Young People's Media Use and Creative Participation.

• Fatimah Awan, University of Westminster
• Alicia Blum-Ross, University of Oxford
• David Gauntlett
  
• Ranjana Das, LSE, University of London
• Reijo Kupiainen, University of Tampere
• Fiona Lennox, OFCOM
• Jane Rumble, OFCOM
  

A good day out in London. The University of Westminster held a special free day on Young Poeople's Media Use and Creative Participation. I had actually thought more young people would be in attendance, but it was more for academics, but it was good and very lively. I especially enjoyed seeing David Gauntlett as I have really enjoyed reading his books and look forward to reading his new book on creativity.

My original intention was to stay all day and therefore see everyone, but the urgent need to find work meant that I had to rush to the Opera House and then to Haringey in the search for work. But the morning speakers on research of media use in Cumbria, and then young people; filmaking and citizenship were excellent and even the potentially dry OFCOM talk was interesting and well presented. I even had the courage to ask a question. David Gauntlett had talked about how positive creativity can be, I know that to be true as this course shows, but I aslo know that for me there is a downside for being like this, that the striving and the connecting that Gauntlett anticipates, have rarely happened for me, so I am always feeling that I am out there, but not getting reinforcement as a result of my activities. For instance printing my books to raise money for the Babito clinic, but having virtually sold none. This may be a reflection of my writing, b ut even I think the book is worth more than the price of a coffee which is all the book costs!!! So leaving one feeling well...... But maybe that is just a reflection of my eeyore personality. However, the research in Cumbria also raised the possibility that certain types of young people who live in the country and who do not want to live there, may find access to the creativity of the net, a sad reminder of all that they do not have, but want. She felt therefore that these few people were "double isolated" because they were physically isolated and emotionally if you like isolated. Some of this had reasonances for me. The last speaker I heard also talked of the defiency approach to much funding for creative projects with young people, one that assumes that there has to be a deficite, that the project will fill, before funding will be allowed. And that although all the participants really got a lot from the experience, some were disappointed by the outcomes. Her research I think had some more resonances, because I think that the element of deficiency comes into my research, and the outcome may also be relevant. I therefore asked if she had come across this double isolation, but she felt that the positive elements of the process outweighed the downsides.

Tomorrow I have to go the seminar to present my work, but and a big but almost everything I had hoped would be ready to show them by now is still unfinished. I have captured some video but not edited. I have some photoshop photos to show people, and some media images to show, and virtually no media quotes, so a very long way short of my idea of a finished film to go with a physical representation of me and my son and his media use.