The Bronte Reflective Interview

00 wow, that was loud. What was it? Just said this meeting is being recorded, but like, it scare you. I should have warned you about that, sorry. They always do little warnings like that when you record stuff on Zoom

It's quite, it's quite reassuring because you know that nobody's ever recording without you being aware of it. The warning coming up, yeah, yeah. Um, OK, I'll, I'll start off with a bit of an opening question

So, um, what What has been your experience of taking part in community reporter training at the Bronte? In terms of the actual community reporting or the tree and the trainer or just in general, just in general so you could speak about a bit of both. You could start with one maybe and then reflect on the other. If we do it like chronologically, that might be it

Yeah, easier to actual community reporting with the young people was really, really good. I think before we went into my expectations for it were quite low just because I wasn't sure if the young people would engage with something like that. But then I think The way that you delivered it was really creative and hands-on for them, and that's what's that's what made the difference for them to be able to engage with it in a really fun way

So, um, yeah, I think that experience was really great for them, and they all gave quite positive feedback for it. And then the actual train the trainer, I thought it was really useful for us just in terms of I don't know, just thinking about outside the box and how we can speak to young people and how we can ask them questions and ideas for like little sessions and little uh story gathering methods. I thought that was really helpful, so overall I think it's been great

Yeah, I definitely agree. I think obviously, I didn't really, I wasn't really there in the sessions as much as Phoebe was when you were delivering it to young people. But when I did step in, um, I thought it was great how you could kind of tell if young people weren't really enjoying the session as much that they need to adapt that and change the delivery method of it

Um, it wasn't just you talking to them on a PowerPoint. I thought that bringing the clay models in and that sort of thing. Getting them to be a bit more creative and thinking outside the box rather than just talking at them or showing them a PowerPoint

Um, I've had a few young people come up to me recently saying, when's Georgia going to be coming back in to do just that in general obviously shows how much they really did enjoy it. Yeah. And I think yeah, the train the trainer definitely obviously with the podcast project that we're hopefully going to be running soon

I think that's definitely helped to think more of different questions and Different ways we can kind of help young people ask those questions and also answer questions as well. And I think when we had the opening day at the Bronte, where we cut the ribbon and that and the young people were going up to community members, I think the fact that they had that confidence. And were able to ask community members different questions and get information back was just amazing

Yeah, I think that session was definitely like a big highlight for us just seeing the young people in action doing it. It was really nice. They're just using their like initiative and going up to people that they didn't really necessarily know and asking them questions about the Bronte, it was really nice to see

Oh, brilliant. I think you both touched on like the creative elements of the way that the workshops were delivered. Do you reckon? There's anything that you would have added or adapted yourselves, like knowing the young people and working with them quite regularly, is there anything, any way you would have tweaked it to make it a bit more accessible or engaging to their

What, what they would have enjoyed or maybe some sort of element of a challenge. Um, they like they're very competitive. So sort of bringing something like that into it, I don't know how you would, but some sort of competition or challenge element into it

Um, but yeah, I thought the clay, the clay idea, and then when you're cutting out pictures and making like a collage, I thought that was really good. Yeah. I've never thought of doing a competitive side of it

That's a really good idea. Phoebe. I think we've just, we've been recently doing some challenges with them and they really, really enjoy it

Like the, I don't know, they're just so competitive. They love being put up against each other. Mhm

Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like that gets them going a bit more and they can see someone else doing something they're like, OK, well, we'll try it this way instead and see what happens

And it kind of gets them thinking about different ways to work. Yeah. There's definitely, so these icebreakers that we, we use in community reporting and some of those are competitive, you know, like the, when you've got to build a marshmallow tower, stuff like that

Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, kind of things like that. They absolutely love it. I think you kind of see like different leadership roles and who's more, more of the authoritative role working in a group and who kind of sits back and just goes along with whatever that other person's saying

Yeah. And we'll have to um we, so we were trying to work at the moment actually to get. Um, to adapt community reporting so it's as accessible as possible to young people, because we've got some funding for a project that we'll be running like over the next few, I think it's a, I think it's a few years, um

