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Party at myplace

Wednesday, 16 December 2009 13:03

streetscape I want you to imagine that you're throwing the world's greatest ever birthday party. It's for the most precious person in your life and you want it to be amazing. So you start planning months in advance. You make a list of everything that you need to do. What's the single most important task that you mustn't forget?

When I ask this question in my training workshops most people shout out things like, ‘book a venue', ‘buy a cake' or ‘hire a DJ.' Very few people remember to invite the guests! You can throw the greatest party in the world but if no one turns up it's going to be a disaster!

streetscape Marketing can be likened to sending out party invitations. You're putting a hell of a lot of effort into your myplace project; you need to make sure that young people turn up. So you identify who you want to invite and you ask them to come along. Simple!

But just to make things slightly more complicated, I want you to imagine that there are another dozen or so birthday parties happening on the same night. And your guests have been invited to those too. How are you going to make sure that they come to you? In other words, what is it about your party that's better than all the others? And why should your guests care?

Identifying your areas of uniqueness is one of the most important aspects of any marketing strategy. Once you have identified who your guests will be you must identify the aspects of your party that most successfully fulfil the needs and desires of that audience. Forget about what you think is important and consider your project from the young people's perspective. What's in it for them?

You can do this by asking yourself a number of simple questions:

What do we do better than everybody else?
What are the benefits for our target audience?
Why should they care?

streetscape If you are struggling to come up with a good argument for why your party is the best then you seriously need to revise your offer. However if your party is indeed superior then tell the whole world about it! Put it on your letterheads, your email signatures, your business cards; don't keep information like that to yourself.

Over the next few months I will be working with the myplace support team to show you powerful marketing techniques that you can start to use right away to promote your project. We will soon be sending out a comprehensive Marketing Toolkit that will walk you, step-by-step, through the process of creating a marketing strategy for myplace. We will be supporting the kit with training workshops up and down the country. And I will be continuing to write articles for this newsletter every month.

Streetscape is a youth participative agency so all of the advice and techniques will be centred on the active involvement of children and young people. Using our techniques, and with my support, you'll very soon have the best party invitations possible.

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Case Studies

Southpoint- Blackpool
Using social enterprise to make a project sustainable

Background

Blackpool is in the throes of regeneration. Major physical changes are taking place throughout the town. An example of these changes is the headlands development on the seafront, recently highlighted as the celebration point for the homecoming of the successful football team. Thousands of people gathered to celebrate the promotion to the premiership. The combination of the people and the backdrop made for such a memorable event.

Wallasey Youth Hub - Wirral
Locating a youth hub in a fire station

Wirral Hub

When the young people of Wirral heard they were going to get a new and exciting youth hub they could hardly have guessed just how innovative it would be. Wirral certainly has a contender for most unusual place to build a youth hub - it was launched in a fire station!

Councillor Sheila Clarke, Wirral's Cabinet Member for Children's Services and Lifelong Learning said: "This really is a breakthrough for all residents in the area. No more bored teenagers hanging around corners with nothing to do. The hubs have been designed with a high degree of input from young people themselves who have worked with enthusiasm and passion to help establish these new facilities."

Toxteth Youth and Sports Centre - Liverpool
Engaging young people from different backgrounds

Toxteth Youth

In the aftermath of the 1981 race riots in Liverpool, Toxteth Centre was built as part of an effort to increase services for the city's racial minority residents. In this it was successful, but the centre now wants to develop and expand to become predominantly a youth facility and bring people of all races together at a refurbished and expanded facility. They envision a centre where young people of all backgrounds and from all over the city have fun and get support together. In March 2009 it was awarded ?2.3 million of myplace funding to achieve this goal. With the funding, Toxteth Youth and Sports Centre has embarked on an ambitious plan to expand and improve its facilities, activities and outreach to bring together young people from a wide variety of ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds.

Culture Fusion - Bradford
Partnership and co-locations of service

Culture Fusion

One of the challenges many communities face is overcoming deeply entrenched territorial and racial divides. At the aptly named Culture Fusion, in Bradford, young people are leading the charge in overcoming this challenge in their community. Jenny Bass, Bradford Council Youth Participation Worker, points out that there are lots of young people that are proud of the area's diversity and who want to celebrate it rather than perpetuate the tensions and divides that exist. So what does it take to create a myplace centre that provides a place for these young people to tackle these challenges, get the services they need, and of course, have fun? Read more...

United Teens Equality Centre (UTEC) - Lowell, Massachusetts
Innovative funding ideas

These days, teenagers often feel their potential is ignored by judgemental communities, but across the Atlantic, the residents of Lowell, in Massachusetts, have been celebrating the achievements of its young people and their involvement in the United Teen Equality Centre.

UTEC website

UTEC has an active youth membership of about 1000, nine full-time paid staff, and runs 18 different classes and programmes every week, and will soon be expanding their facilities and making them fully accessible and energy efficient.

