OurPlace

myplace Knowsley
"Bring a buddy for a bacon butty"

It's not your run-of-the-mill recruitment ad, is it? But then, working with the Ourplace Forum in Knowsley isn't your run-of-the-mill kind of job.

Sean Watson and Jenna Young (pictured, with myplaceAmbassadors on a recent visit)would probably find it hard to say what they do in a typical working day. Witnessing them load their presentation boards into a taxi, before speeding off to the Knowsley Park Centre for Learning in Prescot, where they are setting up a stand to recruit new people to run the Ourplace Knowsley Forum, their combination of enthusiasm and passion is infectious and energising.

There was an ITV programme broadcast recently - Tonight: Make Me An Apprentice - Sir Alan Sugar was one of the pundits advising unemployed young people on how to get a job. With youth employment just under one million, a positive attitude is what you need, according to Sir Alan. Whether you love or loathe Sir Alan, a positive attitude is something that Jenna and Sean have in spades.

And rather than fret about the paucity of jobs currently available, as you wonder how to garner the experience and skills that you need in order to get a job in the first place, Jenna and Sean are inspiring examples of how volunteering can work - particularly when you are looking for work.

As Jenna explains:

"I wouldn't be the person that I am today if I hadn't been doing the voluntary work that I have done. I've learned more from being a volunteer than I did from being at school. I can go into a room and speak to anyone and do a presentation. I'm getting experience working with architects, the project management team and the head of the youth service. It helps you to think outside the box."

Sean continues:

"It gives you the fortitude to walk into a room full of people in suits and not be at all intimidated. Working on Ourplace and having the experience of the project offers a fantastic practical knowledge. It means you are able to face up to someone in a high paying job and say, completely unfettered, 'I don't agree with that. In my experience we've seen differently.'"

Sean, 18, is the Chair of the Ourplace Forum and is currently a volunteer. Jenna, 19, started as a volunteer and is now a paid apprentice.

Sean recently went for a job interview but he didn't get the job because the experience he has gained running the Forum has resulted in him being over qualified.

"It was completely due to Ourplace. In a job interview, you walk in and as soon as you talk about what you're doing, they're absolutely blown away. In an interview, when they ask, 'So what do you in your spare time?', I say 'I'm just the Chair of a five million pound youth project', and they ask, 'How old are you again?' and I say '18'."

Sean believes that his Ourplace training will land him something better.

"It's been a fantastic opportunity to connect organisational skills with people skills," he explains. This opportunity has been aided by the fact that the youth service has given the young people permission to own the project.

"I think it's because the local authority, Knowsley Council, have been probably the most youth-orientated organisation we've seen," says Sean. "It's also to do with the fact that people like me and Jenna, who have been involved from the beginning, are pretty mouthy, do you know what I mean? It's a perfect partnership between a completely facilitating council and gobby, but intellectual, young people. It's a perfect marriage!"

The head of Knowsley youth service is Sandra Richardson.

"I look at Sandra and I think 'I want her job'," says Jenna. "I want to be like her. She is fabulous. She was voted the Young People's Champion. Sandra is so on our level. We tell Sandra what to do!" Jenna is now so busy running the Forum that she has to keep making lists. "I lie in bed and I have fifty million things going through my head."

The huge amount of work that needs doing is one of the reasons for the bacon butty recruitment drive. The other reason is the pressing need to plan for the future.

"We're going to become the Board of Directors for Ourplace," explains Sean. "But I think it would be hypocritical for me and Jenna to stay in control when we're about forty. We want to look to a younger age group. These can jump on now: watch what we've done, look at how we operate. They can then keep the thing going. We can't do it forever. We need to be able to hand this on."

Sandra Richardson adds, "We've done such a lot of work and there's been such an intensive youth engagement process that we've got to make sure that it's maintained and resourced. We need to look at ways that we can keep engaging young people so that the whole thing keeps evolving."

"And yet a lot of young people think that they won't be listened to anyway," says Jenna. "People have said to us: 'You asked for that, and that's what you've got?'. There are young people who don't realise that you can actually make a difference. That just by saying one little thing, you can help to make a difference."

Someone who is already seeing how you can make a difference is Christian Anderson, who is 16, and who found himself at an Ourplace Forum Saturday morning meeting at the 'Youthy' in Huyton, after Sean had reeled him in with a bacon butty.

"Everyone was really welcoming," says Christian, who brought along his buddy for a butty - Lloyd Williams, who is 14. "People asked us if we wanted a cuppa. I am interested. I'm going to stick with it and see how I get on. This project is different from everything else. Sometimes it's harder to get the message across."

And the message is? "You are young and you are going to be in charge of this building," says Christian.

Shaun Ashton is 17, and he has been involved with the Ourplace Forum for a year. He is also a volunteer at the Youthy on Woolfall Heath Avenue, where he is learning a lot about good and bad practice that he is more than willing to pass on to Ourplace.