But we're really thinking about how we can make it as accessible as possible to young people because their age range is quite varied. And this was the first time that I delivered community reporting to like the younger age group of young people. I used, used to more like teenagers and older, like, um, year 10, year 11, like, older young people

So I think it was. It was really fun for me and interesting to see how we could adapt it and. Yeah, I think it seemed to work, and they seem to engage in it

Yeah, I think like the language and all that you were using was, was great for them. They all seemed to really understand what the target was. Yeah

And I think you made it as accessible. You could really like, like go back to the clay thing, obviously, like, if a young person's got ADHD or autism, that hands on sort of keeping their hands busy movement kind of makes it accessible then rather than someone just talking at them through a PowerPoint like that all day through school. They obviously want something that's going up a little bit and keep them engaged

Yeah, definitely. I've, I've always try and be mindful of that whenever we go into youth groups that it's like they're recreational time. So it's, it's a big, it's a big deal, is it, coming in and delivering something when they might not have necessarily known what it is that we were doing

So, I'm, I'm glad, I'm glad that we've got some positive feedback from them and they, I, I think they love the, uh, microphones with the. I think actually. You know, letting them experience it hands on themselves, the actual community reporting side of it where they're interviewing people, that was a big thing for them that got them really, really interested in it and not just doing it to each other, but going out into the community and actually doing it

It gave them that bit more of like that leadership role and it's just the proper experience of it, and I think like, you know, they all really enjoyed it as well. They've all been asking for those microphones, so. Mhm

Really. I think that's what it is. It just takes it, once, once it's clicked in the head, like, they can see the bigger picture of what they're doing and why they're trying to do it and how they are going to be going out speaking to people

It just, it makes them. Yeah. It's easier to focus, I suppose

Yeah, see, see what the what the big goal is and what you're trying to do. Yeah. And so with the, um, the train, the trainer sessions that we did, um

I like how, thinking about how you'll adapt community reporting to suit, like running the podcast and, and getting that up and off the ground. How, yeah, how useful was the train the trainer content in terms of helping you think about that and plan for the future in terms of getting the podcast? I think it was good for us just to all sit around and kind of get the ideas off each other. I mean, we don't really have that much time in the office to sit down and think of, you know, little icebreakers or how we can run a session and include that train, the trainer within the session

So I thought that was really good. The fact that we could just actually sit down and bounce ideas off each other like, yeah, that would work. That could work

Yeah, and I think especially thinking about whenever we move back into our new building and hopefully we get a new cohort of young people coming in, just giving us ideas of how we can approach it with them. And obviously we've we've seen you doing it with the group of young people that we currently have. That was helpful, but then the train the trainer just like gave us the right language to use and different approaches

So yeah, I find it very helpful. Was there anything that was, was there anything that you would change or any, do you think there's any areas of support that you think you'd, you'd like to have a bit more, a bit more support or a bit more information in terms of the content that we covered? Yeah, I think for me, the main thing was just our time scale of doing it, obviously, we were so busy that we had to like separate it off and it took months for us to cover it. Obviously, that was our issue like we couldn't really control the fact that there was so many of us doing so many different things, so

I think if we were to do it again, just completely blocking out a few days to do it all together. Um, and then maybe just like a bit of a refresher at some point whenever we're going back into our new building and if we identify a group of young people who we think would engage with it really well, maybe just like a little one session to update us on it going into the actual community reporting with them would be quite helpful. Um, other than that, the actual content that was covered, I thought it was really good

I wouldn't have changed anything about it. I wonder if Sophie's frozen or not. I think she might have

Oh yeah, she has. Let me see if I can stop a video that might make her audio catch up a little bit. Can you still hear us, Sophie? No, the internet in the office must be rubbish

Um, I'll I'll wait, we, well, we, we can wait and see if she pops back up, hopefully the connection stabilises a bit for her and she can join us again. But we'll hold that thought of talking about in the trainer, um. Yeah, I don't, have, have, is there anything that you've wanted to reflect on since taking part in it or any thoughts or um, ideas that you've had since taking part in the training? And to be honest with you, we've not really, well, obviously we, we done the training just before the summer period, so that was just absolute chaos for us and I think we did integrate a few things into our sessions with I remember one of the sessions we were talking about doing the little

