The way forward

The Myplace young people's bid team has been a small and committed group of young people who can truly see the opportunity that a 'World Class Youth Centre' would bring to the city. Its been a pleasure to work with them.

The challenge is to find a way that more young people can have meaningful, relevant and ongoing involvement in the process. Whether this is a parallel bid and planning team or something different, their experience of working together on the project should act as preparation for them to take opportunities to influence. Those opportunities to influence should be provided as a matter of priority and it should begin right now!

We are free to create a system of influence which truly works and we have an ideal opportunity to do this with the myplace project.

CJ :: Inspired Youth

Myplace the final Session

Session Aims
• To review the project so far
• To catch up with progress since August
• To decide a way forward for the Young People’s Bid Team

The group were asked to respond to the following statement;

“I know how young people can be involved in future myplace planning”

The red marks show how the group felt at the beginning of the session, the blue/green marks show how they felt at the end.


RECAP:
First we talked through the activities that the group had taken part in over the last 4 months. It was important to remind ourselves of how far we had come, what thinking had been done and what actions taken. We then began to look at what events had taken place behind the scenes since we last met in August.

PLANNING:
Mike from Wm Saunders Architects updated the group on the planning process. He explained the architectural drawings of the planned site and described the changes that would be made to the original building which the group had visited back in August.


3 MONTHS IN 3 MINUTES:
In order to explain the sequence of events that followed our last meeting we acted out a short role-play. The group moved around the room recreating specific events and introducing all the people who had been involved, such as;
- The Young People's Bid Team
- The Elected Members of Council (EMAP)
- The Planners and Architects
- The Railway Institute
- The Office of the Rail Regulator
- The Council Bid Team
- Voluntary & Community Groups from across York
- The Big Lottery (The people who are giving out the money)


THE FUTURE:
The result of the events was that the Council Bid Team had made the decision not to put in a bid this time round. They would wait until the next round of applications is opened in order to have a better chance at providing an excellent bid.

We took the opportunity to reflect on how the Young People's Bid Team had been involved in the process; what changes would help young people to be actively involved?

The group worked on three areas, going back to the principles of a 'World Class Youth Centre' they looked at ;
- How to make sure as many young people as possible were involved (Representation)

- Planning of sevices (Commissioning)

- Running myplace and what systems we need now and in the future (Governance)

The activity turned into an interesting debate.

EMAP Papers

For anyone that wants to have a look the views of elected members about Myplace are in item 8 which can be found at the link below on the Council Website.

Kim Peake

http://democracy.york.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.asp?CId=442&MId=3690

Post from Kim Peake, Bid Manager

Thanks for all your contributions to date, Leo and Katie's work representing young people's views at the EMAP was particularly impressive given the range of probing questions asked by elected members.

We continue to investigate and work towards putting a bid together around a multi-purpose facility in the city centre and the architects have been given feedback from young people and agencies who work with young people.

As ever things change on a daily basis but there has been progress on putting together something that gives young people somewhere to go and affordable things to do in the city centre.

I look forward to reading more of your comments and results of your work on the blog.

Kim

multi media

i want a fully functional multi media youth project with cameras editing equipment computers PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

multi media

fitness

would like a fitness studio:

multi gym

swimming pool

we want space!

we want enough space to move around.

we want instruments

food drink

cafe

stuff about travelling

lava lamp

computers that work

Wii

toilets

Xbox 360o

DS Lite

In Clifton.....

In the city centre...

we want space to move around

from ana, joe, kylie

Evening Press Article

Youngsters deliver strong message for city centre venue

4:20pm Saturday 6th September 2008

comment Comments (0) Have your say »
By Nadia Jefferson-Brown »


YOUNG people are calling for a new meeting and entertainment venue to be provided for them in York city centre, as the council considers mounting a bid for Government cash.

Whitehall is making capital funds available for authorities to develop iconic new facilities for young people, which has sparked fresh talks between City of York Council and local youngsters.

The Children and Young People’s Services Advisory panel met with young people who highlighted what was needed and outlined their vision for new events and activities in the city.

Coun Dave Merrett, Labour’s children and young people’s services spokesman, said: “The Government’s MyPlace scheme offers the city’s young people a tremendously exciting opportunity to obtain a world class youth facility in York. “It would fill a major gap in local provision and the city centre is obviously the most accessible location to put it and where young people want to see it.

