• From being placed in care aka a B&B and then given a council flat as a teenager to being supported by a youth worker to volunteer at the community centre and then gain sessional work and go on to deliver youth work around the North East, in South East London, then across the world in Jamaica, with young people from Chernobyl, Israel, Palestine, in Bradford after the race riots and then back to the North East working with Barnardos teenage pregnancy team.
• Making connections and accepting opportunities
• Handing over to young people to manage projects
• Following the global financial crisis, cuts to services decimated the support available for young people, and their parents
• 09:50 This led to the idea for Trylife – finding a way to reach people where they are, which is on their phones and online for a significant amount of time
• Take youth work theory and apply it to media
• Entering the world of film production
• Stigma of young parents and negative media but some of the best parents I know are young parents
• North East Young Dads and Lads Project addressing this in our region for young Dads
• Paul speaks on their podcast about the experience of being a young Dad here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYrmfYne-bQ
• 16:00 The benefits of gaming – helping young people to communicate, build teamwork and a range of other skills
• Trylife – https://www.trylife.tv/ – choice based interactive films for young people on the issues they face
• Giving young people skills, tools, learning
• The most complex interactive film ever made – 450 pages of script
• Funding from ERDF / North Star Ventures (proof of concept fund)
• Learning from seeing good and bad practice and finding people who can help
• Starring in Lies, a series of short films based on stories/poems written by Jon McClure, lead singer of Reverend and the makers.
• Learning from mistakes, getting the process right
• I wasn’t trained in film but I’m pretty good at bringing people together and getting the best out of them.
• 28:00 Social media – using Facebook in the early 2010s, learning to engage rather than broadcast, gaining traction and gaining 7 million followers
• Engaging posts – don’t ask how many steps have you walked today, ask you’re walking from the Shire to Mordor how far have you got today?
• Combatting negative and hateful media – posting positive content
• Working with professionals e.g. police, health workers etc and co-creating content with young people with lived experience
• Finding new talent through the Facebook audience – giving opportunities to young people in roles in the production team
• Scheduling posts – 6am for when people wake up and 3.30pm for young people coming out of school, college etc in UK and waking up in US
• This is the most connected, most diverse generation and they really care about the issues that affect them
• Reaching 1 in 3 people in the UK and 65% of all US Facebook users just using my mobile phone a couple of years ago
• But now Facebook just wants you to pay for ads to reach people so its harder to get that organic reach
• 49:00 Young people have sent messages saying Trylife stopped them from committing suicide
• More formal evaluation has shown strong evidence – see the evaluation by Sunderland University – e.g. 94% of young people involved in the Trylife co-production developed critical thinking skills; 94% of young people developed decision making skills
• Next steps – more issues to cover e.g. gambling coming soon. Also we’ve brought out educational materials (Try Learning) around each issue and these are being taken up in 15 areas – need to roll that out nationally.
• Also need to move from being funded per film to having an income to sustain the company year round
• Young people are passionate about participation – because Trylife is made by them its not like some rubbish campaign like knife crime messaging on chicken boxes in south London, haway man!
• Working with top clinicians, building in health information messages
• Multiple awards – innovation awards in health and social care; business youth work, Royal Television Society for film production, placement provider awards with multiple universities, international film awards, HRH Pitch at the Palace.
• 1:00:00 Presenting in LA for the DTI – meeting the producer of Bladerunner – teaching young people in Compton about using their phones to make films
• Working on a budget e.g. no money for getting the aerial shot, film under the CCTV and put in a freedom of information request for the content
• Going for beers with the founders of the Cripps, developing a project with the Crips, the Bloods and the Mexican Mafia to produce a film to show how things really are for young people in their area
• Pitching to Facebook and almost getting it over the line when the pandemic hit and everything stopped – hopefully this will get back on track
• 1:04:25 During lockdown – bursary from A Million Realities to support social entrepreneurs led to a lot of mental health support and therapy, including being diagnosed with mania and dealing with buried trauma
• Hogan Assessment – recommend this as a starting point for understanding yourself
• Group meditation
• EMDR therapy
• Hoffman Institute – was brilliant but is expensive
• Systemic and Family Constellations work with Illi was amazing
• Its changed who I am. I’ve never been happier. Everyone should have access to this. People are dying because it takes 2 years to get access to some counselling if you don’t have the money to pay for it.
• Going to be working on climate action app for kids
• If you’re working with young people on difficult issues get in touch…

You can find Paul on Twitter and LinkedIn and Trylife on Facebook and Twitter, all Trylife episodes and content are at https://www.trylife.tv/ and you can see Paul’s Ted Talk at TedxNewcastle.