Students take councillors back to the classroom

Pupils from Ulverston Victoria High School and the Lakes School, Troutbeck Bridge, put councillors through their paces with seminars on how young people communicate and engage in politics.

Parish, district and county councillors were all in attendance at the student run event held at the Brathay Trust – an educational charity in Ambleside.

Nathan Davies, participation development worker for the trust, said youth participation in politics was ‘staggeringly’ low and that councillors needed to do more to engage with young people.

“Statistics suggest that young people are more likely to vote on shows like Big Brother than in an election, so it’s vitally important that councillors engage with this group in order to find out why it appears that they are reluctant to become involved in the democratic process,” he said.

Research by Ipsos Mori found that nearly half of 18 to 24 year olds failed to vote in the 2010 general election and in 2006 only one per-cent of 11 to 16 year olds thought that a councillor was someone that they could approach to make a change.

Mr Davies said: “It’s clear that councillors, and politicians, need help in reaching the voters of tomorrow.

“The workshop not only highlighted the technology used by young people to communicate, but also explained more accurately what is important to young people in Cumbria,” he said.

Students running the event, called Demo X Change, spoke to councillors face to face and gave them tips on how use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Sixth former Mark Borthwick, of Ulverston Victoria High School, hopes that the same training day can be delivered to other councillors across the region.

“We believe we’ve come up with a really great package to encourage a dialogue between local government and young people and hope that we can continue to work with the Brathay Trust to develop it further and perhaps even export the model across the country,” he said.