Tag: Young people

Young talent brings the city together in a celebration of music

Edinburgh Youth Music Festival this Saturday

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Edinburgh Youth Music Festival, a vibrant showcase of youth music talent, is welcoming children, young people and their families to participate in this year’s event.

Run in conjunction with a city wide network of youth music organisations such as Totally Sound, Reel Youth Media and Edinburgh Youth Music Initiative, this year’s event is organised by #artcore youth arts and is supported by Creative Scotland’s Time to Shine youth arts fund. It will be a celebration of the quality and diversity of opportunities available for ages 0 to 25.

The Edinburgh Youth Music Festival, organised by #artcore Youth Arts, is a partnership event bringing together youth agencies and projects from across the city. Partners include Totally Sound, The Tinderbox Project, Canongate Youth Project, Edinburgh Youth Music Forum, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Edinburgh College, City of Edinburgh Council’s Youth Music Initiative, Pulse of the Place and the Academy of Music and Sound.

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A main feature of this year’s festival is up and coming musicians such as headliners Beeches (above), who will be sharing the stage with exciting young performers from all across Scotland that will cover the full musical range from hip hop to traditional.

The festival is happening at the South Bridge Resource Centre on Infirmary Street, on Saturday 12 September from 12 – 5pm and offers a chance to get into everything; from songwriting to Samba drumming, to advice on pursuing music as a career.

The schedule includes bands Paisley Row, Cameron Jay, Rachel Alice Johnson and headliner Beeches.

Workshops include a Frozen Singalong with the Youth Music Initiative, for ages 5 – 10; Creative Pathways into the Music Industry with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, for age 14 + and Rock techniques with the Academy of Music and Sound for ages 11-25 years.

Further details of the event including a full listing of performers and workshops can be found on the Youth Music festival website:

http://edinburghyouthmusicfestival.org/ 

#artcore Project Manager, Johnny Gailey, said: “‘We’re really excited to be able to present this year’s Edinburgh Youth Music Festival line up, which sees a host of Edinburgh’s young talent take the stage. Whilst Edinburgh band Beeches are starting to make a name for themselves, it’s just as important to us to highlight all local young talent. Everyone starts somewhere, and there are many budding young musicians in the city.

“Music is crucial to the lives of young people and the festival is a fantastic opportunity for all to be inspired by peers and to work with lots of highly skilled professional musicians and organisations. We want to thank all those involved, who are as excited and enthusiastic about the value of youth music as we are and who made the event possible.”

The Southside’s alive with the sound of music …

Time to Shine? Arts the way to do it!

Culture Secretary visits Youth Arts Hub

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Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop toured Edinburgh’s Youth Arts Hub yesterday and met young people whose lives have been changed by the Government-funded scheme.

The Edinburgh Youth Arts Hub, called #artcore, received £289,087 of funding from Creative Scotland as part of Time to Shine, Scotland’s Youth Arts Strategy, and is one of nine youth arts hubs across Scotland designed to give young people from all backgrounds a chance to take part in the arts.

The hubs act as focal points for regional youth arts delivery, helping to nurture and celebrate ambition, enthusiasm and talent in Scotland’s young people by improving the regional infrastructure. Young people are given the chance to be involved in running of the hubs themselves.

Ms Hyslop visited the hub, based at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Dalmeny Street, and met apprentices working at #artcore as well as members of Youth Arts Voice Scotland, a national advisory group of young people aged 12 to 25 who ensure Time to Shine is informed by the views and needs of young people.

Ms Hyslop said: “It was great to meet some of the young people who have had a chance to participate in arts and culture thanks to Time to Shine, Scotland’s Youth Arts Strategy, and #artcore, and hear about the difference the hub is making to their lives.

“#artcore received £289,087 of funding from Creative Scotland to help it open up access to arts and creativity for children and young people in Edinburgh. We understand arts and creativity can have a huge positive impact in people’s lives, and Scotland’s nine Youth Arts Hubs aim to give young people all over the country the chance to take part.

