I'm a Councillor, Get me out of Here! kicks off

On Monday 6th October, our event I'm a Councillor, Get me out of Here  started up for its sixth year. You can read about the event, its structure, aims, and history - click here.

Cllr John Williams grapples with a (bearded) dragon

IAC 2008 has been up and running for two and a half days, and the event website is already buzzing. Some statistics and quotes follow the break. Point your browser to bigvote.org.uk, press the "Guest Access" button, and take a look around for yourself - after you log in, you can switch councils with the dropdown box on the top right corner.

I'm a Councillor 2008 features local councillors from 22 councils across the UK: 18 from England, 3 from Wales, and 1 from Northern Ireland. The site is bilingual (English-Welsh) for Welsh users.

We won't know for sure how many users are registered on the site until our final evaluation in November (watch this space!) but, just two and a half days after the event began on the 6th, the server reports over 1700 users!

Again, young people started asking questions on the 6th, and so far we have over 2000 questions submitted for the councillors to answer. Students in Oldham Council alone have asked 327 questions. To give some perspective, our busiest council last year had 672 questions in the whole fortnight of the event... so this year's participants are active indeed!

Some questions already asked:

"what do you think about graffiti. art or crime??" - user: urhmenono

"Horse poo should have to be picked up such as dog poo has to, it smells worse and it larger, there should be a fine on that as if you do not pick up your dog poo you can get fined...?" - user rhys876

"what is it like being a councillor because i want to be one" - user: thomas

Live chat is working well, too. We've seen discussions about skate parks (always a hot issue), crime, bullying, and what would make Newry and Mourne a better place (according to one student, Newry and Mourne needs "A BIG DINOSAUR"...)

If you want more information, I suggest you check out the IAC press section, which has all sorts of info and data. I'm on call to answer your queries - ben@bigvote.org.uk. I'll return later in the event with more questions and quotes from chat, so stay tuned!