A day in the life of... a Young Consultant

Tags: day in the life of | young consultants

Hi, I'm Matt and as part of my role as a Young Counsultant it's my job to try and get young people involved in all aspects of myplace projects. Recently I had the opportunity to 'shadow' one of the partners involved in the myplace support team, Bearhunt, and this is a snap shot about my experience as a young person. 

On the 11th November I set off at 5am to meet Tom Calderbank and Malcolm McClean, the Managing Director of Bearhunt who was driving us all to Hartlepool and Middlesbrough. The journey was quite long but gave us an opportunity to chat about anything and everything. After arriving at Hartlepool we met the project manager Mike Young for a business plan meeting. This is where we discussed costing and revenue streams. It was interesting for me to see and hear first-hand a different aspect to the myplace project. It gave me an understanding and insight into some of the rules, regulations and pressures relating to financing the project without compromising young people's involvement. We were shown around the site and allowed to look at the plans for the new building and this gave me the chance to ask the builder questions.

Later that evening we picked up the ambassadors, Sadie Pickering and Kate Williams, and we took them to a local hotel. We had an evening meal and talked about the next day's plans.

The next day was crammed with things to do. We had two events planned to promote both Middlesbrough and Hartlepool. Firstly at Middlesbrough we began to set up the venue for the Ambassador visit. We needed to put up posters, set up projectors and to ensure all equipment was working and in place. Suddenly a rush of young people emerged and sat down preparing themselves for the talk and workshops. Malcolm gave an inspirational speech about the importance of their myplace project and after breaking into two groups they attended the ambassadors workshops. 

The workshops seemed to get great feedback from the young people and I also sat in and took part in both workshops. The first that I attended was Kate Williams' workshop about the history of the town and the power of personal biographies. What I gained from the workshop is that everyone has a life story to tell. The next one was with Sadie Pickering who was delivering a workshop on acting so it was loud and lively. We played many games that encouraged creativity and then she showed us a script of a TV programme that she worked on and allowed us to role play the script in pairs. 

After all the workshops we headed down to the Custom House building which was going to be the new myplace centre and where local press and the young people had a photo shoot.  

The second part of the day was just as great at Hartlepool with the same process and lots of young people attending both workshops and heading down to their site where their building was getting built. On a whole the experience for me was great, I felt I picked up lots of useful skills in helping to arrange an event and hopefully be working with Bearhunt in more of their Ambassador and Business plan in the future. 

A big thank you to Bearhunt for allowing me to shadow them and everyone at Hartlepool and Middlesborough who came and attended the events. 

See you soon :) Matt  

 
Read more about our Ambassadors visit to the north east in our Feature Article.