Shotts Community Priorities highlights 25/26

The Community Partnership Officers (CPOs) for Wishaw and Shotts jointly worked for some months with drama pupils from both St Aidan's and Calderhead High schools on a youth campaign aimed at:

• encouraging the involvement and participation of young people in Community Boards, and 
• community planning decision-making processes. 

During work on the initial stages of the campaign where young people from other workshops were designing pop-up banners to be displayed within their schools, they had the idea of having a QR code on the banners that would draw in interest of young people who would scan this to find out more, and that a TikTok video would be the best way of getting this message across.  

This idea led to work with the drama pupils from both schools to create four videos delivering a range of messages from young people around their real issues within their communities. The campaign strapline created by young people, “Young People, we have a voice, let’s use it!” is promoted on the pop-up banners and within the videos which were promoted on our social media platforms including:

• TikTok
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube 
• our website

The CPOs wanted to further the engagement and consultation while providing the young people with a treat for all their hard work. To acknowledge their appearance in the videos, the screening  and red-carpet event was planned with a movie theme running throughout the day.

The celebration and engagement event was delivered on 31 March at the Newmains Community Trust Centre. The young people along with their teachers, head teachers, Community Board Chairs and key partners, enjoyed the screening of their videos, blooper reel and an awards ceremony, to show our appreciation for their hard work and success in the making of the videos. Our Communications staff who supported, filmed and directed the young people attended along with a member of the community who had kindly starred in one of the videos.  

Capturing all this energy, creativity and passion, we wanted to think about how we can work with young people to go even further. Therefore, alongside the premiere, we built in a short bit of activity:

• engagement and consultation around what other issues young people have
• what empowerment means to young people
• a future focus on Community Priorities

This was delivered with the young people, along with an evaluation of their involvement in the campaign, the videos and the event on the day. The feedback will be used to inform future engagement as well as projects and campaigns to support young people in Shotts and Wishaw. 

Our aim was to show the young people that what they have produced is honest, creative and powerful and they should be proud of that. These videos aren’t just something to watch, they say something important by highlighting: 

• real issues,
• real experiences
• real opinions from young people in our communities

That matters, because young people don’t just have views about what’s happening locally but they can influence it as well.  

Their voice matters, their experiences matter, and there are real opportunities for young people to shape what happens locally, including:

• Community Boards
• youth forums
• pupil councils 

This event was about celebrating what they had already achieved but also recognising the influence they have, right now, as young people.