Take one social problem. Add a hundred young developers and social innovators. A million post it notes. A thousand litres of soft drink. And tens of thousands of lines of code. Mix em together. You’ve got yourself an Interactivism hackweekend.

Just in case you’re wondering what the heck a hack weekend is it’s an event for programmers and designers to get together and collaboratively create programmes, apps and websites.

Interactivism had a social purpose and a youth twist, which made it even more fun. It was truly awesome to see people working together, developing their idea on the go and make it a reality over the two days. Coders hands were a blur they were coding so fast.

All the teams’ ideas were amazing. I particularly liked Slurker, which embraced online procrastination and used people’s social likes and appreciations to recommend jobs, careers and contacts to them. Because it’s based on existing behaviours and platforms it seemed likely to be adopted and I liked how it turned a behaviour and data into something useful.

Huge congratulations to everyone who took part.

Interactivism hack weekend was organised by Google, the RSA, FutureGov and Livity.

Google Interactivism: Young People’s Hack from The RSA on Vimeo.

“When Sam and I found out what amazing people we were shortlisted against in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur awards we felt proud to be finalists amongst such amazing leaders and organisations (Sir Tim Smit of  The Eden Project, Sue Riddlestone of Bio Regional and Emma Stewart and Karen Mattison of Women Like Us)

And we truly felt that we had got as far as we could in the brilliant Ernst and Young Entrepreneur awards.

“So, why on earth prepare a speech?” you’re all wondering.

Good question. 2 reasons:

1. Sam my brilliant business partner is currently taking a break in Mexico, asking the woman he loves, to marry him (she said yes). Now anyone who knows Sam and I will know that I’m ‘the quiet one’ … and he… is…not the quiet one and he would feel far more comfortable up here with the mic. I, however, am someone who needs to prepare.
2. Secondly, you just never know… as has been played out to me this evening.

In 2008 Sam and I were finalists in this same category and we lost out, quite rightly, to Ian MacArthur and John Bird of Big Issue. Rather than be disappointed to lose, we felt inspired to go away and ‘be better’ and so we pledged to continue building the business of Livity, proving the concept of Livity and delivering more business and social benefits to our clients and young people in equal amounts… until we were good enough to try again for the awards – and win. Think it, say it, do it. And here we are.

Thank you to the judges for recognising our improvements, growth and our ever-increasing ambition. Thanks and well done to our fellow finalists – we represent one of the most important and exciting developments in business and the community and must continue to support and inspire one another.

Thanks to everyone at Livity – we have a brilliant team – each and every single one of them. Thanks to our families and friends for supporting and believing in us and the business. Thanks of course to our clients and the biggest thank you must go to all the young people who have come through our door, been involved in our campaigns, the magazine, our workshops and apprenticeships – they are why we get up and go to Livity every morning.

Thank you, I’m really really thrilled.”

Sam and Michelle now go through to the UK finals in October…

According to Alex, the motivation behind the article was the fact that the new Harry Potter film is just about to be released and if you were 11 when you started reading the books (the same age as Harry in the first installment), you’d be 24 now!

Alex spent one afternoon last week researching her piece at our office, talking to just a few of the young people we work with. She also spoke with myself and Livity co-founder Sam about our involvement with young people, and how we’ve seen things change over the past decade – luckily, whilst I am no longer catagorised by society as a ‘young person’, I am still a ‘twentysomething’ so let Sam lead on that one!

Here’s an extract from the article for those of you that missed it…

“At the offices of Livity, a Brixton-based marketing company that exists, says Sam Conniff, its co-founder, “to benefit the lives of young people, particularly disadvantaged young people”, you would be forgiven for thinking that the younger generation didn’t have a care in the world. In a light- filled, wood-floored loft, with Warhol’s Marilyn prints and banks of Apple Macs, a youthful team puts the finishing touches to Live, a quarterly magazine, while another group readies itself to go to Westminster to question Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Having flown in from Mexico, where he was promoting Dubplate Drama, Livity’s ground-breaking interactive TV series, and about to head off to Bangladesh for discussions on microfinance, Conniff is tired but hardly world-weary as he enthuses about the apprenticeships, mentoring schemes and youth-orientated campaigns that he and his team have pioneered over the past nine years.