“The timescale is now very short, and the council and its potential partners need to continue their work and pull out all the stops to deliver the bid.”

An officer’s report to the panel stated that, if a bid was made and proved successful, any necessary building or refurbishment work would most likely take place in 2010.

Coun James Alexander, the children and young people’s champion, said: “The young people who attended the meeting sent a very strong message that they want the venue in a central location. They feel equality of access from a public transport point of view is very important.

“In terms of what they would like to see the venue used for, they listed various events and activities such as sport, drama and gigs, and would like to see a chill out area, café, PCs and games, internet access, advice as well as some outdoor space. “I was tremendously impressed with their contributions, and I hope this vision becomes a reality as it is long overdue. I think the Government has recognised that young people need decent leisure provision, and I’m happy to welcome its contribution to achieving this”. Panel members supported in principle the idea of mounting a bid to secure myplace cash to develop centrally-based facilities for young people and also backed calls for the site to be in the city centre.

Officers will now pursue the ideas throughout this month to explore possible options for a site and partnerships.

These will be appraised closer to the bid deadline to help decide whether a bid should be submitted now or deferred until a further bidding round.

EMAP Meeting

The EMAP meeting is the Meeting between the Executive Member for Children and Young People's Services, Cllr. Carol Runciman and her Advisory Panel.

The Advisory Panel is made up of local elected Councillors from different areas of York plus council officers and representatives from education.

At the meeting Katie and Leo represented the Myplace group and gave a short presentation of the group's work on the myplace bid. The idea was to encourage Cllr Runciman and her Advisory Panel to agree for the bid to be taken forward. The Assistant Director of Children and Young People's Services, Paul Murphy backed up the points raised by Leo and Katie and made a good case for the Myplace bid to be agreed.

With many creases still to be ironed out by the council's bid team we await the decision on which site will be chosen, taking into account the excellent feedback from the myplace group.

In our next meeting we expect to be able to invite the architects back to present the results of their work. This is likely to be during the week beginning 22nd Sept.

See you all Soon.

Peace

CJ

Session 3

The myplace group spent this session looking at architectural images that appealed to them and developing ideas on how to transfer their ideas into a brief for the Architect.

Following this they headed out to see a couple of site options accompanied by some planning and creative professionals.

The First Site they looked at was on Haxby Road at Nestle.

SITE 1












The second site they looked at was at the Railway Institute buildings next to the Railway Station.

SITE 2










Finally they brought all their ideas, research and priorities together in order to put together a brief for the architect.

Next stop – Presenting their ideas to the Meeting of the Executive Member for
Children and Young People's Services and Advisory Panel.

A Message from Paul Herring

I'm writing as the Head of Young People's Services in the City. I'm very excited at the prospect of bringing a substantial facility for young people's activities to York. The committment from a young people in partnership with the Council and community organisations is fantastic and I wish all those involved in making the bid every success in their endeavour.

Best wishes

Paul

Site Visits

Monday was a fast moving day working with you, the architects and council staff around expressing needs and aspirations for a World-Class youth facility. After many ups and downs glad to report we are approaching a meeting tonight with councillors with options (more than one!)

Thanks for all your hard work up to this point and look forward to continuing working with you after the meeting.

Kim Peake
Myplace Bid Manager

Session 2

The group were asked to respond to the statement

"I know what young people would like from a new world-class youth centre"

Red/orange remarks show their feelings, as a group, at the beginning of the session and the green/blue remarks show their feelings at the end of the session





Today's session was all about priorities for the building itself.

Session Aims
• To explore what we and other young people feel is important
• To think about the challenges for the bid team and possible solutions
• To prepare a pitch for the Counsellors’ meeting


The group thought about all the buildings they use in York and chose some examples of what they considered good buildings and bad buildings.

Using the floor as a virtual map of York they stood at the location of their building and gave their thoughts on the building's purpose, location, culture and features.

This helped the group to consider lots of important things we experience about buildings which could feed into our plans.




Following this the group used diagrams to explore what they think are the priorities for a new building based on their experience and knowledge. This information will be really helpful when it comes to working with an architect.






We noticed that there were a number of conflicts emerging between what people thought were priorities. Sarah will test these conflicts out by doing a short consultation with young people in schools next week.

