Tag: Leadership

Highgate Apprentices challenge the government – a new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

This programme is presented by two teenagers from Highgate in Birmingham. Earlier this month Stephen Hughes and Gareth Deeming spent a day in London talking to ministers and senior civil servants about young people and the communities where they live.

They had a few minutes with Baroness Andrews and recorded their conversation on a mobile phone (they had left for London with a digital recorder – which failed on them!). This forms the core of the podcast, but in it they also explain how they want support to work with a group called SCAWDI to develop a new apprenticeship for young people.

The community apprenticeship is being designed to get young people learning through working in their community, and also expose them to a much wider range of experiences and aspirations. The plan is to lift their lives to the point where they can once again fulfill their full potential.

Some other Grassroots programmes connected with this are:

Cuckoos in a White Middle Class Nest – our first ever programme featuring Barbara Willis Brown on the work of Scawdi.
Junior Street Champions – young people working in Lozells.
The Northfield Young People’s Forum – on controlling public money.
SCAWDI – link to a b:cen briefing on the organisation. (dead link)

Northfield Young People’s Forum "Leaders of Today" – a new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

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Jenni Rowley and Selina Okunnu of the Northfield Young People’s Forum talk to us about how power is shifting towards the young in Birmingham. From April 2007 the forum, run by 11 to 19 year olds, will have up to £80,000 to offer as grants to the young people of this south Birmingham constituency. There is also an update on a story from July 2006 about Get Hooked on Fishing, based in Bournville.

For any of our dozens of other programmes about active citizens please find the Grassroots channel here.  Any comments are welcome, use the link below or email grassroots@podnosh.com.

School of Everything – except for choice?

A few weeks ago I showed a friend how to use predictive text. He was delighted. So was I. Teaching and learning are precious and potent means to connect.

Charles Leadbeater (writing in Prospect Magazine) mentioned something new to me: the School of Everything. It’s an online/offline project still in dvelopment, being created with support from the Young Foundation. The site they are working on is intended to be a place where we can all connect to share knowledge; a combination of wiki, classroom, coffee shop and workshop.

They set out their principles here, which (if you don’t mind) I’ll repeat:

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