Chamber puts children’s creative skills to the test
Posted by Carly Roper on Thursday 3 June 2010
The Radio City Media Bus was in town last week, at Darkstar on College Street. The visit was part of St Helens Chamber’s Creative, Arts, Media and Enterprise and Innovation Challenge 2010, which saw groups of children from 10 primary schools across the Borough compete to design the best new landmark for St Helens.
The Media Bus is equipped with state-of-the-art media production equipment and delivers media training and interaction in conjunction with Liverpool's Hit Music Station, Radio City 96.7.
The school children were on the bus as part of a two week-long challenge organised by the Chamber to design and market a new piece of artwork or sculpture that would act as a landmark for St Helens. As part of their marketing strategy the shortlisted groups all had the opportunity to visit the media bus and record either an advert of news feature to promote their new landmark.
The week of activities came to a close on Friday as the shortlisted teams presented their ideas in front of a Dragon’s Den Style panel of judges; including John Whaling, Economic Development Manager at St.Helens Council, Gary Conley, Resources Manager at St.Helens Council, Lynn Ben-Yousef from Darkstar Laser Arena, Jon Stephenson from Radio City and Ron Helsby, Executive Director of The World of Glass.
The Winning team was “The Dream Team” from St Austin’s Primary School with their idea Past, Present & Future, a sculpture of a hand holding a glass rugby ball, representing the past, present and future of St Helens. As their prize they will win a guided tour of the Radio City Tower in Liverpool, a picnic on Crosby beach with Anthony Gormley’s Another Place exhibition of iron men and a class visit to Dream. They will also see their winning design come to life, courtesy of The World of Glass who will be commissioning a scale size model of the sculpture to be made by one of their glass workers.
Martin Foulkes, Enterprising St Helens Manager at the Chamber, said: “We were very pleased to have been able to work with so many local primary schools on this project. The challenge is designed to develop a number of the children’s enterprise skills such as team work, risk taking, problem solving, organisation and creativity.
“This challenge is just one of the many projects we run with young people throughout the Borough to encourage entrepreneurial activity.”
Commenting is now closed.