Finally the group brought together all their ideas into three short statements to be delivered to the meeting of elected members on Thursday. We welcomed Cllr. James Alexander to the group to give some helpful feedback and to join in the debates.




Peace

CJ :: Inspired Youth

Hayley

Hi

I have done some work today and Im going speak to the councilor's on Thursday.

I am helping to get a grant to make a space for young people in York.

I have done work like this before and hope to make a difference.

I will write again soon.

cheer's Hayley

Leo

Hi!

I'm Leo and this is my first week working on the Myplace bid because I couldn't come last week. I was told about it through some other voluntary work I was doing and decided to get involved!

It's a really interesting project and I like the fast pace of the meetings. I think it has to be like this partly because of the short time available to get it done though! This week we looked at the building itself-what we want it to have in it and what will be its main purpose. There was a lot of debate over what its main focus should be around; education and advice or fun. In the end we decided both were necessary for the place to be a success!

We then looked at the conflicts and possible problems we will have to get past with the bid such as whether to have lots of outdoor space or a huge building. At the end of next week Sarah is going to go into some secondary schools to find out what the young people there want which should help us work some of these things out!

It's fun doing this project and I'm glad to be involved!

Shonagh

in today's session we really got to have our say about the actual centre.
we spent a while writing on diagrams what we thought was essential, what would capture peoples attention, what would make people want to return and what our wildest wishes were for the centre.
it was a great excersise as it really felt like we were able to take matters into our own hands.
we then came up with a few issues that could cause conflicts, and thought of questions we could ask young people to help us overcome them.
the session was rounded off by using the 3 questions we asked ourselves last week to come up with statements we could present to the council panel when we meet with them.
i enjoyed the creative nature of today's session, and look forward to the next one :)

Harriet

In todays session we looked at what would be needed in the myplace building, we split it in to what is essential, what is needed to capture the attention of young people, what we need to make them return and a wishlist of things that may be too expensive or unrealistic. Some of the things that may be too expensive would be good to do so there is the possibility that day trips could be organised to places eg. a swimming pool, the zoo.
We made a list of problems with the building, some of these were whether or not to have an outside space and whether or not we were willing to compromise the indoor space to make room. Another of the problems that may occur is that because the centre is for young people aged between 11 and 24 younger kids maybe be frightened away by the thought of lots of enormous teenagers and older kids may not want to hang around with loads of little kids. From these problems we thought of questions to ask young people so they could help us find solutions. The last thing we did was to come up with some statements that we can present to members of the council at a meeting.

:D

A post from James Alexander

My name is Jame Alexander and I am lucky enough to be the elected Children and Young People's Champion of York.

Myplace is an amazing opportunity to give the children and young people what they need. This is a purpose built "somewhere to go". I often visit youth events run by various groups as well as visit schools. What rings very clearly is that there are not enough permanent spaces for children and young people to socialise with their friends, have a good time and not feel victimised for being bored. This is why it is great that here is the possibility of getting a purpose built centre and why it is so important that there is engagement with young people to find out what they want.

I am behind this project 100%. I hope to see a fantastic, ambitious world class youth facility in York. This is what children and young people want and this is also what they need and deserve.

James

Myplace in the Press

Post from Kim Peake

Hello, its fantastic to see the beginning of something special. I have been managing the Myplace bid working with all kinds of people behind the scenes in the council and voluntary organisations across York.

It's been, and will continue to be a rollercoaster ride to put our bid together but I really believe that together we can make a strong case for a world-class facility for young people across York. I'll work hard to put together the best bid we can to represent yours and other young people's wishes for somewhere to go with your friends or have interesting things to do.

I'll be back to look again at what you're doing, but look forward to meeting those of you that come on the site visits.

Kim Peake

Message from Paul Murphy

Hi there - I'm Paul, and I'm an Assistant Director at City of York Council with responsibility for Young People's Services.



It's great to read your first thoughts about "myplace". If we can pull off a successful bid, we could potentially have something really special for York - a brand new facility which has had young people involved in its design from the very outset.



Thank for all your enthusiasm. I look forward to hearing more from you all as the project develops, and to meeting you all face-to-face in due course. Maybe one day you'll be standing there when we cut the ribbon to open it! It will take us a while to get there - but this is the first step, and you'll always be able to tell people that you were part of it!



Bye for now.