Like mood board for whenever they come in, so put a little sticky note on how you feel whenever you first come in and then at the end of a session, we've done that a couple of times and uh. Yeah, it was good, but I think over the summer we've just been so busy, so it's really just going to be September going forward, that's when we're going to start integrating things into it, so. Are you, are you OK, Sophie? We lost you for a second

It's OK. Wi Fi here, it's terrible. We were, we were just talking about the train the trainer stuff and um

Yeah, Phoebe was saying it's been quite hectic over the summer for you to try and. Implement the stuff that you've learned from the training, it's just, yeah, it's just time wise, it's not been realistic for you to be able to do that. So looking into

September. That's the, the plan is to get some. Some of the convenient reporting stuff that you've learned embedded into what you're doing

I don't know if you've frozen again. Can you still hear Phoebe? I can yeah. Right

Hopefully. Let me, I think it's the, I think stopping the video might help slightly, so I'll, I'll turn the video off and see if it helps. So looking forward into the future

Do you, can you visualise like having. Regular anything like regularly scheduled in in terms of community reporting or like do you think you'll implement it into sessions or it'll be more, um, like event based so you'll host an event and then use it at a specific event rather than, Yeah, to be honest with you, I think we're just gonna have to see. What it's like whenever we get new young people in because, you know, you never know how they're going to react to stuff like that, but if we get a group of young people and who are really engaged, then it could be like, you know

A proper little project that we do with them where we deliver the um community reporting to them and then maybe they do a project based on that like the uh newsletter, which could be an ongoing thing. And if they're not engaged with that kind of stuff, then maybe it is just like one off training that we do with them so they can use it for events. But I mean like I said, we're gonna have the podcast and um project up and running soon

I reckon a lot of young people are gonna want to be engaged in that, so maybe that could be like the little first few introductory sessions into the podcast and delivering some kind of Community report and training to them and whoever wants to engage in that before they go off and do the actual podcasting. Um, yeah, like I said, I think it's just going to depend on on what kind of young people that we get in. But I think just in terms of like Whenever we first Get young people into the youth centre, being able to have the training behind us to ask them those open ended questions and like using the right kind of language and stuff, just in general is going to be really helpful for us to engage with them anyway

It might not be in the sense of like doing a community reporting project, but just for us to have that ability and a bit more confidence with it, I think, you know, that's definitely benefited us in that kind of sense. I think that that's another thing that I've had to get used to. And it's just the nature of working with young people in the context of, like, youth clubs is that it's, it's quite sporadic, like when they decide that they want to come or not, which is life

So it's, it's thinking about how you can still engage people and let them be involved in stuff, but not. Have, like, gaps in the information that you've given them. But I think, yeah, how, how do you think that worked in terms of different young people being in the sessions each week and the numbers kind of fluctuating? Do you know what, it's to be expected

I think, you know, we never expect the same young people to engage every single week, regardless of how much we want them to. So. Yeah, it's just, it's always going to happen

It is, it is difficult to work around that because obviously you can get a new young person joining in halfway through it and they've got no knowledge of it, so it's just about making sure that you can quickly kind of update them on what's going on. And maybe in that sense it's good for 4 of us to have that training, so one person can continue on delivering it and then the other person can take a young person or a group of young people out and just update them on it before bringing them back in. So, yeah, I mean, we deal with that all the time

So it's it's kind of normal for us. I think definitely like I found really helpful you sending over all those like little resource packets and everything. Um, and just for us to have like a bit of a template for what we can use for them

I think we would kind of struggle with knowing the exact questions asked and their little tasks to engage with, but yeah, those resource packets were helpful. I'm glad to think, I know whenever I do, well, they train the trainer stuff specifically, it always feels like I'm Information dumping on people because there's that much content to share, but I'm glad, um, I'm glad it, it, it feels useful. Um, yeah

Yeah. It is, it is a lot to look through, but I think when you sit down and start to think about how you want to deliver stuff, it, it should make sense. And if it's, if you've ever got any questions or you're unsure about anything, you can just get in touch with us and someone, someone will be able to explain and, and support you through the process

