Two groups of year 8 students were involved in ‘Dear Merseyside’ spoken-word and video content-creation workshops in March, which were organised as part of Merseyside’s Evolve strategy to strengthen community cohesion and build a better future for all.
The workshops were led by local spoken-word artist Joseph Roberts and Hilary Pickering, media director of Springboard Media Agency, who was accompanied by a videographer.
Catch22, a charity dedicated to helping young people by raising awareness to help prevent exploitation, were also in attendance and, along with Joseph, delivered an assembly to year 8 students.
The workshops took place on a special media bus parked in the school car park. The bus is touring the fourteen secondary schools in the Evolve communities in Liverpool, Knowsley, Sefton and Wirral.
One group of students, working with Joseph, created their own Dear Merseyside poem – essentially a love letter to Merseyside that reflects the ‘love where you live’ element of the Evolve initiative.
Meanwhile, Hilary and her videographer helped another group to create some short-form video and audio content based on the ‘Dear Merseyside’ idea which could then be used to create bitesize videos for social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
