It may be a truism that young people are our future, but what history has taught us is that young people are too often left out of decisions that will impact them and that successive generations fail to involve and listen to the voices of young people in designing the future. The result has been generations disenfranchised and angry at those who came before them for leaving a steadily less sustainable world.
Happily, the University is committed both to enabling young people to engage and achieve and to help shape the future of our City, equipping them to become the thought leaders and innovators of tomorrow.
Involving young people in sustainable urban development and regeneration
The University's recent 5PARK EcoCity Challenge Day delivered by STEMunity and the University's Faculty of Technology outreach team gave 90 young people from local schools a unique opportunity to tackle real-world challenges, discover innovative facilities, and explore ideas that could shape the cities of tomorrow, including model making, robotics, renewable energy, eco housing and 3D printing. As Stephen Morgan MP commented: “Going forward, the challenge for the future of Portsmouth is staying true to who we are whilst growing and modernising our city to continue to ensure accessibility and sustainability. The voices of young people will be crucial to shaping what this future looks like, with their ideas, experiences and perspectives all having the potential to make a real difference.”
Library school outreach and engagement
The University Library is also committed to supporting Portsmouth's young people to access the best available academic information. We have led outreach events for local primary schools, using the Outside In World collection of children's stories in translation to inspire creative projects in local primary schools. We have offered gamified introductions to academic research for ICP students. And we are now delighted to offer library research training sessions to Portsmouth Grammar School extended project students, introducing them to the University Library, showing them how to get the most from the variety of open access electronic resources available to them, as well offering reference access to our print collections for those who obtain an external under-18s Library membership. This should all help provide the best academic information available to launch their research projects, support their academic ambitions, and bridge thelearning gap between school and university.