But there is a spark of anger when he describes the growing number of kids failed by an education system that is all too quick to label them as troublemakers, to distort the reality of their lives and to consign them to an uncertain future. Livity aims to break the mould by opening its doors to 800 people a year, half of them from challenging backgrounds, with the aim of placing at least 200 in full-time employment or education. “Diversity,” argues Conniff, “breeds innovation, and in this country we do not encourage diversity. We end up replicating ourselves.”

The group of teenagers and twentysomethings that I meet have diverse backgrounds and interests, but they are united in one thing: Livity has given them opportunities that they are unlikely to have other- wise come across in their everyday lives. There’s Paul, who spent nine months on the Music4Good scheme and is now setting up his own marketing consultancy; Shane, who tells me that the keys to his new business, a cleaning company called EcoBoothe, are his fondness for bicarbonate of soda and his determination to pay his staff a living wage; and Bridget, whose involvement in international development projects has increased her awareness of global events. Elleeshea, on a placement at Livity from her Prince’s Trust course, has written a piece about modern female identity; she juggles her work with looking after her three-year-old daughter. From Raphael, who spent a year at Sony on a placement and who tells me that “if there’s an opportunity happening here, you can always get involved”, to Albert, a creative writing enthusiast, who finds that “talking to people makes me fulfilled”, these are youngsters bursting with commitment and determined to grab whatever is on offer. When I ask them what’s worrying them most, they eventually settle on the fear that their travel costs are about to soar.

Livity, of course, cannot accommodate every young person who wanders through its doors, and Conniff is clear that more similar organisations are needed. His sentiments are likely to be echoed by many, particularly those in the numerous agencies focused on helping young people in difficult circumstances…”

Alex Clark for The Times, 6^th Nov 2010

I can definitely sympathise with those that Alex spoke to complaining about the rising cost of travel – my biggest gripe about turning 26 wasn’t that it was now inevitable that every ‘aunty’ I met at a wedding would ask me if I was looking for good boy to marry, but the fact that I was no longer eligible for a young person’s railcard! Sad times.

Mira

Download a PDF of the full article

And one day whilst I was on the 10:10 website seeing what everyone else is doing, I entered a competition to win a giant logo made of grass…… and we won!

Here it is enhancing our reception area, until the day we get our verticle garden constructed and then the salad wall will be born! This is Livity’s no 1 green ambition of 2010 to have our very own salad wall, and it will happen soon, watch this space !

Thanks to CURB Media for making this super cool natural decoration, we really LOVE it !

By Rebecca

She’s introducing us to Mexico’s advisor to the UN on youth issues and when it came to TV channels… she voted for scale and significance!

Which was lucky, because of the two presidents, one became a conference call booking and the one who squeezed us in was the big guy, the very last meeting of the very last day.

And so, we’re in the waiting room of El Presidente of the space station that is the channels sprawling HQ and studios, on what is arguably Dubplate Drama’s biggest day out, at 6pm on our third and final day in Mexico, with hours left, feeling a bit nervous.

A bow tied butler arrives to take our drinks order and I fight against every nerve to resist ordering a Vodka Martini.

Our vantage point of being on the top floor with huge windows means we can see the helicopter swoop in and feel it land on the roof directly above our heads and see El Presidente walk down a short flight of stairs and into the meeting room. And then we’re beckoned in….

Don Televicion aka TV God enters the room, white haired, broad shouldered, perfect teeth, a fair face (but one that you’d never fuck with) a deep voice that didn’t say much but didn’t get disobeyed, ever. All immaculately turned out, in a monogram tailor made shirt.

As I noticed a hand shaking as it picked up its glass, I decided not to drink any more water, and we began.

As we explained the interactive aspect of the show and talked through our favourite dilemma ending (season two, episode 6) his perfect poker broke a smile.
He talked about which option he would have voted for and we began to discuss values, morals and principles, and how best to encourage these debates amongst young people, he talked about his vision for the station and of it’s role in civil society, and their responsibility to educate and empower.

Anyone can do a values speech, but this wasn’t anyone speaking, we talked of exciting future plans and of the social, cultural and philosophical programs the channel fund, all, obviously balanced with their competitive and commercial imperatives.

Good talk, for the head of an entire network.

We talked of our ambitions for a Spanish speaking locally produced version of Dubplate Drama and the effect it could have, we discussed the business end of a deal and we left shaking hands and agreeing to talk over the next few weeks with a view to potentially making something happen.

