The Community Partnership Officers for Shotts and Wishaw were tasked with engaging seldom-heard voices as part of their Local Outcomes Improvement Plan (LOIP) Community Engagement priorities. Young people were identified as a key target audience, with the aim of encouraging their participation in Community Boards and ensuring their voices were heard in local decision-making and community planning matters.
Several planned workshops were delivered to engage and consult with young people from both Shotts and Wishaw who attend St Aidan’s and Calderhead High Schools. These workshops were aimed at raising awareness of the:
- Community Partnership Team role
- local Community Boards
- community planning processes to young people
highlighting that they have a voice in their community in relation to issues that affect them. At the workshops young people were consulted on what their issues are that can be discussed at Community Boards, and how participating in community planning can benefit young people. Groups of various pupils representing:
- Pupil Council
- Youth Forum
- Focus groups
from both schools were tasked with the design of pop-up banners planned to be located within all four High Schools in Wishaw and Shotts.
They discussed in their workshops what design features would best draw young people’s attention including bright colours, QR codes and links to social media platforms. Young people identified that a TikTok video linked to a QR code would capture young people’s attention to access information from the banner. This led to a secondary project involving S4 drama students from St Aidan’s and S3 drama students from Calderhead High, who were tasked with the creation of TikTok videos. The young people discussed how best to get this message across to other young people in communities targeting this particular audience. The young people discussed their ideas and issues; they wrote the scripts for the videos and participated in the filming by either acting or as runners in the making of the videos.
