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Skills and Enterprise Training for College Success
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Prizes galore at 'The Mix'
You've been labelled as a 'NEET'*. You are one of 895,000 16-24 year olds in the same situation**. You don't do 'education' or 'training' and you haven't got a job. Pretty depressing, probably. That's where 'The Mix' comes in - a programme designed to help young people appreciate their talents, improve their skills and build their confidence. How does it work? The approach is not complicated; give young people something unexpected to do, watch curiosity overcome reluctance, help them with technical support when they need it and let their natural talents emerge.
This programme - run at Milton in Oxfordshire at the end of April - put a group of 20 young people together with film making specialists in a team based competition. Using the latest Flip video cameras, Nikon digital still cameras and Apple Macintosh laptops running video editing software, the student teams produced four great videos reporting - perhaps optimistically! - on England's appearance in the World Cup Final against Brazil this summer in South Africa.
Piloted with Abingdon and Witney College and working closely with Connexions Oxfordshire, Working Knowledge delivered this movie making extravaganza which had the 20 participants brimming over with energy and fun by the end. As statuettes were handed out for Best Acting, Best Film, Best Technical Production and Best Cinematography you wouldn't have believed that 4 hours before most of the young people involved had never been involved in film making, let alone featured in their own production.
A special award was made for Best Direction; a young woman whose energy and decisiveness had galvanised her whole team and spurred them on to the 'Best Technical Production' award. The award for 'Outstanding Media Talent' went to Jordan; he won an HD video camera that he can use to practice his new found skills. Asked why he thought he'd won the award, he said; 'I worked out at the beginning what I needed to do and I just did it'. Asked where this might lead, he said: 'I'm going to talk to the college about a course, maybe photography'.
The programme was a pilot, designed to test whether this approach could make it easier to engage young people in other opportunities for training and work and to improve their life chances. Tracking the young people over the coming months will determine whether that is the case, but the feedback from the overwhelming majority of young people, staff and facilitators involved suggests that the young people will go away more motivated and more likely to consider new ideas and options for their future.
* A NEET is a young person who is 'Not in education, employment or training' . Some useful information and a broader definition can be found here.
** The Quarterly Labour Force Survey NEET Statistics can be accessed here.
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