On Sunday 2nd July, finalists of the Argus Youth In Action awards gathered at the American Express Community Stadium in Falmer for the annual awards ceremony – a fantastic event which saw our region’s children and young people celebrated and lauded for their incredible achievements.
Over the past few months, nominations have poured in from all over Brighton & Hove for each of the 12 categories – applauding young people and their leaders who have inspired and supported other people in their communities.
This year’s awards saw the Trust for Developing Communities co-sponsor the event with our business partner, the British Airways i360. A speech was given to the room by Adam Muirhead, TDC Projects Manager for work with young people, and Sean Watkins, Head of Marketing at the BA i360 who spoke about our work across the city. Following that, Adam and Sean jointly presented the ‘Star of the Year’ award which we are incredibly proud to say went to the #ProtectYouthServices campaign group – a group of teenagers who managed to prevent hundreds of thousands of pounds from being cut from youth services in this year’s Council budget. When Brighton and Hove city council announced an 80 per cent cut in funding to youth services last November the group mobilised to take action – demonstrating, lobbying councillors and collecting over 2,000 signatures for a petition demanding the cuts be prevented. Their impassioned campaigning meant that the proposed cuts of 80% were drastically reduced to a much less painful 15%.
Adam said of the award “Having been on this journey with these amazing young people this capped an incredible evening for us. Thank you so much to the Argus and to BA i360 for making it all possible.”
And talking to The Argus, Tilly Wilson,17, one of the young people involved in the campaign said: “It’s great to know that with all the stuff that we did we got somewhere and reduced the cuts.
“It involved great teamwork to make this campaign as effective as possible and put youth services at the forefront of people’s minds.”
Well done to the Protect Youth Services campaigners and to all the other extremely deserving winners of this year’s Youth in Action awards. What a fantastic way to celebrate all the wonderful young people doing things to make our city a better place.