Youth Fed – raising the bar for Cyber Awareness

Youth Fed are bringing together young people in need with people prepared to help.

As part of our commitment to building a pipeline of talent and skills for the future, here on campus you’ll find a dedicated Digital Centre, hosted by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The Digital Centre is utilised by Youth Fed for immersive training. Situated alongside start-ups and blue chips it is an ideal location for young people to learn and be inspired by all things digital.

There is a vast array of activities taking place at the Digital Centre and beyond and we’ve been speaking to Michael Jones, Training Coordinator and Mental Health Support Worker at Youth Fed about just one of them the ‘Short Digital Film Makers Day’.

Q: Can you tell us more about Youth Fed and how you came up with the idea for the film makers day?

A: Youth Fed was originally set-up to inspire, support and inform young people and in recent years this has included a focus on online safety and  cybersecurity as a critical topic relevant to all young people.  As part of this work we visit schools and community centres and carry out interactive lessons.

I was really keen to see this fantastic work expanded further so as the need has become more prevalent, we also talk about safety security issues in social media. We’re not trying to fearmonger or provide extreme messaging this is about focussing on the excellence of the internet as a tool whilst maintaining the message that it doesn’t come without its dangers. Hence the idea for a film makers day where we asked the young people to use their film making skills to create a short film with the emphasis being on cyber safety.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about what was involved?

A: The day was aimed at young people aged 11-18 years old and held at Safety Central. Safety Central is this incredible education centre, you walk in and there’s a pretend shop, police station, courtroom and more. It’s designed by the same company who designed Harry Potter world and is a completely immersive environment almost like a movie set. Safety Central use this for education purposes but we saw a greater potential for creativity whilst being educational too!

We asked all the young people taking part to create a 2-3 minute short story/film. They used their own equipment, so they were able to recreate videos at home.

The venue really set the tone for the day as we were all able to get together in the cinema room to watch the films.

Q:Why are days like this so important?

A: The internet is so widespread and there is so much to make people aware of, we need to ensure that it is engaging for those taking part. Getting young people involved in cyber safety by asking them to create a film really helped with this.

Similarly, at the Digital Centre on the Sci-Tech Daresbury campus people often gasp when they walk in the room as there are two big screens with cyber threat maps, so it feels like you’ve stepped into a cyber security hub. Having an immersive and engaging space on a campus with such an interesting history really helps us deliver our key themes on keeping safe and aware online, cyber security and digital self-care.  Talking about the diversity of careers in the digital and cyber security sector is an important part of the sessions and having the opportunity to work in amazing places such as the Daresbury campus helps to inspire the sector’s future workforce.

Q: What’s up next?

We’ll continue to deliver our programme across schools and community centres and we’re attracting hundreds of students through the Digital Centre, from a number of schools across Halton, Warrington and Cheshire. I am also hoping to be back at Safety Central for Halloween 2025, running a locked room adventure.

If you want to read more about Youth Fed and the work they’re doing you can visit their website here: https://youthfed.org.uk/