Yeah. Are you OK, Sophie? Yeah, I'm back again. I've joined on my phone, so hopefully

That's OK. There's no feedback either, so that's good. Oh, it's a lot

Um, we, yeah, we were just talking about um. What, what did we say we were speaking about how doing community reporting with young people is a little bit different in the context of a youth club situations because each week is different in terms of who you get and who decides they want to come and take part. Um

Yeah, so we, we're just having a conversation about how we thought that when. And we thought it worked. Yeah, I thought that it's obviously it's a voluntary element to it, but the fact that the young people actually wanted

To come in and take part obviously shows that there was a keen interest. And the whole project itself. I know, um I think in the sessions, there was one young person who was a little bit older

I don't, did you, we speak about them taking on a bit of like a. Like a volunteering role, like, almost like mentoring other young people. Yeah, yeah

I don't know. Have you thought any more about that being a thing in the future, specifically with like community reporting? So if you had a couple of the older ones who seemed quite engaged and like they were passionate about doing the interviewing and stuff like that, have you thought about potentially having them? Support in sessions when you're delivering community reporting activities or trying to get young people trained up. So we have like in terms of social media sort of thing, we have like, you know, for our TikTok or our Instagram, we have spoke about getting a young person to interview

Other young people, um, so it's not just run by us, it's run by the young people themselves for the young people. Yeah. Um, but obviously that won't probably happen until we're back in the building

Um, we spoke about doing like a mystery shopper, so getting the young people to introduce another young person around the youth club and asking them questions, um, and then posting that on our social media page. And then maybe prior to that going into, we can deliver the community reporting training to them so they have access to all the information that they need and like different styles of asking questions and and how to do it properly. So maybe before going into if we choose someone for the social ambassador role, that's something that could be part of the role going into

Yeah, I think, cause it's, cause the idea is with community reporting, it's, it's peer to peer, so I reckon it would work really well having. A young person who was a bit more confident um to support. All the young people who were a bit newer to the idea I think

I think I said as well, it's kind of making them seem more of like a role model as well. If that young person that doesn't have as much confidence has an older young person that they can go to when necessary, they don't feel as comfortable speaking to an adult about it, then it does kind of bridge that gap. And kind of make them look up to that older person and be like, OK, yeah

I can be a bit more confident in myself. Yeah. Do you think, have you, yeah, have you got any other other reflections or? And yeah, any thoughts that have, have come up just chatting through what, what your experience has been like doing the community reporting and the train the trainer

I have a question. I don't know if it was brought up when we did have the training, but say if he wants to have a um I think you did mention it, but I can't remember. If he was to have a social ambassador, would they be able to create their own account on the train the trainer website? You know, if when they can upload certain documents or like interviews that they have done or what they have to go through us and we upload it for them

a community reporter website, I think. So in order for someone to be registered with an account on the community reporter website, to like upload stories and things, they have to have taken part in like the core community reporter training, which you have been trained to deliver. So as long as I think the key thing with using the website is that they have a good understanding of best practise and like what the

What consent is involved in uploading someone's story. Um, but yeah, you, you can work through that with them through the train the trainer content. I think if, if you want somebody, if you want to register somebody with an account, just get in touch and we can set accounts up for you

Um. I think, yeah, I, I'm sure you'll have your own policies around, like, young people giving information. So you probably have to get like parental consent, you know, to register them with a register their email on the website, things like that

But it should be fine. Just, just get in touch and, and. Over email and we should be able to do that for you

Yeah, I think it would be nice for them as well because if any of them does have like reporting or anything like that, being able to see their work actually posted up on the website for other people to access it could be a big thing for them because like, you know, when else are they get that opportunity so. I think that website is great. I think the last training session that we done with yourself where we went through that, it kind of highlighted just how, like, I don't know how nice the website is, and it is quite interesting going through it and just seeing how we can add our stories onto it

I'm in the process of reviewing it at the moment. So if you do run into any issues or problems with the website, that's another thing we, we'd love to hear feedback from people about it, so we can tweak it and make sure that it works for people. Cause I, every time I run a training, there'll be like little hiccups and things that don't make sense to people or just tweaks that need to be made

