.uk/citizenship.htm

The following is an interesting link Civic Societies may find useful

http://www.cleanersafergreener.gov.uk/en/1/engageyoungchildren.html

I was interested to read what Birmingham are doing to try to interest young people in Citizenship.

Terry Carter
Portsmouth