We drove away watching the sunset over Mexico City and it felt a little bit like it was Mexico City was making the decisions for us.

None of this would have been possible without the British Council and they’re amazing teams in both London and Mexico. In particular Angelica Atristain and Claire DeBraekeleer.

And it’s never happened to me before, until this week.

Which made it even crazier when the same thing happened again, the next day, on the other side of Mexico City at a rival channel.

Neither president was present, so second meetings were set up and a tale of two channels began.

The second largest Spanish language TV network on the planet renowned for it’s world conquering Tele Novella’s Vs the pioneering public service broadcaster, borne out of a university, radical, socially principled, but quite a bit smaller, rival.

Trying to weigh up the pro’s and con’s of each, we zig zagged across Mexico City meeting the other key players and components needed to make Dubplate Mexico a reality, with a few pavement restaurant meetings along the way.

We sounded out brand partners and sponsors and met everyone from the world’s largest handset manufacturer to the planets most popular sportswear brand and a few more in between.

Luckily the one we were most excited about was the one most excited about us.

We met with the head of the British Council and have never been left so open jawed by a vision for cultural and social
improvement achieved through creative and social enterprise. If he pulls it off, his plans will be a lesson for Social Enterprise
around the world.

We asked everyone we met to vote on the right TV station for us in the great big Dubplate channel debate.

Vote A to reach all of Latin America vote B to keep it real.

And everyone surprised us with his or her answers.

Global trainer brand say go with the little guys it’s about perceptions.

Awe inspiring Social Entrepreneurs with hands on experience working with kids on the street say go with the big guys, it’s social change at the greatest scale that is required.

We were incredibly lucky with the access, interest and opportunity we had, and we tried to make the most of it.

The only meeting we didn’t get to have was with someone who’d recently decided it was time to leave Mexico City when their five year old children were given ‘Getting away from Kidnappers’ training at school.

That stopped us in our tracks.

As did the Chocolate Social Entrepreneur who made and sold chocolate shaped grenades and bombs to raise awareness and money to help heavily exploited cocoa farmers.

We also had our preconceptions of the Telly Novella challenged. There are strong social and moral messages core to the Telly Novella and a significant history of them focussing on specific social issues and raising awareness and working in partnership with relevant advisory and support networks.

Not entirely unlike Dubplate Drama, just a lot, lot longer.

We were further put in our place as we were reminded about the validity of the simple escape of the Telly Novella if you travel four hours round trip to work a 12-hour shift every single day.

Our cynical assumptions and hesitations about Big Broadcaster were beginning to shift.

If you took the proven change Dubplate achieved in the UK, in terms of behavioural change in young people and the complete shift in audience we achieved for Childline, and then magnified it to a country of 122 million with a average age of 25…. Just as your starting point…?

If you add to this the discovery made during our research that Big Broadcaster has for five years run a daily show dramatising real life stories sent in anonymously by women who can’t speak about them elsewhere, tackling issues from abuse and rape to anorexia and alcohol abuse and then promoting the services, around the show, that these women need to break the cycles they’re caught in…

Our choice of channels was beginning to sharpen.

Less than a day left and a deal to be done…

- -

None of this would have been possible without the British Council and they’re amazing teams in both London and Mexico. In particular Angelica Atristain and Claire DeBraekeleer.

Emil Ahmed, 17 Live Magazine music editor

Biggafish is known for its massive parties from the Camden Roundhouse to Matter in the O2 Arena. Last night was the kick start to the UK tour. Artists performing on the night included Griminal, Marvell, Lioness, Loick Essien, Rio, Meleka, Big Man Zest and Bigga Fish’s very own DJ Policy and host Jazzie.

The party kicked off with some head banging tunes with some funky house and bashment thrown into the mix. Loick Essien was on hand to please the ladies and girl group RD Official set pulses racing amongst the boys.

Marvell crew jumped on the stage to give the crowd what they wanted – madness! As expected they brought down the ceiling performing “We are Marvell” and “We know”.

If you ever decide to go to a  Bigga Fish event  you won’t be left disappointed. Next stop on their UK tour is Bristol, Manchester and Sheffield. So if you’re around – check out there website and grab your tickets ASAP!