Paul

Myplace Session 1

The myplace group were asked to respond to the following statement;

“I understand my role in the myplace bid team and how I can contribute”

Red/orange remarks show their feelings, as a group, at the beginning of the session and the green remarks show their feelings at the end of the session.


Well done!

You covered a lot of things in this session

Session Aims
• To look at the situation and the understand the task
• To understand the process of contribution
• To be aware of other people who are involved
• To Understand the role of the young people’s bid team and the individuals within it



Now we have a good way to move forward. Next session we will be looking at your ideas for what young people would want from a new centre for young people and what evidence we can gather to help make our case.

Peace

CJ
Inspired Youth

Rhiannon

Hi, my name's Rhiannon. I'm from York and was invited to come along to a meeting about Myplace through my involvement in the Duke of Edinburgh Award. At the beginning I had no idea about Myplace and I hadn't even heard about it before!

We were given a brief about the council's bid and discussed their aims. The idea is to create a space in the city centre where young people can go and socialise. We looked at what it is the young people of York would like to have in this new building and the different ways we could find this out. The council needs to have their young people on board and so are really keen to hear our ideas and plans for this project. They need to make a case which they can put forward detailing our plans and ideas. We thought about this and how it will affect different groups of people. We did an exercise with a piece of string and looked at how different people such as the media, the council, the general public and individual organisations and charities are all linked to young people. I had no idea so many people are involved. If the bid is successful we'll be able to talk to the architects and be involved with the design of the building all the way, so the whole project will have a massive input from the young people. After all we're the ones that will be using it! After this first session I'm now really excited about the project. It sounds like an amazing opportunity for all the young people in York. Fingers crossed we get the bid!



THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE AN INTEREST IN MYPLACE:

COUNCIL SERVICES FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

ELECTED MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL

YOUNG PEOPLE

SERVICES FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE PROVIDED BY CHARITIES AND COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS

THE WIDER PUBLIC

THE MEDIA

Jenny

Hi, my name is Jenny. I'm from York and has joined a meeting about Myplace through my connections from the Duke of Edingbrough Award.

I had no idea about what Myplace was actually about at the beignning! But we were given a brief and the aims of the project. The overall idea is to create suggestions on what a buliding could be used mainly for young people. And we as young people can have our say about this project from where it can be located to how the building would look like. After the first session we were able to know who we would be working with and the other poeple and organizations that are involved such as the council, media etc. If the bid is successful planning would go ahead and there will be more opportunities for young people!

Nicola =)

Hi i'm nicola and i'm from wheldrake. =)

Today in the meeting we talked about the aims of this project, one of these was to understand our task which we talked about and answered some quiestions on bidding. The next was to understand how to achieve the task and then be aware of who is involved which was when we each represented one of the groups involved in myplace and linked ourselves together usiong string. The last was to understand our role which we did by discussing representation and how we represent others.

I am looking forward to having a say in what is put in to the building and meeting the designer/architect.

Ellie + Harriet

Hi! We're Ellie and Harriet and we're from the general York area.

In todays meeting we did a string activity to show how lots of different aspects effect the overall outcome of the project.
One of our aims was to understand our role and this activity helped us to do this.
We also looked at bid questions and what we will need to include in our answers.
We're really looking forward to looking at the architectural designs to get an idea of what the building would look like.

Shonagh

hey, I'm Shonagh, I'm from Fulford

I heard about this project from my YorKash group leader and it sounded like a great idea.
In our first meeting we did a few exercises just to get the ball rolling and to help us with our understanding of what our role was, who else was involved in the project, and how we were actually going to achieve everything.

The first activity we did was to understand who was involved and how, we used a ball of string to illustrate this, we stood in a circle and were assigned the titles of various parties concerned, including the council, council services and young people, then passed the string around from person to person to show how they were linked and we ended up with an understanding of just how interlinked all the groups were and a big tangle of string!

We finished the meeting with an exercise in which we paired off and wrote on big sheets of paper 'what facility we are we trying to create and why will it be world class?', 'what will young people get from the centre? and why do we need it?' and 'how will young people have there say?'

I really enjoyed the couple of hours we spent doing all this and will definitely be back next week :)

Welcome to Myplace York

Myplace York is a fantastic new project. It will give young people the chance to shape plans for a world class centre for young people in the city.

Follow this BLOG to see their progress!

Peace

CJ
Inspired Youth