A group of young people from Little London interviewed the Deputy Mayor of West Yorkshire, Alison Lowe, in a self-directed podcast where they talked about local issues and concerns they experience in their community. The group called Leeds Young Change Makers are part of Barca-Leeds Youth Work Provision which supports the voice and influence of young people to identify, reimagine and create improved systems that address systemic injustice and inequity.
Ella Johannessen, Lead Practitioner for Targeted Youth Work at Barca-Leeds, shares how proud she is of the group of young people:
"The young people really led the way for this session and the group’s performance was so productive.
At the beginning I could sense they were nervous as they knew Alison was an important person. They explained a bit about how they feel about the local area which then became a group conversation.
The young people really expressed themselves well and I was impressed with how far their communication skills had come when we had only been working on interviews for a short amount of time.
We moved on to creating a podcast where the young people interviewed Alison Lowe and asked her advice, thoughts and feelings about the local area, rough sleepers and how to make positive change to the area.
The young people each assigned themselves different roles, such as the host, the producer on the laptop and thinkers writing down new questions. Myself and my co-worker Raffi were blown away at how confident and mature all of the young people acted. They were amazing.
After the session they asked if they could make more podcasts in the future as they had enjoyed the experience and were growing in confidence. The next day the group were the talk of the school and were so proud of themselves (as they should be)."
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