"Huyton hasn't got a good reputation with Kirkby but we want to make Ourplace become a big networking place and make friendships come out of it. I never knew Jenna until I went to the Youthy and got involved in Ourplace. We want people to come from Huyton, but also everywhere else around Huyton: Prescot and Kirkby and Halewood."

Shaun is also gaining experience and skills being part of the Forum. "In the long run I think it's going to help me. I want to be a teacher and doing this is helping me with my confidence."

"We want Ourplace to be more than a youth centre," says Shaun. "We want it to be about young enterprise. Manning the recruitment stand at the Knowsley Centre for Learning, he points out just one of the things he hopes Ourplace will achieve: Job shadowing opportunities within the business community for young people.

Another new recruit, Amy Brown, is 16 and is starting to see how it is possible to make things happen.

"You have to experience it to realise how much power we actually have," she says. "It's the way kids, or youth, are treated at the moment. It seems like nobody trusts them enough to give them something like this, so because we're giving them something like this maybe they will respect it and enjoy it because we've put the trust in them."

Amy is another fan of Sandra Richardson. "She's more interested in the success of young people than in her own success."

And the new recruits are learning on the job, with Sean and Jenna as their mentors. Learning quickly, already the newer Forum volunteers are keen to pass on new skills to even newer recruits - and to welcome people who might not necessarily become part of the Forum, but are nevertheless bound to benefit from the host of facilities and activities that will be on offer once Ourplace opens.

"It's dead exciting," says Amy. "We're the young people doing it but it's going to be future generations that are going to enjoy it. And we've been a part of that."

And looking to the future is also making Sean and Jenna look to the past.

"It's a bit of a legacy," explains Jenna. "The site for Ourplace - that was where our school was." The former St Thomas Beckett School in Huyton is now an empty, muddy site, but Sandra Richardson is confident that work will start before Christmas. It's an area which is being transformed: Ourplace will be part of a campus which includes a brand new leisure centre, funded by Knowsley Council and the Huyton Arts and Sports Centre for Learning.

Sean adds: "The fact is that we are replacing it with something we've designed that is absolutely stunning. I keep thinking about what it's going to feel like to stand and look at it and walk in for the first time."

"I'm dead excited," says Jenna. "I remember the first conversation we had with Sandra and she said, 'Oh, there's this money', and we had a consultation with seventy young people but that was eighteen months ago and so much has happened since then."

And the Ourplace Knowsley Forum is ahead of the game when it comes to planning and resolving issues and looking at how this whole thing will work.

"We've got a real transport issue," explains Jenna. "But we're going to sort some transport out: we're trying to get bike tracks and stuff like that. Our aim is that want to make this absolutely amazing youth centre so that it doesn't matter where you're from, you'll still want to go. People are saying, 'If it's good enough, we'll come'. And we found out at the myplace seminar that it's not just an issue in our area, it's in every other area."

"We have taken massive steps to alleviate the transport issue," adds Sean. "There's a lot of efficient transport to Huyton village but the centre was going to be a hefty walk away around the campus. We've remedied that. We've now sorted a path so that the campus is going to have access straight from Huyton village and you won't have to take walks through unfamiliar estates. You just walk straight through and then you're at Ourplace; it's like a five minute walk."

Sean is so passionate about the project that in between volunteering as the Chair of the Forum and looking for paid work, he has written a song about Ourplace.

To get in the mood, you need to imagine The Monkees. Then you should start humming the tune I'm a Believer. And it starts like this:

"And then I saw Ourplace

Now I'm a believer"

Sean sings it while playing an old piano, in a Jools Holland kind of way.

There are many who think he should record it and put it on YouTube, or at least on the myplace website.

And Jenna is equally passionate about the project. "This is our building. This is what we want to give to young people."

When it comes to summing up Ourplace and how they feel about it, Jenna says, "It's funky laaa." She admits she was horrified, during the presentation on the Knowsley Ambassadors day, she realised that "Funky laaa" was written up on the boards for all, including Mandy Smith - one of the myplace ambassadors - to see. "But it's the only way to describe it," says Jenna. "It's just funky laaa."

Whereas Sean, pleased with the way in which the bacon butty recruitment drive is attracting new and younger people, ends in the way that he says he has signed off at every Ourplace presentation he has ever done:

"Rock on!"

Ourplace Knowsley in a tag

Location: Longview Drive, Huyton, Merseyside

Project value: £4,999,274

Doors open: September/October 2011

Theme: "Somewhere to call your own. A place that compels you to think about things you have never dreamt before."

Activities:
Dance
Skate and BMX park
Art
Music
Film
Martial arts

Facilities:
Media suite
Chill out café
Area with outdoor terrace
Advice and counselling
Clinical rooms
Dance/fitness studio
Skate and BMX park
Multi-use games area
Allotments
Arts/crafts area
Changing facilities
Offices and meeting rooms

Links: Connexions, Knowsley NHS

Contact:
Sandra Richardson
Tel: 0151 443 5324
Email: sandra.richardson@knowsley.gov.uk

OurPlace Knowsley Inspirational (407.08 kB 2010-07-22 15:19:33)