“Culture, the arts and creativity play an important role in tackling inequality, and Time to Shine builds on the well-established links between culture, education, youth employment and personal development.

“It is not only about providing enhanced access opportunities for all of Scotland’s young people but it goes further to support meaningful career pathways for our talent of the future; be it on stage, the screen, behind the scenes or in our world-leading creative industries.

“Perhaps most importantly of all, our aim is that this engagement with culture will nurture personal qualities that will help our young people to grow confidently as citizens and towards realising their ambitions, wherever they lie in the arts or elsewhere.”

#artcore project manager Johnny Gailey said: “It’s great to have both the Cabinet Secretary, and young people from Youth Arts Voice Scotland, to visit to see how #artcore has progressed, since we got our Time to Shine funding to set up a youth arts hub in Edinburgh a year ago.

“In the past year, we have employed a team of four young apprentices to run our programme of multi-arts activity – we’ve worked with over 500 young people in a series of pilot projects involving gaming, animation, radio plays, circus skills, music, creative writing and self publishing. And we’re now at the exciting point of announcing our expanded autumn arts programme at sites throughout the city, as well as launching our new print social enterprise, Out of the Blueprint.”

Joan Parr, Creative Scotland’s Head of Creative Learning said:

“Placing young people at the centre of the strategy’s aims and ambitions is a core principle of Time To Shine and we are delighted by the extent to which the Time To Shine implementation programme has so far taken its lead from young people.

“#Artcore Edinburgh is very much a youth led Arts Hub and therefore provides the ideal setting for our national Youth Arts Voice Scotland group to reflect with the Cabinet Secretary on what’s been achieved through Time To Shine to date, and what can still be achieved in supporting Scotland’s young people to flourish and achieve in and through the arts and creativity.”

Blair Boyle, YAVS Member, said: “As YAVS we are delighted to be presenting the progress of Time To Shine to the Cabinet Secretary. We are playing a key role alongside Creative Scotland and Young Scot in the development of the strategy implementation programme and we think it’s vital that young people continue to have a strong voice at this level influencing policy and decision making.

“We are proud that Scotland has such a powerful arts strategy for young people and are excited to be at #artcore today to be able to share with the Cabinet Secretary the breadth and depth of the work that is now happenening across the country.”

Chief Executive of Young Scot Louise Macdonald said: “We are really lucky that there is such a wealth of creative talent right here in Scotland and that there are young people who are so passionate about championing it.

“The young people involved in Youth Arts Voice Scotland are nothing short of inspirational in their drive and ambition to make the arts more accessible to young people right across Scotland. Their hard work and enthusiasm is encouraging young people right across the country get involved in arts programmes, securing our future as a creative nation.

“I am proud that we, in partnership with Creative Scotland, have been able to bring these young people together, so they can meet, discuss and ultimately grow their passion together with other likeminded young people.”

 

Join MYDG for AGM … and get your bike checked too!

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Muirhouse Youth Development Group

would like to invite you to our AGM 

Thursday 24 September 

3.30 – 5pm

My Adventure HQ

23b West Harbour Road, EH5 1PN

MYDG***MY Adventure***Muirhouse Link Up

Refreshments included

Please RSVP by Friday 11 September

(by email to Dean@mydg.org.uk)

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Dear All,

I look forward to seeing everyone at the AGM at the MY Adventure HQ on 24 September. It will be great to share the groups successes over the last year and celebrate our young people together.

Address is: 23b West Harbour Road, Edinburgh, EH5 1PN.

If anyone would like to bring their bike to be given a free health check on the day please bring it along. We have a mechanics workshop here and some of the MY Academy team will be there to do it.

See you all soon,

James Howell, Director

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City authors dominate Children’s Book Awards shortlist

FREE TO USE - Scottish Children’s Book Awards shortlist is announced.

Edinburgh-based authors have dominated the shortlist for the 2016 Scottish Children’s Book Awards, with four out of the nine shortlisted authors hailing from the city.

Emily MacKenzie, Elizabeth Laird, Danny Weston and Joan Lingard are all up for the prestigious awards, which celebrate the most popular children’s and young adult books by Scottish authors or illustrators.

