from YAPRap February 2008
by Cessnock Youth Entertainment Committee
We are the Cessnock Youth Entertainment Committee. We are aged 12-25 years. We live in Cessnock. We meet once a week and we organise drug & alcohol free live music events. We've been doing this for over a year now. Some of our achievements this year include recording a compilation CD of young local bands (NOCK ROCK) and hosting a mini regional tour to launch the CD and consult with other young people in our area, buying a PA and cubase* so we can record our events live, hosting a variety of events such as Youth Fest where over 500 young people attended and we also started a myspace.
Why did we start a myspace, you ask?
Firstly we all had one and we find it an easy way to communicate. Secondly when we were consulting with young people we asked how can we tell them about what we do and the constant response was – “Like hello, MYSPACE.”
As a committee we knew that Myspace was the answer for us when it came to promotion and connecting with other young people. As a committee we are supported by the Cessnock Youth Development Officer Lakin Agnew and Rebecca Fowles the Coordinator of Cessnock Youthlinx. We told them about our idea, gave them a run down on myspace and the end result is that we have a myspace – www.myspace.com/cyecenterprises - which is solely run by young people and the workers have one too - www.myspace.com/cessnockyouthservices - which is solely run by workers.
Why are writing this article in YAPRap?
Because we want to share some of our experiences and lessons learnt about myspace as we understand that many youth services and youth workers are a little bit “nervous” about venturing into myspace. A little while back myspace and facebook were a hot topic of conversation on “Youthgas.” While most of the conversations were positively discussing the benefits of the sites to reach young people many concerns were raised about internet safety, policies, procedures and internet security.
There are more benefits then just being able to reach lots of young people, myspace is more then just a good promotional tool, it's another way for youth services to engage with and communicate with young people. Myspace is youth friendly. We have almost 500 friends on our myspace and the workers' space has over 800. It's a mixture of young people, bands, performers, other groups/committees of young people and youth services. In a regional area like Cessnock myspace is helping to link us to other like-minded young people across the country.
There are things you can do to be safer on myspace and the argument we'd like to put forward today is that the pros far out way the cons. That as young people we are going to be on myspace, facebook, bebo, MSN etc etc whether or not you guys join us, because we like it, it's a good way for us to communicate and meet new people. So please come & join us at myspace.
We all have our own myspace as well as the Committee's. Many of us have online personas rather than sharing too much about ourselves. We set our profile on private and use another name. We don't share too much personal information. If you are looking at setting up a myspace for your youth service try setting up one using a persona first so that you can become familiar with the site before starting your official service myspace.
Once you're ready to join us on myspace go to www.myspace.com, click on the orange SIGN UP! button and it's fairly simple from there. The basic operation of myspace is best learnt by just playing around and trying things out. If you're having a basic layout then it's very simple, if you want something more flashy there are plenty of sites where you can “pimp your layout.” If none of that made sense think about asking the young people that access your service to give you a run down on myspace. It would be a good way to engage with them and involving them in the process is a good example of youth participation and would really help them to have a sense of ownership. When it comes to content on your site that might be the difficult part that your service has to decide on, especially when it comes to uploading photos & videos. We have signed consent forms for the workers to use photos of us on their site and we put our own photos on ours. Many people get concerned that comments can be seen by everyone but you do have an option to approve comments before they are displayed. Any messages that are sent can only be viewed by the person sending and the person receiving so young people will still be able to contact you that way without everyone reading their message. From the workers' myspace, Rebecca and Lakin have reported that young people do indeed contact them that way with a variety of questions ranging from needing info about youth services in the area to accommodation.
When you have a look at our site check out our friends list too. Myspace is for everyone. Yes the majority of our friends are young people in Cessnock, then there's bands we like such as Silverchair and Cog, bands that play at our events (myspace is the only way to communicate with them) but also lots of other youth services such as ReachOut and Indent.
A while back email and the internet were scary. Now who could imagine going back to snail mail????
More information:
- www.myspace.com/cyecenterprises
- www.myspace.com/cessnockyouthservices
- www.myspace.com
- A YAPA ethical dilemma involves myspace.
