Celebrating Future City Leaders
04 November 2018
This October half term young people and youth workers from across the capital came together to celebrate the impact and achievements they made taking part in our flagship social action programme City Leaders.
Now in its third year, City Leaders has provided progressive social action and leadership opportunities to young people across London through project work that helps teams bond, improve their youth club and work together to give something back to their community. Young people who showed the most dedication and commitment joined Future City Leaders, a cohort of 25 young people who took part in an intensive leadership programme over the summer.
Over 60 attendees who took part in the programme during 2017-18 gathered in central London for this year’s City Leaders Celebration, sharing stories and successes from a year of social action. Hosted by law firm Addleshaw Goddard, we also had six awards up for grabs, with each award showcasing the positive change that London Youth members and young people have made in their communities through City Leaders.
Winners
Team Stage Award (£100 prize)
Mary’s Youth Club
Choosing a unique experience to help bond their team together, Mary’s decided to take on The Penitentiary Escape Room where they had to solve tasks to escape the building within a time limit. The challenge helped young people’s communication and social skills and brought them closer together.
Club Stage Award (£100 prize)
Coin Street
For their Club Stage project young people created a questionnaire for their youth group to find out what music equipment they would like access to. Following this they set up a small portable music studio which is now set up during youth sessions for a range of young people to access.
Community Stage Pitch Award (£100 prize)
Elfrida Rathbone
Young people worked well as a team with everyone contributing to the pitch. They innovatively brought the previous, Club stage, to life by showing pictures and videos from their Club stage project, demonstrating the impact the team already made. The team impressed the panel and successfully pitched for £600 towards their Community stage project.
Community stage Award (£100 prize)
Spotlight
Spotlight supported a local community need through a totally youth-led project. This group partnered with a local homeless charity to prepare care packages which they distributed personally so they could let shelters users know that young people care for them. Young people even cooked healthy meals for shelter users as part of their project. You can see a documentary of the project here*.For hyperlink: Watch Spotlight’s ‘Helping Hands’ documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUHJsyXZQmc
Futures Campaign (£50 voucher)
Kaylem
This year Future City Leaders were supported to create a campaign that had an impact on an issue they felt passionate about. Kaylem created his own YouTube channel to hold interviews about cuts to youth funding and schools and the importance of getting young people into drama.
City Leaders Development (£50 voucher)
Chloe
This award celebrated young people who have really developed throughout the programme. Chloe sometimes found it difficult to contribute or share her amazing ideas, however, gradually her confidence and leadership skills developed. She took part in in training sessions to build presentation and communication skills and used these to become an integral part of the team over the summer.
Our Chief Executive, Rosemary Watt-Wyness was at the celebration and highlighted the impact of City Leaders, citing that it has an impact on many areas including young people’s confidence, skills such as team work and budgeting and also learning about leadership and power in London. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room when Futures participant and Dare Londoner Amina delivered a heart-warming speech about youth work. You can read a copy of this here.
Find out more about our youth social action programmes here.
Stay up-to-date with all the latest news, blogs and policy updates from London Youth here.
Join the conversation on Twitter @LondonYouth and on Instagram @London_Youth.
