ABOUT THE DAY

The REACH Festival for Young People bought young people together to discuss their experiences during the pandemic and, most importantly, what we need to do now to enable young people to thrive. Young people may often feel overlooked and unheard, and REACH understands the importance of including young people in conversations surrounding their own futures. In bringing young people together, we’re hoping to amplify their voices and opinions to help shape mental health, education and government policies directly affecting young people. 
Using young people's voices from our Festival, further consultations with our Young Person Community Champions and our recently published research (click here to read our paper), we have developed a 6-point plan to help young people thrive post-pandemic. You can read our recommendations, developed with young people, for social policy and community initiatives below! 

You can watch the video below for more information!

WHAT DID WE DO?

A LIVE PODCAST WITH A COLLECTIVE SOUND

The REACH team were excited to welcome A Collective Sound to do a live podcast at our Festival for Young People, all about the impacts of the pandemic on young people. In this podcast, ACS give us a personal insight into the ways in which young people may have been impacted but also make recommendations on the best ways to move forward. Head over to @acollectivesound instagram to take a look at the other topics they've discussed.

You can listen to the live podcast below!

As you know, REACH are interested in exploring all of the ​different factors that might impact young people’s mental health. In addition to our Festival, we launched our very FIRST creative competition to help us better understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on young people. Young people were given the opportunity to ​express and give us an insight into some of these impacts. 

We had many amazing entries and a very big thank you to all who entered!

You can view the winning entries by clicking here.