Young creatives from Gosport, Hampshire, plan and pitch wellbeing ideas for their community

Steppin’ Up Dance delivered a new social action programme for children and young people to creative positive change 

The project gave local young people the chance to design and lead their own projects focused on wellbeing. It was devised following a county wide ballot of more than 1,000 young people in Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton (HIPS) voting for their top priorities.

Grants to support co-created projects to support secondary school aged young people to engage in activities were funded by Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme. This was match funded by #BeeWell/The National Lottery Community Fund.

Youth Matters, the HIPS youth steering group, sorted through those application and made their recommendations.

Enterprise Project

Over a week in the summer holidays Steppin’ Up Dance brought together young people from Rowner in Gosport, Hampshire. Sessions started with creating an interactive adventure map based on community challenges that inspired ideas to plan potential wellbeing events to address.

Subsequently participants highlighted mental health, environment/nature, families, schools, accessibility, and fitness/movement as themes of importance. As a result they worked up social action events for the local area around;

• animal rescue
• tree seed planting
• garden growing
• accessible family fun
• dance workshops

Given these points Rowner Community Centre immediately offered the group the opportunity to participate in a tree planting project. Additionally #BeeWell invited members to join the upcoming Accessibility Ambassador scheme. These are great outcomes that ensured participants felt tangible outcomes.

Each member learnt how to plan, organise and promote a project that had a positive impact, and confidently presented their ideas including marketing materials to the #BeeWell Youth Cocreation Lead and a representative from the Rowner Community Centre.

Miss Danika from Steppin’ Up Dance shared that the young people evidently demonstrated teamwork, creativity, and strengthened their presentation skills.

Can you help them take action?

If you can support this group to take forward their social action plans for the community please contact danika@steppinup.co.uk from Steppin’ Up.

To find more about other youth commissioned projects please visit Young people in HIPS lead the way in commissioning youth activities – #BeeWell