Director of Development Jessica Wilson said: "It's the place you go if you want to talk to teens."

myplace Chesterfield - Derbyshire
Involving young people with a disability

Myplace Chesterfield

Involving young people in the planning of myplace centres can mean a lot of different things, but at myplace Chesterfield, it means making sure young people who are often left out of the process are included.Making Chesterfield myplace somewhere that young people with disabilities can hang out and get support alongside other young people has been a key part of their design plans.It seems obvious in theory, but when it comes to practical considerations, what makes a youth centre friendly to a mix of disabled and non-disabled young people?

Westfield Folk House - Mansfield, Notts
Partnership and co-locations of service

Objectives

A scheme to transform Westfield Folk House Young People's Centre in Mansfield has won a £5 million myplace grant. This case study shows how the project developed from a logical and well structured plan to boost youth provision following years of under-investment. Successfully involving young people in planning and decision making has played a major role in this.

Bolton Lads & Girls Club -Lancashire

A renowned youth social club it was set up in 1889 to provide a safe place for young lads, particularly those working in the mills, to enjoy leisure activities. boltonbuilding

Over the next century the club grew and grew and began letting girls in from 1991. After further development it was decided that the original 19^th century building could be stretched no more and needed updating.

Hornsey Road Baths - Islington
Creating a compelling case for change

Hornsey Road Baths This case study highlights the work done by Islington Council in securing local buy-in and agreement to a forward strategy for youth facilities. This allowed them to engage over 3500 stakeholders and create a compelling case for change that resulted in an overarching strategy for young people aged 11-19.

Boclair Academy - BearsdenGlasgow
Involving young people through film

Boclair Academy is a secondary school in Bearsden; a small commuting town three miles north of Glasgow. In 2005 the school got funding from the Scottish Arts Council through a bid by the local authority (East Dunbartonshire Council) to develop a purpose-built digital film studio on the school campus.

Inspirationals

myplace Chesterfield

Heather Fawbert didn't have to go far to find the perfect spot for myplace Chesterfield. She discovered the site - an expanse of open space: tennis courts and overgrown, disused allotments that hadn't been dug for over fifteen years - on her way to work.

myplace Mansfield

On his first visit to Westfield Folk House, the Grade II listed building which is currently being transformed into a myplace for Mansfield, architect Rudi Marecki spotted some graffiti.

vine_lane_newcastle_1

myplace Newcastle-upon-Tyne

The thing about myplace, and all new buildings in fact, is that the really good ones tend not to spring up overnight. World-class buildings need time. You just have to be patient.

myplace_havering_1

myplace Havering

"It's like that music venue in Australia," says Charlotte, as she pours over a book on architecture, with page after page of beautifully photographed buildings. It turns out that she's referring to the Sydney Opera House.

nicoleburke When Nicole Burke addressed the Blackpool business community at the Pleasure Beach at the end of the Knowsley and Blackpool ambassadors event, her audience was gripped. Nicole talked about what myplace meant for the young people of Blackpool, and people immediately wanted to get involved. Nicole made it sound like fun. People started to think of offering help in ways they hadn't thought of before. Good communication sparks creativity in all of us.

jenna_ambassadors

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.

myplace Leicester
Miracles do still happen

There's a newspaper cutting stuck on the wall outside one of the dressing rooms in the Leicester Haymarket Theatre. Written by Sheridan Morley in August 2004, and published in the Daily Express, it talks about the Haymarket's performance starring Ronni Ancona. "Singin' In The Rain that reigns supreme," is how the glowing review begins. It was just one of many glowing reviews for the myriad musicals staged in this theatre.

carlisle_youth_zone1 As part of my role as a young consultant I visit myplace projects to see how they are involving young people. There have been a number that have stood out and impressed me for a variety of different reasons, however one in particular that I found stood out was the myplace project in Carlisle. This project has involved young people from the beginning, sending them to leading youth centres in and around London to find out what they want in their centre and involving them in the design process.

myplace Hartlepool
Hartlepool's Got Talent

Hartlepool's got talent. Loads of it. So much talent in fact, that the town recently held not one talent contest, but two: Hartlepool's Got Talent and Hartlepool Has Talent.

Beth Marshall, a key young person in the myplace team, who has a big talent for guitar playing, singing, and doing cover versions of Jack Johnson and The Beatles, lights up when she talks about the excitement behind the scenes at Hartlepool Has Talent.

myplace Bristol
No Height Restrictions

"Do you have to be a certain age?" The question comes from the audience, from a six-year-old boy called Adam. We're in a dramatically lit, makeshift auditorium in Bristol's former Bridewell Fire Station, in the heart of the city. It's not a question that anyone else has thought of. But Adam has a point. It's a good question to ask. Because at the moment, he's too young for myplace. When he gets his answer, "13-19", he realises that he will have to wait a few years - seven, to be precise.