Our press club at Rye College has been exploring the need for a new youth club for Rye’s 11 to 16-year-olds. Their research shows almost 80% of young people are keen on the idea. Here’s their report:
What’s the plan?
Sophie Thorpe, a member of Rye Town Council, has just announced her plans to start a youth club in Rye. Whilst it’s still in the planning stages, we will be sending our reporters, armed with plenty of questions, to chat with her about what prompted her to want to start a youth club, and to explore what the youth club will be about.
Overall, we gathered the youth club would be a community led club run by volunteers and focussed on making a safe, fun space where young people can come together to make friends, and do activities they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.
What does Rye want and need from its youth club?
In order to keep the attendees’ needs the priority, Sophie has already organised two sessions at the leisure centre for teenagers and young people to discuss what they’d like included in the new youth club. To aid Sophie with her investigation we devised a survey with pupils from Rye College to find out what they really want, and whether young people think it’s worth us having a youth club at all.
The results are in … and 79% of pupils said that they would love a youth club in Rye!
Requests were flying in for a range of activities including arts and crafts, video games, cooking, forest school, and sports including but not limited to football, darts,
skateboarding, swimming and badminton. There was a special interest in having free or cheap trips as the survey participants stressed the need to be able to do stuff outside and not be stuck in one place all the time.
The most popular time and date for the club was late afternoon or early evening somewhere between 4pm and 7pm on either a Saturday or Wednesday. Hopefully these findings will help Sophie in ensuring her designs for the club get the most participants possible.
Our questionnaire also revealed why pupils thought Rye needed a youth club and interestingly, whilst most did say something along the lines of “they’re fun” or “it’ll stop my mum banging on at me about always being on my phone” some people went further, sharing Rye’s need for more long-term teen friendly activities for the locals. Whilst there’s often quite a lot on during tourist season, local pupils reported that winter and autumn are very beautiful but unfortunately “rather boring” but there’s hope that the youth club would contribute to solving this frustration.
So, is the youth club a good idea?
We think so! Rye’s youth club sounds like it’s going to be absolutely amazing. Please keep an eye out for more information and come along and get involved.
Thanks to the team at the Rye News Press Club at Rye College for their report. We’ll be hearing more from the young reporters soon as they set the agenda with a mix of news reports and features. You can read more about the press club here.
Image Credits: KT Bruce .
I think that sounds like a great idea!