Norwich City Council Hackathon

Join us in hacking one of the biggest issues our democracy faces... youth involvement in local politics!

The Hackathon puts young people in the driving seat, discussing the barriers to young people engaging in local democracy and what we can do to solve them!

The event will bring together a group of young people, with the aim of creating innovative ways of getting more young people involved in local politics. The event will address the problem of a lack of young people in local politics. It will question why this exists and how it can be overcome by getting young people to ‘hack’ the various barriers they themselves identify.

SPEAKERS:

Cllr Alan Waters, Leader of Norwich City Council

Laura McGillivray, Chief Executive of Norwich City Council

Cllr Emma Hampton, Norwich City Council

Cllr Farah Hussain, London Borough of Redbridge

ARRIVAL INFO:

The main council doors are closed and locked at 4:45pm so access is via the side entrance on Bethel Street. This will take you through the customer contact centre to the main reception, please go up to the next floor and head to the Mancroft room.

We will be joined by two local councillors who will be speaking at the event and will stay on for networking at the end of the event.

Programme:

1. Short intro to Shout Out UK, Be a Councillor and Hackathon.
   
   
2. Norwich City Council intro.
   
   
3. Participants divided into groups
   
   
4. Question: 'What are the major barriers to young people being involved in local politics?' Groups to discuss major barriers and write on flipchart paper on each group’s table.
   
   
5. Group feedback on the barriers they came up with and why they think each exists.
   
   
6. Silently, for 2min, each individual must write down EVERY SINGLE IDEA that comes into their head individually on separate pieces of sticky paper (just a few reminder words will do). EVERY THOUGHT MUST BE WRITTEN DOWN. After allotted time, pens down.
   
   
7. Individuals come back together in their groups and combine the ideas. SORT ALL THE IDEAS INTO GROUPS (make up the groupings themselves). Discard ideas that are completely unfeasible OR have already been tried.
   
   
8. Councillor speaker.
   
   
9. Each person selects a couple of favourite ideas from the group to defend, stating why.
   
   
10. As a group, they must keep cutting the total number of ideas in half until they have 1–2 remaining.
    
    
11. Group feedback – short presentations by each group of their 1 – 2 ideas, why those ideas and what barrier they break down.
    
    
12. Councillor speaker.
    
    
13. Networking and refreshments.

Event in partnership with

Event organised by Shout Out UK

We are a multi-award winning independent news network and course provider that, via journalism, film, events and education, connects one of the largest networks of intelligent, adventurous and career-driven young people with the aim of getting them more active and interested in politics.