Matters2us is the group name for the newspaper that expresses young people’s voices. It was produced in North Edinburgh by the North Edinburgh Young People’s Forum. They explained what they had done:-
“We as young people got the privilege of becoming the first ever pilot group to have produced a paper with the team called: The Matter. Our deadline was 6 weeks, so you can imagine how strenuous the whole process was.
We were given a client, an editor and a designer to help us produce the paper and went out to explore the Forth Neighbourhood Community. We asked them a question from our client, Tim from Total Craigroyston/Edinburgh City Council. The question was ‘How can young people’s voices be heard successfully in the Forth Neighbourhood Community Planning Process?’
We consulted with roughly 200 young people around the area and put all of the ideas into the paper. From the ideas the young people gave us, we selected three big ideas. On our launch night we explored these ideas in greater detail with the audience.
The launch night was about highlighting our achievement in making a newspaper and getting it known to the local community more widely, whilst also letting the public know about the process of producing the paper. The audience was made up of general public from the community, Edinburgh City Council workers, Councillors, representatives from Young Scot, Snook and other young people.
People want to support us in finding funding to do a second print run and have heaped praise on us for the work we have done. We as a group enjoyed this experience very much and hope to do it again sometime in the future!
North Edinburgh Young People’s Forum
NEYPF@hotmail.co.uk
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
