The Brief

We covered the Have a go workshops that are part of the wider programme of Inspiring Skills Excellence for Wales. This project is run by Coleg Sir Gar who worked closely with other schools such as Ysgol Y Strade, Ysgol Dyffryn Aman and Cyfarthfa High School.

The programme sought to teach children new skills that they traditionally wouldn’t learn in the classroom and potentially inspire the children when thinking about potential career paths going forward. This programme is all about making an impact in teaching young people new skills and that can lead to positive results for businesses as well as individuals in their respective industries.

The Welsh Government touched on the skills that project looks to encourage stating what the project looks to achieve. They list as skills: “build confidence, improve technical and practical skills and enhance their employability”

The Process

For the film we managed to get a range of footage from the three schools we filmed with. These ranged from shots to interviews with both pupils and staff about what they have enjoyed about the project and how it’s been beneficial for those involved. The major benefit that we highlighted was how these lessons presented a series of opportunities that they wouldn’t have gathered from lessons or open evenings. The shots we included were of the children working together as groups as well as well as how the college staff carried out the lessons. We were very happy with the quality of our interviews with several different individuals from pupils, the school staff and the staff running the programmes.

For this film we worked with schools that primarily educate through the Welsh language. One of the main successes of this project was the use of the Welsh language and how we were able to conduct some of our interviews in Welsh. This was great for us to be able to see the Welsh language used in an educational sense.

The aim of the activities has been to encourage children to try new things and inspire them to learn new skills. From speaking to those involved in the lessons it was clear to see that the pupils really enjoyed taking part in activities that schools wouldn’t usually teach in a typical school lesson, in addition they were really inspired by what they had been taught throughout the lessons with many leaving with the feeling that they had learnt something new.

One of the points that was touched on in the video was how providing children with opportunities in school would increase their knowledge of workplace processes. Another thing that tends to be spoken about in this day and age is a skill shortage amongst young people and that these projects are helping eliminate that. This topic was touched on in one of our interviews where facilitator Dominic Bonaker touched on how skills such as teamwork and communication were lacking with young people and these are vitally important to being successful in any future career path.

The Result

We managed to demonstrate all the different impacts that the project has had on the pupils and schools themselves and how these activities encouraged the pupils to work together as well as think about what they learned.

We successfully noted the perspectives of pupils, teachers, event facilitators and employers which really emphasised just how important this is.

The film successfully highlighted the objectives of the programme in terms of introducing pupils to new industries and the potential benefits of pursuing careers in the respective industries. To add further, we managed to get the perspectives of employers and how they believe that running these courses are beneficial for all those involved and in terms of closing skill gaps.

This was a particularly good project for us as Stori Cymru given that there was a great emphasis on the Welsh language throughout the project and conducting interviews in Welsh was hugely beneficial for the film. Another reason why this project had a lot of appeal to it was the importance of giving young people opportunities in work. At Stori Cymru we have sought to demonstrate the importance of providing opportunities and projects such as these which have been all about providing young people with opportunities to learn and develop for themselves with the right support network.

If you have a project that you’re looking to bring attention, get in touch.