Youth Work: Minister to look at Mediabox funding
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
The minister for young people has indicated a 6m government youth media fund could be extended beyond its scheduled March 2008 finish.
Beverley Hughes told Children & Young People Now she is keen to see if funding from the Department for Children, Schools and Families' comprehensive spending review allocation can be used to continue the work of Mediabox.
After a visit last week to a Mediabox project run by the Connections Communications Centre in Hammersmith, west London, she said: "These particular projects work with disengaged young people for long periods of time, to take them through progressing their skills. The key thing is that because young people make a film, it is theirs. They get qualifications on the way, but they also get something that they make as evidence of what they have been doing."
She added that while anecdotal evidence about Mediabox is positive, the government would need to see proof of its success before funding it further.
Mediabox was announced in the 2006 Budget and launched in December the same year. It offers grants of between £100 and £80,000 for projects that involve 13- to 19-year-olds in England in creative media work.