Run by Scottish Book Trust with support from Creative Scotland, they are Scotland’s largest book awards with a total prize fund of £12,000 – the nine shortlisted authors and illustrators receive £500 per book, and the three winning books receive £3,000 each.

Emily MacKenzie, who lives in the New Town and studied Graphic Design at Edinburgh College of Art, has been shortlisted in the Bookbug Readers (3-7 yrs) category for her debut picture book Wanted! Ralfy Rabbit Book Burglar, published by Bloomsbury.

She was recently shortlisted for The Independent Bookshop Week Children’s Picture Book Award and her second book, Stanley The Amazing Knitting Cat will be published by Bloomsbury in January 2016.

Commenting on her nomination, Emily said: “I was absolutely over the moon when I found out that Ralfy had been shortlisted for the Scottish Children’s Book Awards!

“The book has had such a warm response from teachers, librarians and the children I’ve read it to so far which has been really lovely, but the idea that a further 64,000 P1 children starting school in Scotland this year will receive a copy of it to enjoy and hopefully help them on to a path of loving reading and books as much as I do, blows my mind. It’s a dream come true and Ralfy and I want to say a big thank you to Scottish Book Trust for all their support!”

A free copy of Emily’s book will be gifted to every Primary 1 child during Book Week Scotland, in the Bookbug P1 Family Bag, along with copies of the two other shortlisted books in the Bookbug category.

This bag was produced by Scottish Book Trust in conjunction with Education Scotland and the Scottish Government as part of Read, Write, Count – a new literacy and numeracy campaign aimed at children in Primary 1 to 3.

Elizabeth Laird, based in the Old Town, has been shortlisted in the Younger Readers (8-11 yrs) category for her book The Fastest Boy in the World, published by Macmillan.

Elizabeth, who has previously appeared on the 2008 and 2010 Scottish Children’s Book Awards shortlists, is an award-winning author of children’s fiction and travel. She has written over 30 books for children and has been shortlisted five times for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, including for The Fastest Boy in the World this year. She has been nominated by UK IBBY for the international Hans Christian Anderson Award, and her new novel, Dindy and the Elephant, was published in June. Elizabeth now lives with her husband, splitting their time between London and Edinburgh.

Elizabeth said: “It’s a thrill and an honour to be shortlisted for the Scottish Children’s Book Award. ‘The Fastest Boy in the World’ is an Ethiopian lad called Solomon, who dreams of joining the ranks of the great African running champions. Now, thanks to this lovely award, he’ll be running all the way round Scotland. Go Solomon!”

Danny Weston, who lives in Tollcross, has been shortlisted in the Older Readers (12-16 yrs) category for his book The Piper, published by Andersen.

He has published three novels (under the name Philip Caveney) with Edinburgh-based publisher Fledgling Press. These are time travel adventures, all set in Edinburgh at different points in its history. The first book Crow Boy is set in Mary Kings Close, Seventeen Coffins is all about the tiny coffins found on Arthur’s Seat in 1836 and the most recent book,One For Sorrow, is all about Robert Louis Stevenson.

In the New Year, Fledgling will be bringing out The Calling – a novel featuring all the statues in Edinburgh. The Piper was also recently shortlisted for the North East Book Award.

Commenting on his nomination, Danny said: “I was surprised and delighted to hear that I had been shortlisted for this prestigious prize. At a time when the importance of literacy seems to be increasingly challenged, prizes like this mean more than ever to authors like me.”

Joan Lingard, who lives in Edinburgh’s New Town, has been shortlisted in the Older Readers (12-16 yrs) category for her novel Trouble on Cable Street, published by Catnip.

Joan has been a published writer for young people and adults for over 40 years and is best known for the Kevin and Sadie books, set in Northern Ireland at the time of the troubles there.

Her popular Elfie and Joe trilogy began when she discovered that her grandfather had run a pub in Stoke Newington in London and she started to research that area around the turn of the 19th Century when he and his wife lived there.

