“What’s the harm in putting up a smoke alarm, like a lucky charm watching over pops and moms” raps ‘Controversy’ - aka Stephen-remell Coleman who’s a firefighter on the red watch at London’s Wimbledon Fire Station. . “Got Mine Got Yours” is a rap about how smoke alarms save lives and it’s getting quite an audience [...]

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has recently embarked on a project to explore the potential use of Camera phones in various projects. The aim is to introduce camera phones in projects with young people. Ahead of that, a pilot project is testing the feasibility of introducing new gadgets to Fire Support Network Volunteers. [...]

Zico is a firefighter with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, he is also the winner of the Northwest Regional Development Agency Young Achiever of the Year Award. The award ceremony was back in November 2006, but Zico’s story is now on the Princes Trust website. 

I was lucky enough to attend a recent ‘Pass Out’ ceremony from one of the Beacon Courses at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service. A group of young people who had successfully completed a training course about Fire Safety and Prevention ‘graduated’ one afternoon in July! The display included demonstrations of skills learnt on the [...]

Another BBC article recently highlights ‘user promiscuity’ in social sites. “MySpace is running out of breath, while Bebo and Facebook are fast catching up. That’s the message from the latest figures on social networking in Britain. MySpace has long been the leading site for young networkers who want to run their social lives online. But research [...]

The BBC recently published an article on Social sites (MySpace and Facebook) and class divide. The article is based on recent research by US PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley. The research highlights that Facebook users are more likely to come from wealthier homes then MySpace users. The [...]

We are looking to explore potential partnerships within the UK and in Europe to work with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service and Kisky Netmedia Ltd to establish funding for our emerging technology projects. We are exploring two avenues, one UK Universities and the other with The Merseyside Brussels Office. Dr David Allen, Leeds University Business School [...]

Kensington Vision Kensington Vision gives the people of Kensington, Liverpool, a unique opportunity to access the latest local information – from news, sport, & video diaries to business information, jobs, training & education. It is a project focussed on delivering local content, created by local people, and making full use of cutting edge technologies. Whether you [...]

Youth Tech is a great blog I’ve been reading. It’s “a discussion about using technology in creative ways to enrich the lives of youth.” It’s an American site but has a lot of excellent resources in this area.

The Community Fire Safety Strategy will be available for download via this blog. “The Community Fire Safety Strategy is integral to our corporate planning process. It provides a high level view of our approach and ambitions in the area of community safety and is underpinned with a series of individual strategies – arson, youth, violence at work, etc – [...]

As we’re researching a range of services that are of relevance to the Youth Engagement community, we’ll be linking to them via this blog, in the hope that you find our research useful. We have recently been looking at national government initiatives in neighborhood policing, and community engagement. Respect http://www.respect.gov.uk/ The Government’s new Respect Initiative including “Youth Specific” [...]

I recently started working with The Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service to develop ideas for using Emerging Technologies in Youth Engagement projects. One outcome of that is this blog; a new initiative designed to build a community of practice for people working with youth engagement and new technologies. Another outcome of my work with the [...]