Shout Out ht media experts will guide pupils in the pre-production, production and postproductionht media experts key lessons in Media Production

For further information please click on       Shout Out

This years Conference was based around one of Gateshead Councils Vision 2030 6 big ideas which was “Global Gateshead”. There were 107 children in attendance.  Topics on the day were to look at which schools within Gateshead already have links with schools abroad.

Schools brought information to the conference that showed exchanges that they have had to date. This gave everyone a chance to look at the  differences between our schools and schools abroad.

Representatives from companies who chose Gateshead as their base were asked to come along and give a brief summary of what they did. They were Komatsu, Traidcraft and Groundwork.The afternoon session gave the children the opportunity to look at what they thought were the good selling points of Gateshead.  The best points were written up into a big letter and presented to the GSP.  It will also be included in the final  Vision 2030 document.Gateshead Community Network (GCN) have recognised the need for children and young people to become more aware of how decisions that affect their lives are made. With this in mind the GCN Partnership Officer contacted Gateshead Council’s School Council’s Officer Don Sweeny to discuss how GCN might become more involved with school councils.

Following meetings with Don Sweeny, GCN's Partnership Officer contacted schools to arrange a visit to their school councils.

Lord Lawson of Beamish agreed to host the meetings for the first year. 

During these meetings it became apparent that each school council worked in different ways, and had little or no contact with other school councils to pass on any good practice.  As the school councils were keen to meet and talk to each other Julie and the rest of the staff team organised a conference to take place in October 2007. All schools in the Borough were invited and asked to bring with them three things that they, as a school council, had achieved within their school.  

18 schools participated with 81 students and 24 teaching staff in attendance. The students ranged in age from 7yrs – 17 yrs.  The main topics of the conference were

      ·        To raise awareness of Gateshead Community Network

·        To enable participants to know that their voices and views are important

·        To explore with students the possibility of setting up a Gateshead Junior Community Network

The Junior Network meetings continued with an additional two schools agreeing to be hosts

(Colegate Primary and Bill Quay Primary) while Lord Lawson continued to mentor. 

A second conference took place on October 11th 2008 and was held in the Northumbrian Suite, Federation Brewery.  The project received financial support as well as facilitators helping on the day from partners -Morrisons, Northumbria Police, Tyne & Wear Fire Service, Nexus, and Gateshead Housing. 

The theme for the conference 08 was Community Cohesion, the event was well attended, a DVD has been produced from the day. 

The DVD was presented at Gateshead Strategic Partnership and the Children & Young Peoples Partnership in January by Luke Birkbeck  a member from Colegate Primary School Council ( with support from Julie our partnership officer and other members of the School Council).  Luke has also presented the DVD at both the South and East Area Forums (if you would like a copy of the DVD please contact the project). The host schools continue to meet regularly to generate ideas for future meetings and generate editorial ideas for the Junior Bulletin.

Other suggestions from previous meetings was to visit an actual Councillors meeting.  The project arranged for this to take place and on 23rd April, Julie took 21 children (with teacher support) along to Gateshead Council Councillors meeting. The visit began with a meeting in the Mayors Palour, then the schools met with Cabinet members and Councillors in the Council Chamber before watching the start of the full council meeting.

A third conference will take place in October this year, where the main theme will be one of Gateshead's six big ideas from Vision 2030, which is Global Gateshead this was agreed by the children & Young people at the last Junior Network meeting.  There were lots of great ideas and as we begin to organise the conference we will keep you up to date with agenda items.  

We have also recognised a need for school councils to receive training around, presentation skills, how to run a meeting etc, we are currently looking into this.

Junior Network meetings continue to take place regularly abd we continually strive to get as many Schools to come on board as possible.  If you would like to come along to a meeting or would like further information please give Julie a call on 0191 4784103.

This is an introduction to ht media’s mentoring scheme known as “Shout

Out”.

The scheme is aimed primarily at schools, clubs, charities and group organisations.

“Shout Out” will provide the client involved with a valuable promotional / informational film. When complete, the film

would belong to the client who may choose to distribute it as a DVD in their information packs and/or upload them to

their websites as, for example, a key pupil recruitment tool.

We hope to involve ten schools/organisations in the first roll out of the project, completing one per month for ten

months. We hope to start in February 2010.

The key element of the scheme is that

of the film making process. The pupils will learn from

with an emphasis on fun and creativity.

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