Following a conversation with a friend about the period between the first and second world wars, Joan began to research the impact of the Fascist movement in London in the 1930s, and the parallel conflict in Spain.

Joan said: “I’m delighted that Trouble on Cable Street has been shortlisted for the Scottish Children’s Book Awards. I have been writing for young people for over 40 years and I am always pleased to know that readers are enjoying my books.

“I enjoyed writing this book very much. It is set in a fascinating, unsettled time in Britain’s history – and European history – and the more I read about what happened in the 1930s the more I found parallels with some of the problems we’re facing today, eight decades later.

“In 1936 the communities of the East End of London rallied to stop a march by Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. They clashed with the police in Cable Street and the march was eventually stopped, but many people were injured in the fighting.

“I always enjoy writing strong characters, and once I’d settled on Isabella and her two brothers their story fell into place against the backdrop of London in those difficult times.”

FREE TO USE - Scottish Children’s Book Awards shortlist is announced.

THE FULL SCOTTISH CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARDS 2016 SHORTLIST: 

Bookbug Readers (3-7 years)

  • Never Tickle a Tiger by Pamela Butchart and Marc Boutavant (Bloomsbury)
  • Wanted! Ralfy Rabbit Book Burglar by Emily MacKenzie (Bloomsbury)
  • Mouse’s First Night at Moonlight School by Simon Puttock and Ali Pye (Nosy Crow).

Younger Readers (8-11 years)

  • The Nowhere Emporium by Ross Mackenzie (Floris)
  • The Mysteries of Ravenstorm Island: The Lost Children by Gillian Philip (Orchard)
  • The Fastest Boy in the World by Elizabeth Laird (Macmillan)

Older Readers (12-16 years)

  • Black Dove White Raven by Elizabeth Wein (Egmont)
  • The Piper by Danny Weston (the pseudonym of Philip Caveney) (Andersen)
  • Trouble on Cable Street by Joan Lingard (Catnip) 

Over the next five months, children the length and breadth of Scotland will be reading the three shortlisted books in their age category and voting for their favourite.

The voting deadline is 5 February 2016. The three winning books will be announced at a special award ceremony on 4 March 2016. 

Jasmine Fassl, Head of Schools at Scottish Book Trust, said: “The Scottish Children’s Book Awards are a perfect way to celebrate Scotland’s talented authors and illustrators, while also helping participating children to develop an independent love of books and reading.

“Hundreds of schools and libraries from literally every corner of Scotland involve tens of thousands of children in reading and reviewing the shortlisted books every year, proof of both the eagerness of Scottish young people to make their voice heard and of the quality of the shortlisted books.”

Leonie Bell, Director of Creative Development at Creative Scotland, added: “The Scottish Children’s Book Awards is a hugely successfully programme that celebrates children’s and young adult literature while also encouraging reading in children across Scotland.

“The fact that the winners are selected exclusively by children makes this an extra special award to win.  By taking an active role in choosing the vote they are taking steps in their journeys as independent readers.

“This is a fantastic shortlist and we encourage young people across Scotland to get involved.  We look forward to finding out who they choose as this year’s winners.”

The Scottish Children’s Book Awards also encourage budding authors or journalists to put pen to paper: the popular Book Review Competition offers pupils the chance to win book tokens, sponsored by Waterstones, and an author visit for their school.

Aspiring film makers can enter the book trailer competition to showcase their digital talents and win book tokens for their school. Scottish Book Trust provides extensive learning resources for teachers on how to create book trailers.

CALL Scotland has again worked with Scottish Book Trust and the publishers to create accessible digital versions of the nine shortlisted books for children and young people with physical, visual and reading or dyslexic difficulties, who can’t read the paper books. The accessible digital versions of the shortlisted books are available free of charge from CALL Scotland.

You can request books by going to http://www.callscotland.org.uk/Home/.

 Pictures: Rob McDougall

Inverleith Youth Forum: get involved!

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Youth Forum Poster

Inverleith Young People’s Forum is starting up again and looking to recruit new members (see poster below).

Interested or like to find out more?

