Let it Shine - again

Cast your mind back nearly a year and you may well remember reading something about Shine Week. Actually, forget about reading about Shine Week, you may actually have been involved with it. Well it's back.

In short, Shine Week is all about celebrating England's young people and their talents. It's a nationwide celebration and is taking place from July 12-16^th.  It's a great opportunity for young people who have a talent to get involved and get themselves noticed. Teachers and youth organisations can also sign up if their young people have any particular talents.  And it doesn't really matter what your talent is, it can be anything. Be it creative arts, sports, technology or enterprise, your talent can be pretty much anything. Even if you can't think of anything right now, the Shine Week website feature Inspiration Lounges where you can go and get inspired.

So far, around 6000 school and youth organisations have signed up.

Since the event was created in 2008 there have been a huge range of talents on show, such as over 100 young people dancing on the roof of the Southbank Centre, a takeover of Portsmouth's Express FM radio station, and 200 young people taking part in a debate in the House of Lords.  Some of the big names who have championed the event since its conception include tennis star Tim Henman, musician Ms Dynamite and Dragon's Den millionaire Peter Jones. A host of politicians also support the event.

MP Ian Wright said: "I think Shine Week is really vital. Sometimes in the media we get a lot of negative stories about young people but not all people's experiences are like that."

So if your class, your youth group, your friends or just you have a talent you want others to see then get involved with Shine Week. 

Just some of the comments from young people about Shine Week - "Adults should appreciate young people's talents", "there is a lot of young talent and no-one is really hearing it, that's the good thing that Shine is about", "I really appreciate what Shine is doing."

So if you want to get involved, head over to the Shine website here.