But yeah, I, we're currently updating it and trying to make it as. Accessible as possible. So if you ever, if you've ever got any suggestions, just let, let me or one of the rest of the team know and we can, we can tweak things on the website

um the stories that the young people interviewed when we had the bronzy sort of opening day. When will we um get the clips from that, just so we can show the young people and the community members, you know, the whole story. So I'm, I go on leave, um, I think I've got 2 and a bit more weeks left in work

I'll make sure everything is shared with you before I go away. It's just, it's a little bit hectic at the moment, just making sure that all my admin bits are done and dusted and sorted. But before I leave, that, that will all be be shared with you

I think, did we? Say if, if you got like a link that you could share with me to like a OneDrive or a folder sharing system that I can upload them to, to for you. I'll I'll I'm on the website, but if you send me a SharePoint link or something, I can put it in there as well, and then you've got all of the. Core folders and files

Thank you. No worries. Yeah, is there anything else you wanted to speak about or reflect on before we finished? I mean, I think overall it's just been great, and I think the support that we've received has been great and just knowing that we can reach out at any time, um

Yeah, it's just overall been a great experience. I think it's great that you've been able to work around us as well. And it's just kind of made us feel a bit more

You know, um, included within the train, the train and the fact that you can just work around us and that we can reach out to you whenever we want. Um, yeah, I just think it's been overall really great. Yeah

Oh, I'm glad, I'm glad he's been positive. I've really enjoyed it. Yeah, so we, and I think, yeah, just like Sophie said, I know obviously we're very hectic all the time

And having to cancel sessions and then redo them. It's, it's probably been a pain for yourselves, but we really do appreciate it. Yeah, definitely

That's OK. I think it's just that, I think it's the nature of youth work and things can just change at the the heart and summer holidays is just always chaotic for people. So I appreciate you hanging in with it and, and

Still managing to get through all of the, the content and stuff and it sounds like you've got loads of, Plans for the future and how you're going to use it. So yeah, I'm excited for you to actually utilising everything that we've learned for the future, definitely. And using that plan as well, the action plan that we, um, made with you

Yeah, that was helpful. Have, have you seen the email that Cath sent out a little bit earlier on? I think so I think the BBC was it? What was it that she said, so I think she wanted to do a reflective interviews with you, but we'd already booked this in, so I'll, I'll, what I'll do is I'll share. Um, this with that

Um what else did she say? Yeah, it was something about the BBC Children in Need future change makers, but last time I had a look at that, it was for quite older young people. Um, we don't necessarily have any of them engaged with us at the moment. So if I, I can't remember off the top of my head what the age range is, but I think it's quite wide, um

I don't know if it's worth you reaching out and speaking to Cath and maybe just having a bit of a catch up with her about it because that's you remember me mentioning the project earlier on. Project that we've got funding for, that's that's that's the project, so I think it's just, it's delivering more community reporting training and I know. There's a few young people at your organisation that have already done it, but like you say 11 to 18, so that would that would suit us

Yeah, if you've got more cohorts of young people coming in and getting signed up to. Take part in your activities then I think to get involved in that if you, you think it'll fit in. But I definitely have like a date for that

Is it going to carry on until like next year or something, I think so. I'm I'm pretty sure it's at least a 12 month project. Cat's managing it and I've, I've learned, I know a little bit about it, but because I'm not going to be here for 6 months, I think it'll be Lauren who, who will be

Delivering the first chunk of workshops and sessions, but yeah, well maybe in September, hopefully, well, whenever we're back in the building, which we don't matter. But if we're getting new cohorts of young people and that's definitely something we can look into then. But I think the young people that we have and they've all had a go at it anyway

So we'll wait for the new ones if they do come. I'll, I'll pass that on to Kath and just let her know where, where you're at with it. Well, I, I can send her an email

I'm gonna go through all my emails today. I've not had a chance yet throughout summer, so no worries. Oh God, I bet you've got loads

Oh, I don't think I don't want to do it. I'm dreading it.