Contact Callum McLeod, Community Learning & Development Worker on 332 6316 or email Callum.mcleod@ea.edin.sch.uk

Dancing with wolves

Local youngsters shine in dance performance

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Liminal Dance Company brought their Red and the Wolf to North Edinburgh Arts on the latest leg of a Scottish tour – and, together with local young people, took an appreciative audience on a magical journey.

Choreographer Gemma Williams and professional dancers worked with a locally-based community cast of young people aged 8-16 in a series of workshops which culminated in a live performance of the work on Wednesday evening.

Inspired by the Little Red Riding Hood fairtytale, Red and the Wolf  tells the much-loved story through music, movement and dance and took the audience – who were not merely passive observers, but became part of the performance – on an ever-changing, fantastic journey.

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It was a fascinating experience, a real adventure, and all credit to the young participants Gemma Williams, Justine Lim, Christina Duncan, Abigail Courtney, Katherine Rennie, Jiaya Aui, Gabrielle Glean, Staney Mckay, Ferdie Mckay, Sorcha Minto, Julie Dorozynska, Freya McNicoli, Inez MacIntosh and Rhona Payne who really put their hearts and souls into the performance. Bravo!

Next stop for Red and the Wolf is Musselburgh’s Brunton Theatre (11 – 15 August)

Tay-riffic fun at Youth Work Games!

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Muirhouse Youth Development Group’s (MYDG) fourth annual youth work games took place on 14th & 15th July, bringing teams of young people, staff and volunteers from across North Edinburgh and Aberfeldy to compete in the decathlon event at the headquarters of Wildfox events, on the banks of Loch Tay (writes KATIE TUFF).

This event brings together youth organisations who may not necessarily work together on a regular basis, to show teamwork, companionship and friendship through the events and social interactions. Creating opportunities for young people to get involved in sport and exercise in a unique but inclusive way.

This year was the biggest yet with 13 teams competing for the sought after youth work games trophy. The ten events took place over the two days by the banks of Loch Tay, which was a beautiful setting for the first event, the cross country run, followed by the tandem bike ride race and finishing off the day in wetsuits with a swim and canoe on the Loch.

MYAdventure were working in partnership with MYDG , taking the lead on some of the events and were part of the staff team. Both Leaders and young people gave it their all to get points for their teams with some friendly competition and great participation from everyone.

As evening set on the athletes village, we were joined by the Dancing Feet Ceilidh band who gave a great night of live music with leaders and young people dancing around the marquee to some old Scottish classics, and learning some new moves (some a bit confusing!), culminating in everyone getting involved for a final rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to finish off the night.

The second day was welcomed with beautiful sunshine and some tired but enthusiastic young people raring to get going. The Swamp football tournament kicked off the day’s events, accompanied by archery, tree climb, tug of war and long jump all leading up to our final and most anticipated event, the assault course.

This year we had Perth and District YMCA Ybounce bring along their inflatable assault course and slide. The assault course had everyone getting involved ending in a youth leaders vs. youth work games staff showdown. This proved to be the favourite amongst all the events.

The prize giving ceremony was next on the agenda with most teams receiving medals. This year our Youth Work Games trophy winners and overall champions were Kids in the Street from Craigmillar ,who annihilated any competition by winning most medals and scoring an impressive 25 points over the two days! Granton Youth Centre came second with 12 points and the Breathe project from Aberfeldy third with 10 points. Rowlands from Selkirk were the recipients of the Sportsmanship award for showing enthusiasm, teamwork and all round good spirit for the event.

This year we received funding from the North Edinburgh Partnership to run the event, without which it would not have taken place to the level that it did. It was great to see so much enthusiasm and excitement around the event, with young people coming together, getting to know each other and work as part of a team.

It is our hope that the experience can be looked back on and the skills learned can be transferable back in the youth organisations after the event. A huge well done and thank you goes to everyone involved!

Plans are now being set for Youth Work Games 2016 for a bigger and better event, if you are interested in hearing more or want to book up for next year, please contact MYDG office on 0131 332 3356.

Katie Tuff, Muirhouse Youth Development Group