The idea of E2M came about because there was very little for 11-18’s to do in Lancaster & Morecambe after school (especially for young people who don’t play sports).
A few ideas were tried out around Lancaster and the feedback was incredible. 98.5% respondents answered 4 or 5 out of 5 when asked how much they enjoyed the workshop. 94.9% answered 4 or 5 out of 5 when asked if they would recommend it to their friends.
The film then won support from Lancaster City Council, Albright Lawyers, Lancaster BID, the BBC and several senior people at Lancaster University.
Our vision board has already started to meet and develop ideas for creating a new exciting building for E2M!
434 free tickets for 24 different creative workshops, short courses and events are up for grabs. This pilot is to test more ideas, our new systems and it is being professionally filmed to help create an advert to attract members and help with fundraising for when E2M fully launches.
A group of 20+ young people who have been involved in workshops went into production to produce a launch event in mid November. The event was attended by E2M supporters including the NHS, police, businesses, government, educational organisations, artists, volunteers and hard to reach groups.
Around 250 people gathered at the Dukes Theatre on Thursday November 14, to take part in the launch of E2M. The young people produced the launch themselves and premiered our Impact film on the big screen.
Whilst the country was rocked by a global pandemic, the Escape2Make team used the time that we had to take a closer look at our core structure and business model. We welcomed three new board members, including a new Chair Person. We also welcomed our brand new Strategic Development Manager, Saul, who continues to help E2M look towards the future. Perhaps most importantly, we began our very own Youth Board, made up of nine young people who lead us forwards and ensure we never lose sight of our goals.
E2M is passionate about being youth led and believe young people should be deeply listened to. Many of the young people from the cohort from past activities came together to form a board to steer the charity in the right direction. The Youth Board have a great deal of power in the charity – deciding on delivery, to helping write our vision, mission, values, theory of change, code of conduct, business plan and policies. They help to solve problems for the trustees, help shape bids and deliver presentations.
We don’t think this photo was from the first meeting in June!
The beginning of our brand new Film Club and Press Club. Groups of young people were thrilled to return to in-person activity, kicking off our new ongoing clubs.
Special guests from Ikea, Eden Project and officials from regional and national
youth services and representatives from local businesses joined E2M for the event.
A New ChairJack, from E2M’s Youth Board, recruits Bill Kistler (ex VP of Disney) as E2M’s new chair.
Map
An open invitation for the local community to attend the Green Festival at Scotch Quarry in Lancaster on Saturday 27th August to see what 11-18s had been doing over the summer in a variety of free workshops. Alongside the young people’s stalls were food vendors, live music, and theatre performances, drumming from Morecambe based More Music, yoga and gong baths.
