Welcome to Youth Space blog post number two! We hope you enjoyed our first post, we’re looking forward to making this blog a regular thing. It's been a few months since our last post so time to catch up on what you’ve missed!
We’ve had a really exciting couple of months and it feels like we’re finally able to plan and do things without covid interfering too much (touch wood).
Our podcast group released the first episode of their ‘Outcast podcast’ on Spotify and talked about all things Valentine’s day, and you can listen to that here -
Youth Space podcasting is a group of young people aged 14 - 17 who are currently in the process of upskilling themselves to edit their podcasts and get them out there to the masses via Spotify and Apple music.
The Outcast podcast is a play on words drummed up by our fabulous young people. In these witty talking segments, the group come together to voice their views and thoughts on reality. Featuring lots of cursed humour, the group never fails to entertain!
Sands Film Festival
On Saturday 26th of April, we had our first big creators trip through to sunny St Andrews for the Sands Film Festival!
Young people from the creators group (a group focused on digital creativity and content creation) along with others from Beath Media Club (a filmmaking group) came together to have a day of films, fish and chips and a special talk from the director of Marvel films, Joe Russo.
It was great to see all of these young creators bonding over the day with many of them not knowing each other prior to the event. This is definitely an event that we would like to go back to in 2023!
Beath Media Club
The young people at Beath High are a creative bunch who aren't afraid to dream big! The group has managed to recreate scenes from Thor Ragnarok, Turning red and created what can only be described as a remix of Shrek and Encanto. Creating… “SHREKANTO”
After a six month stint, through lockdowns and in person, the Media Club have now moved on to greener pastures with a proper dedicated space in Cowdenbeath.
We’re sad to see them go but know that they are in good hands at their new location at Thistle Industrial Estate. https://www.bizseek.co.uk/media-crew-01383-223096
YMCA Glenrothes Gallery
We had our Creators gallery at the YMCA in Glenrothes right at the end of a two week break from our groups on Friday 15th of April.
It was full of fun, as it always is when we get to meet the creators in person. It’s cool how different it is running a session in person - everyone is upbeat as it is a rare thing (though we also had snacks so maybe that’s why?)
Putting up the work didn't take long and we had plenty of bluetack! It looked great in the end and it was amazing to see all the hard work put in by our young people in a physical form and space. It was also an opportunity to hand out the Top Trumps packs we had all made together - we even had time to have a couple of games.
Playing the game Ninja was a highlight, although I (Ben) was first out. The matchmaking run by a couple of creators was fun and very messy (poor Otto’s hoodie!).
All in all, it was well worth the planning and we can’t wait to do more meet-ups in the summer!
Award shows
On April 26th, Nick, our manager George and myself (Clare) were lucky enough to attend the Young Scot Awards in Edinburgh.
It was a great night and it was amazing to hear from so many inspiring young people and celebrate their achievements! There was such a wide variety of talents in the room and everyone was so passionate about their cause.
At the beginning of June, we headed through to Glasgow for another awards show, the Youthlink awards - and this time the whole team was there! We all got suited and booted and spent a night at the Hilton, we reunited with our old manager Vicky which was so lovely and it was amazing to have a bigger group of us at this event.
Although we weren’t nominated (maybe next year) everyone's favourite Project Officers Ben and Otto did appear on the big screen to introduce one of the award categories. These nights are always fun and make you feel proud to be part of the youth work sector, sitting alongside so many amazing people.
Pride Month
Seeing as June is Pride month we wanted to really make that a focus on our social media, we worked with one of our volunteers Brigid who was an amazing help and had so many great ideas. We had a variety of different posts going up including a queer creator spotlight, where we asked young people on Discord which queer creators they loved, whether it was a singer or author. We then posted them on our social media!
Our grand finale for Pride month was probably my favourite post we’ve ever done - a lip sync drag battle.
Otto, Ben and Nick each chose a song they wanted to lip sync and we met at the Lomond Centre to give them their makeovers. Sadly Nick couldn’t make it due to covid but he still took part at home which was amazing!
It was a full day of makeup, wigs, outfits and filming the battle. We let our Instagram followers choose a winner, it was a very close competition but in the end Hannha Mantana beat Gemima Business by one vote and was crowned as our drag queen! If you’d like to watch the full performances follow these links -
Hannah Mantana - https://youtu.be/vnM1FzShzLg
Stella Dee - https://youtu.be/vnM1FzShzLg
Gemima Business - https://youtu.be/09rbKsYZWP0
Our podcast group also released their pride themed podcast which you can listen to here - https://open.spotify.com/episode/5UoRfs5I0Ic3ZSjSbnKapl?si=W1yNeyGSS52OAt_6tt-I8Q
All in all, it was a great month celebrating all things pride and we still have our own pride event that's happening in a couple of weeks to look forward to! If you'd like to have a look at some of our Pride posts here is the link to our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youthspacefife/
CLD Awards
To finish this post off on a high, we recently found out we have been awarded a Digital Learning and Development award! We were all delighted when we found out that we are one of the first organisations in Scotland to get this award. Otto, Ben, Katie and Nick spent months gathering evidence from each of our groups to prove what we’re doing is making a difference and going well. It's a great feeling having it acknowledged with this award!
That is all we have to update you on for now, if you’ve made it to the end we appreciate it! We’ll be back in a couple of months to fill you in on how our summer programme went. Until then, we hope you all have an amazing summer!