Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

National Care Leavers Week - Sheffield LifeSwap

We've been talking with Sheffield City Council for a few months about running LifeSwap.   During National Care Leavers Week on October 24th 2007 five Care Leavers from Sheffield and five senior officers and members from the council will take a photo every hour on a mobile phone camera and send the pictures with captions to the LifeSwap site.  A snapshot of those ten lives will build over the day and if our previous experience is anything to go by a fascinating contrast in lives will show.

But that is just one small part of the effect of the event.  Sheffield are putting as much into and getting as much out of the preparation for the event.  A group of young people are responsible for organising the event.  They will decide which care leavers and which council people will take part.  The Corporate Parenting Panel of councillors have shown a lot of interest in signing up to the idea and it's raised lots of questions about what their role and responsibilities are towards Care Leavers.  Deciding to run LifeSwap is acting as a catalyst to generate awareness about children in care even before the event has taken place.

Which of course is going to be needed when the June 2007 White Paper, Care Matters: Time For Change comes into effect.

Brighton LifeSwap

Today was the turn of Brighton and Hove City Council to take part in LifeSwap.  The photos are still coming in thick and fast at 8.45pm as the Council folk head home and into late meetings and the young people head out to the bars and clubs of Brighton.

The Council seem to be a little surprised at the media interest shown in the event.  Apparently the local paper and radio station weren't sure about covering it until they saw it start to unfold and then were asking for quotes saying they had been sitting at their PCs watching the people's days unfold as the site built.  The BBC covered it nicely.

Please have a look and leave a comment or two.

LifeSwap in SocietyGuardian

LifeSwap has achieved some form of national recognition with an article in today's SocietyGuardian covering the event.  The article is extremely positive and sums up the advantages of the event far better than I can, but essentially it says that it changes attitudes by bringing councillors and young people closer together.

If you'd like to know more about the event please visit the sites, www.beaconlifeswap.org.uk and www.norfolklifeswap.org.uk and give us a call.

BeaconLifeSwap

Today sees the launch of BeaconLifeSwap.  This is a spin off from LifeSwap where 21 young people from seven Beacon councils were invited to tell us about "my life: my community" through photos and captions using mobile phone cameras kindly supplied by O2.

The eight Beacon Councils are expected to share information about how they engage with young people with other councils and the first stage of that process has been to share experiences between themselves.  BeaconLifeSwap starts that process.

The initial results are great and varied.  Some of my personal favourites are:

Thorny 21 - "There was me thinking that kids are being told to do more outdoor activities?"

Thorny is a 19 year old from Norfolk showing his witty side.

Ferdie 22 - "TSmokin area at my college encouraging students to smoke"

Is it right to encourage smoking through the provision of smoking areas?

Ferdie 17 - "Two ladies which i thought to play basketball now really good and i feel proud"

Ferdie is a proud refugee from Rwanda.  His photos are delightfully devoid of typical British reserve.

LW24 - "Carers funday?"

Perhaps not so interesting until you realise that the Carer is 12 year old Lauren.

Ana 8 - "A few mins of peace"

Ana is 18, but it could have been any 20 or 30 something mother I know.

All of the young people have something to say and none of them have had a straightforward life such as I had or you'd want your own kids to have.  None of the pictures are going to win a photography competition and the literacy of the captions is unlikely to get published elsewhere but there is something very powerful about the pictures.  People treat mobile phones differently to video cameras or even digital cameras.  They are more personal and other people are more comfortable around them.  LifeSwap gives us much more personal and intimate insights into young people everyday, hum-drum, ordinary lives than we'd get through any other means.

On BeaconLifeSwap you can ask questions and leave comments by each photo.  Please visit the site and do so.

LifeSwap - Edge, Beacon and YMCA

It is a big couple of weeks for the LifeSwap project.  What started as a small project to help Councillors understand a little more about the lives of the more vulnerable young people in their care is about to get a lot bigger.

Yesterday we saw copies of an excellent full page article in the NYA's Edge magazine. (see previous post). Today IDeA are announcing the launch of Beacon LifeSwap in their weekly email newletter (circ. 40,000 officers and members we're told) and finally YMCA England have agreed to approach 15 of the centres swith a proposal to work with us on organising LifeSwap for their local authorities.

So what is Beacon LifeSwap?

Beacon Councils are local authorities who have demonstrated excellence in a particular policy area.  This year one of those areas was Positive Youth Engagement.  Eight councils were appointed including Norfolk County Council (in partnership with South Norfolk District Council).  The eight councils are expected to work together to promote the work they have done and to help in that process they are going to run an adapted version of LifeSwap where 3 young people from each council will take pictures about their communities over a 3 day period.  The results will be launched on Thursday June 15th as part of the Beacon Scheme Learning Exchange at www.beaconlifeswap.org.uk.

Once again the kind folk at O2 are supplying phones and credit for the pictures and messaging.  Thank you.

LifeSwap on The Edge

The Edge, "the newspaper on youth work and youth affairs for local authority elected members from The National Youth Agency", have published a very nice article (page 7) about LifeSwap.

One correction is needed from the article - the next LifeSwap won't be Mids-Beds at the end of June.  It will be the Beacon LifeSwap where young people from the eight Beacon Councils will take pictures on the theme of My Life, My Community.  More details to follow soon.

LifeSwap

Last summer a very creative and clever lady called Fran Farrar from Norfolk Children's  Services mentioned an idea about getting vulnerable young people and Councillors to use cameras to share their life experiences over the period of a day.  Working with Fran we took the idea one stage further and developed Norfolk Life Swap.  We used  mobile phone cameras, supplied very kindly by O2, to take the pictures, caption them and send them in to the site which built over the day into a portrait of the lives led by this group of ten Norfolk people.

The results of this first event are undeniably powerful and moving.  Whether the most impactful pictures are of Jonathan, who requires 24 hour care, or DannyBoy, who suddenly photographs an electronic tag belonging to a young lad he is mentoring, or some of the desolate shots of empty roads, buses and train platforms as Councillors and young people traverse a large and sparsely populated county - I don't know - but they are certainly insightful into the lives these people are leading.

Everyone we've shown the site to loves it.  Some relate it to Corporate Parenting (the concept that Councillors are parents to the children in care within their area), others as a way of giving young people a voice allied to the Hear by Right campaign.

Either way we are in the middle of letting Councillors know about the event through a marketing campaign to Councillors (Children's Services Portfolio Holders) and Council Officers (Directors of Children's Services and youth workers).  Please feel free to let all and sundry know about the site.