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Diane Reid, Head of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Outreach & Corporate Responsibility, sums up a year of of innovative and diverse outreach projects and says a big ‘thank you‘ to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ volunteers

Audiences are at the heart of everything we do

“There is nothing like face to face interaction with the audience.” These are the words of Radio 1Xtra Producer who worked with young people from Hackney on the design of a radio debate about what it means to be Black and British.

Hermeet was one of hundreds of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ staff who volunteered to work on Outreach projects in 2016. The projects they worked on were exciting and varied - and all designed to enrich and inspire the content the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ makes for its audiences. And here are some of the highlights.

, Assistant Producer in Newsround, worked with in Manchester to help a group of young people, who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and/or Transgender to make a short film exploring identity. For David, the volunteering experience helped him to learn to challenge his assumptions about areas he assumed he knew well – which is key to making programmes with integrity.

In ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Scotland, and her colleagues found a new way to use the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳’s archives to prompt conversations between families and carers and people living with dementia.

Outreach in the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is all about getting to know and understand our audiences, and them getting to know us. We do this by running an employer-sponsored volunteering scheme that brings ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ people together with specific audience groups we’d like to serve better. Many of our projects focus on younger audiences.

2016 started with the premiere of .  The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳’s Outreach team organised the to raise awareness of the dangers of online grooming, with an expert panel and teaching resources from ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Learning. It was one of a number of events organised by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Outreach to maximise the impact and reach of the programmes we make. After the screening, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ volunteers worked with teachers and youth workers on how key messages from the film could be built into lesson plans.  

was an ambitious outreach project for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Music Day, featuring community groups and choirs across the UK performing live for their local audiences.

One of the landmark events of 2015 was a conference bringing together programme makers, commissioners, people living in poverty and the charities who work with them, to talk about responsible ways to work together to portray people living in poverty.  In 2016, we worked with to put together an event for the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community and journalists from inside and outside the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. The aim was to move away from the stereotypes attached to that community to more genuine and informed coverage. Journalists and people from the GRT community learnt about each other, new relationships were forged, and this has already resulted in new content for audiences.  , CEO of , visited the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Hull studios with members of the GRT community, where they were made welcome, shared their experiences and learned more about how news programmes are made. , Senior Producer for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Generation, came away with contacts and ideas, some of which have already been made into programmes.

We also inspire people to consider a career in the media. Volunteer , who works in ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Comedy, managed to do this by telling the story of his personal career journey to young people during a day of employability workshops. And 6thform student from the West Midlands was inspired by meeting people at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ who had just started their jobs, such as runner , calling it ‘a spectacular experience’ which helped her start to think about her own career.

is ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Outreach’s Volunteering Manager. He organised a Science, Technology Engineering & Maths (STEM) Roadshow where a series of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ volunteers with ‘some of the coolest roles’ in the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ showcased their skills and their jobs to inspire and encourage young people from 32 schools across the UK, using challenges such as weather forecasting, coding, user testing games, budgeting for a TV show and design & engineering.

The amount and range of work we did in 2016 was only possible through the help and support of the community organisations we worked with, our ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ volunteers and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Outreach team – all of whom have been generous in sharing their experience and skills.

So what does 2017 hold?

In 2017, our primary Outreach focus will be on – a project which Is a partnership between ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳’s News, Academy, Sport and Children’s Departments. It gives thousands of 11-16 year olds students in the UK the chance to make their own reports for a real audience, using lesson plans, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ learning resources and the help of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ volunteer mentors. is a Senior Broadcast Journalist for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Scotland. His enthusiasm for journalism was sparked by the visit of a reporter to his school nearly 40 years ago. Nowadays he tries to repay that debt by being a School Report mentor.

School Report is important work for the future, teaching young people how news is made: how to put together a news story, how to check facts and sources - increasingly important as they come across ‘fake news’ in all its forms.

Volunteer , who works at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio London but took time out to get involved with ‘Pitch and Tour’ sessions for young people at Radio 1, sums it up: “My main goal of volunteering was to inspire other young people and show them that it’s possible to get a job within the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ – and I feel like I achieved that. It has improved my confidence and I have been given an insight into what other young people want from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. I can now take that back to my role at Radio London and help inspire some fresh ideas to our programmes.”

For the Outreach team and for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ volunteers, Yasmin makes a point that’s very important to us: it’s all about the audiences. It’s what it says on the badges ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ staff wear every day: ‘Audiences are at the heart of everything we do’.