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Teenagers podcast their own fireworks safety message
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In a first for Scotland, Renfrewshire teenagers are 'podcasting' other young people to warn them on the dangers of fireworks.
The group of youths from Renfrewshire Young Scot have made the first ever podcast message to be launched on the new national Young Scot website on Monday 30 October.
The teenagers decided to focus their podcast on fireworks to coincide with the launch of Renfrewshire’s 'Fireworks be safe, not sorry 2006' campaign.
The teenagers decided to focus their podcast on fireworks to coincide with the launch of Renfrewshire’s 'Fireworks be safe, not sorry 2006' campaign.
Focusing on the issues that directly relate to young people, they interviewed people from Renfrewshire Council’s trading standards and neighbourhood warden services, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, Strathclyde Police and the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals (SSPCA).
Kris Sinclair,17, chair of Renfrewshire Youth Voice from Johnstone was one of the teenagers to take part in the podcast. He explained why they got involved in this campaign: “We wanted to show that young people are just as interested in fireworks safety as adults. We thought that if young people asked the questions and made the message it would connect with other young people more. We are asking the questions that young people really want to hear and relaying it in a way that young people can relate to.”
Councillor Mark Macmillan, Renfrewshire Council's spokesperson for modernising government, added,“This is a fantastic idea and a great example of how new technology can be used to target the young people of our community. To get young people forwarding on the message of the dangers of fireworks themselves to other young people, and get them downloading the message onto their iPods and MP3 players is a new and exciting approach”.
The partners behind the fireworks campaign were keen to use the new podcast medium to get the message of the dangers of fireworks across to today’s young audience. They agreed the best way to get the message across was to use young people themselves and discuss the issues that affect them relating to fireworks.
Kevin Hughes, Community Fire Officer, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, was one of the people interviewed. He said, “The young people asked as a lot of good questions. The questions ranged from how well equipped we are to deal with bonfires to general safety advice. It was interesting to hear about the issues that young people felt were important. Podcasting safety messages like this is a great idea as it gets the message across in an accessible and novel way. I hope that it will prove popular with the young people of Renfrewshire and that they will all log on and listen to the advice.”
The podcast highlights the efforts put in by all the partner agencies in Renfrewshire to make the firework period safer. The community safety partnership group (Renfrewshire Council, Strathclyde Police and Strathclyde Fire and Rescue) secured national recognition for last year's firework safety campaign, when they were awarded a COSLA Bronze Excellence Award 2006 in the 'Advancing Community Wellbeing' category.
The film the youngsters made is available to download in three parts:
You need to have Apple Quicktime software installed to see the video clips:
Download Apple Quicktime for free >>
It is also available in podcast form, ready for downloading onto an iPod and MP3 players, at Young Scots' website www.youngscot.org.
Press release: Monday 30 October 2006
