As usual, we are very busy in the Youth Action group. Some of you may have noticed that we have had a change of name. We felt that Youth Engagement was a little staid and old fashioned and we really want to encourage younger people to get involved with our projects. We are also working on a new, colourful, eye-catching logo for Youth Action - so watch this space!!
As Youth Action, one of our main aims is to try to engage with young people of all ages and over the years it has been a challenge. However, we feel that we are now getting somewhere mainly due to our successful Curlew Art competition and Wild Week which we ran last year. These have enabled us to get a foot in the door with several schools and we are building solid relationships with several schools now.
We have been running another art competition this year, this time to produce a picture of bees or other pollinators, either through drawing, painting or photography. We have had some marvellous entries from the very talented children of the Moorlands and are looking forward to announcing the lucky winners in a few weeks. We are hoping to present the prizes at the HuG festival on 24th June.
We are also running a Wild Week for local schools again. This time w/b 19th June. We have five schools involved and will be offering workshops on bees, swifts, hedgehogs, curlews and landscape and biodiversity. We chose these animals because they are all endangered but we are fortunate enough to have them all living here in our beautiful Staffordshire Moorlands. This year we have been working with Transition Buxton on planning the Wild Week and have been lucky enough to get some Lottery funding through them and some money from Outside Arts to help pay for some of the resources and people to run workshops. We still need some volunteers to help lead sessions. If you feel that you could volunteer and help us out, especially with biodiversity, please get in touch.
We have also begun working with two local High Schools – Leek High and Moorside High in Werrington. Both are at early stages but we hope that we can help the schools move forwards in their bids to become more sustainable, and help educate their students about climate and looking after the world we live in.
We have also now got links with @21 Youth Club here in Leek and visited them recently. We enjoyed meeting the young people and some of them enjoyed doing a fun quiz which we had created for them. It was great to chat with some of them and find out what kind of things they enjoy doing. We are hoping to visit on a regular basis with more practical activities such as cooking and making things.
We are holding a Clothes and Media Swap in conjunction with the Sustainable Consumer group and Trinity Church. Following the success of the one we held in November, we thought we’d have another go. It is on 20th May, at Trinity, so start sorting out your old clothes, games, books and DVDs, etc.
As you can see, we are very busy but are a very small group. If you think that you can help in any way with projects, attending meetings, admin or contributing ideas, we would love to hear from you.
Contact us at
Sally and Moira