Since January, twelve Woodhouse College students have participated in a Mixed Media and Journalism Programme, which was an extension of Nutmeg’s Community Reporter Scheme. Over the past few months, these young people have covered a range of topics including: ethics and journalism, interviewing, filming, writing and reporting. They have also produced content for the Nutmeg Blog where they have tackled subjects such as elitism in politics, the NHS, and their future options. If you haven’t already read these posts, I would urge you to!
On February 24th, myself (Milli, Communications Assistant) and Rui, Chief Executive, were fortunate enough to see the Youth Participation Officer, Phoebe, in action at their final session. It was truly wonderful to see these participants engaging with the programme and working both in teams and individually to answer the questions put to them. There were even worksheets which Rui and I got involved in. From a personal perspective, I appreciated the amount of information given as well as the opportunity to think of the value of certain skills. At the time, feedback was provided from the participants and was followed up by a more in depth survey. The responses of which were generally very favourable and pointed to an increase in skills and knowledge gained, as well as a motivation to create more in terms of journalism or reporting.
It wasn’t all work, however, as the contributions of these students were celebrated in the form of Celebrations, certificates and Nutmeg t-shirts. It was a joyous end to a fantastic programme and this is reflected in comments made by both Phoebe and staff from Woodhouse.
“The team here at Nutmeg are incredibly proud of the work that our enrichment participants have produced. By contributing to our blogging platform, these young people have showed they have the courage to speak out on behalf of their generation on the issues they care about”.
Phoebe McHale,Youth Participation Officer
“Nutmeg are a truly locally networked organization and they have been a pleasure to work with as they are adaptable, friendly and know what they are doing. They have delivered some skill-building and engaging sessions to our sixth form students using media and publishing as the focus. I think this is especially important in a high achieving academic environment like Woodhouse College, as gaining these kind of transferable skills and awareness of “creating a message” is relevant and useful for all our student’s potential career futures”. Joanna Greatwich, Careers Co-ordinator, Woodhouse College
