Throughout our Summer of Fun project this year, we have organised many new activities and ways for our young people to spend their summer with Paisley YMCA, such as our Summer Gaming Cafes and our VR training projects in various schools and community centres throughout the Paisley area.
Many of these projects also featured collaborations with other youth organisations, who are just as invested in creating a fun and educational environment for Paisley’s youth as we are. One example of this was through our partnering with SoundPlay Projects to run two separate workshops on the 4th and 5th August. These projects gave our young people the chance to combine their scientific side with their musical creativity to create their own imaginative works.
Founder of Soundplay Projects and Musician, Bal Cooke explains, “These workshops combined low-tech ways of sound making (using ping pong balls, paper cups and elastic bands) with high tech video manipulation of the clips we filmed. It was brilliant to see what the young people came up with, creating sounds and objects that we’d never have thought of. “
These projects utilise the technology provided by youth organisations to encourage young people to develop new skills and ideas that will go on the serve them later in life. As Cooke explains:
“I think these kind of projects can open up creative possibilities in digital technology, beyond the world of games, smartphones, social media, etc. All those platforms are totally valid but are so much part of young people’s lives already.
“We are keen on the idea of playing with technology to create something unique and think that really can inspire others to try new things or even just to look at technology in a different way.”
Collaborative projects between youth groups such as this allow for a greater expansion of creative projects to engage our young people and working together allowed us to really bring this project to life. Cooke states:
“Paisley YMCA bring so many benefits; they have great facilities and staff, as well as brilliant connections with the community. They also share our ethos that projects should be driven by the young people rather than try and impose stuff on them. We hope to work with them again soon!”
Likewise, we are also extremely thankful to Soundplay Projects for this collaboration and we’re very excited to see what we can do next!
For more information regarding Soundplay Projects, please check out their website for details.