Ethel Mendius 3 weeks ago
As Communications and Marketing Officer, I produce a lot of content for our website and other channels, but I couldn’t do it alone. Here are some of the different ways we collaborate with children and young people at FCS, including a recent project with a talented young artist from an Army family.
I have been the Communications and Marketing Officer at Forces Children Scotland for just over a year, and it’s a wonderful place to work.
In addition to being part of a collaborative team, I’ve had many opportunities to hear what children and young people from Armed Forces families have to say, because power-sharing and meaningful co-production are central to our work. For a recent example of what this can achieve, check out Max’s Big Move, our new storybook written by and for children from Veteran families!
This approach was evident from the recruitment process. At the application stage, I submitted a child-friendly application for the young people involved with Forces Children Scotland. At the interview, there was a young person present, playing an equal role on the panel. Seeing this level of involvement motivated me to join the team and, thankfully, I was appointed.
That was last May. Since then, I’ve had numerous opportunities to speak to children and young people directly, getting valuable input for the work I do. Some publications, like the recent series on memories of Forces life, are entirely youth-led. Other times, young people provide feedback on existing content or developing projects. As a rights-respecting organisation, we always check that children and young people are comfortable with their photos, artworks and words being shared.
This spring, I was involved in a creative offshoot of The Ruby Boots Project. Heather, Project Coordinator, invited a young artist to make representations of children and young people’s experiences when a parent leaves the Armed Forces.
Kemu Kedrayate volunteered his time and creativity, developing a cast of characters for the project, who happen to be dinosaurs! We held several meetings, working together to adapt his fantastic drawings into a designs showcasing children and young people experience and feel on the way to civvy street.
Heather and Kemu reviewing our work at the final project meeting
The stories he illustrated were themselves drafted with children and young people during school-based sessions across Edinburgh and Fife. What was first envisioned as a single story became four composite narratives, after children and young people rightly pointed out that there is no single Veteran family experience.
You can see the results here, and we’ll be taking a deeper look behind the scenes of this project very soon.
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