Wishaw Community Priorities highlights 25/26

The Community Partnership Team Community Partnership Officers covering Wishaw and Shotts are tasked with engaging with seldom heard voices as part of their Community Engagement LOIP priorities.  Part of this target audience includes young people, with the aim of encouraging their participation in Community Boards and have their voices heard in local decision-making on community planning matters.

Several planned workshops were delivered to engage and consult with young people from both Wishaw and Shotts 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 and 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 and 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. 

A final design used to produce four banners, to be displayed in each Secondary School within Wishaw and Shotts.  This design has been adapted to be shown on the digital screens within each Secondary School and in poster form.  Examples of these designs are shown below.

The production of four TikTok videos highlighting a range of issues identified by young people, incorporating the campaign strapline from the banners, “Young People, we have a voice, let’s use it!”; these have been promoted on North Lanarkshire Council social media platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and can be found on the council website.

View the videos

Throughout the social media campaign there has been an increase in young people interacting through social media platforms, by liking, commenting and sharing the videos, indicating that these are having a positive outcome. 

Through participation in the all the workshops involved in this project, young people have gained a variety of skills, including increase in confidence and self-esteem, teamwork, improved communication skills and increased knowledge in drama and filming related skills.

By participating in the project, some of the young people had the opportunity to attend and talk about their experiences and the process at North Lanarkshire Council Communities Committee within the Council Chambers.

This campaign is on-going and the main focus for an overall future outcome is to encourage more young people participate and be involved in community planning processes.