The Ultimate Youth survey was launched on April 4 2005 with a party at Blaydon Rugby Club.

It all began in March 2004 when around forty 11-16 year olds attended the initial survey meeting. It was decided to look at three main themes: what they like and what they don’t like about where they live, and what leisure facilities they would have in an ideal world.

An advisory group of adults was formed, and a youth steering group set up. These young people applied for funding for publicity and to provide refreshments for meetings where young people gave up their time to brainstorm issues they wanted to bring out in the survey.

They researched the activities which are already available to them using Yellow Pages, the internet and databases. Some met us in focus groups to describe in more depth their feelings on the main themes. This gave us a huge amount of information with which to shape a questionnaire.

Approximately 1,100 were distributed; 712 were completed and returned, and so we felt we had a good basis of knowledge on which to base our project.

The Youth Steering Group were keen to find other ways for the opinions of young people to be voiced. They won funds so the themes could be explored using a variety of media. This included photography, collage, paintings, model- making and video production. We held an exhibition of the work young people had done so far in the People’s Gallery at the Discovery Museum in December 2004.

What next?

All the information we have collected is now being passed on to relevant organizations; we hope our voices will be heard and that the hundreds of young people who have given this project so much time and energy will see tangible changes in the future.

We’ll report on progress here on this website.