You can edit our website for a day

Sep 23 2008 by Matthew Mckenzie, The Journal

THE Journal is offering youngsters the chance to edit our website for a day – to coincide with a new festival for children and young people.

The Juice Festival kicks off this Saturday with a weekend of activities around Newcastle and Gateshead.

The festival promises an energy-filled schedule of events and activities, programmed specifically for the region’s younger generation.

It will make up part of the region’s contribution to the launch of the Cultural Olympiad, a four-year national programme designed to celebrate, inspire and encourage cultural activity in the run-up to London 2012.

Now we our offering youngsters the chance to edit JournalLive to coincide with Juice.

Open to children aged between 11 and 18, we’ll invite the lucky winners into The Journal’s Newcastle offices for a day during the Juice festival. They will be able to decide which pictures and stories go up on JournalLive that day and can participate in a news conference. It’s a rare opportunity for kids to have their say on what stories and pictures we should have on the site.

To enter, all youngsters have to do is log on to www.journallive.co.uk and click on the “Your chance to edit Journallive” link on the homepage. There, fill in the form with three ideas for things you’d like to see on Journallive especially for kids.

Brian Aitken, editor of The Journal, said: “It’s a great chance for journalists of the future to have their say on what they’d like to see on our website.

“Our online operation is important to us and we’d like to hear what youngsters think could improve it – and encourage them to get hands-on for one day.”

Aside from the Juice launch event, other festival highlights include Kurdish Garden, billed as a “spellbinding interactive performance” from an Italian children’s theatre company, and Stretch – an interactive art installation using hundreds of strands of elastic.

There will also be Xperience 08, the region’s biggest festival of BMX, skateboarding, surfing and winter sports. The climax of Juice will see the world premiere of David Almond’s award-winning novel, Skellig: The Opera, at The Sage Gateshead, which runs from November 24 to 29.

“This is not just about something being planned for young people, but with them and by them, and really developing a sense of them engaging in the festival in a way not seen elsewhere,” said Stella Hall, of NewcastleGateshead Initiative, who are behind Juice.

Visit www.NewcastleGateshead.com/ Juice for updates on the festival programme and booking details.

It’s a great chance for journalists of the future to have a say on what they’d like on our website