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Bob and Morris
Bottletop - Project Update July 2008
11th July 2008
It’s been a while since we provided an update of the Bottletop project, and so here we offer a reminder of the aim of the project, together with a report of progress, which has been exciting and encouraging.
Bottletop’s aim is:
To work with 16-18 year olds in the three Further Education Colleges in Hereford, including Hereford Sixth Form College; to encourage a healthy relationship with alcohol; and to develop a website to raise this awareness with their 14-18 year old peers in Herefordshire.
This is very much a pilot and, as we reckon it’s a country-first, it has been necessary to work some things out as we go.
So, what has happened over the last few months?
We conducted a short, low-key, baseline questionnaire before we started to get a feel of student attitudes and knowledge of alcohol. Some of the headlines:
75% of students considered that they had been ‘drunk’ in the previous
two weeks
63% said that what they had enjoyed most in the last two weeks
involved drinking
32% were concerned about someone’s drinking
80% failed to estimate the government’s daily drinking limit correctly
36% said they didn’t know where to go to find out more about the
misuse of alcohol
So there was something to go for…!
We were delighted when the project was awarded Arts and Business funding from Government to augment the investment by Scottish and Newcastle in this innovative project. This additional funding has allowed us to work with more students of different backgrounds, has supported the use of different media, and will allow us to undertake a deeper evaluation of the effects and implications of this sort of intervention. It will also help to provide a platform to publicise the work when we have completed this pilot.
In February, facilitated by the Colleges' management, a series of student engagement performances were conducted by the Playhouse team over a couple of days in general areas around Hereford Sixth Form College, Hereford College of Arts and Herefordshire College of Technology. What has been interesting in reviewing this engagement phase is that although it didn’t apparently attract students directly to sign-up to get involved in the project (really only one chap came along of his own volition), it did raise awareness that something was going on and “Bob and Morris” seem to have been observed by a lot of students.
Subsequent facilitation sessions were attended by 33 students (6 from Hereford Sixth Form College, 14 from HCA and 13 from HCT), who explored relationships with alcohol, government messages and what was actually important to them. This informed the students’ decisions on content for the website. The HCA group (who were drama students) have concentrated on writing, performing and filming an epic tale around drinking, entitled Empties, which will be a central draw of the site. The Sixth Form’s students have produced an animation ‘It's not easy being a pint glass’ and writing, and the HCT students, who are studying Health and Social Care, have produced a wealth of content looking at specific aspects and messages – with safety appearing to be a key feature.
Work has now started to draw all this excellent possible content for the website together, with Chris Preece from Infinity Unlimited undertaking this task with the Playhouse and the help of a focus group of young people.
The first cuts of some of the work that has been produced were shown at a lunch held on 25th June to thank the students for their participation, and at which we sought their feedback.
Importantly, more than half of the students said that their involvement in Bottletop had changed their view on alcohol and everyone reported that family and friends had shown an interest in what they were doing on the project. They had enjoyed being involved; one student wrote “Keep getting people our age involved with stuff like this!” Students reported that they had gained self-confidence, learned more about the effects of alcohol, and had in some cases changed how much they drink as a result.
We aim to launch the Bottletop website during next academic term, ideally in early November and will want, with the Colleges and agencies, to explore the best ways to make this launch as effective as possible and thereby to broaden the impact of this project.
We would very much welcome any comments and particularly any suggestions for the website as it is being constructed, such as signposting. Do get in touch.
damagelimited@btinternet.com