launching speeches May 23rd 2013

and

Aston University are launching later this week an EU funded project looking at Social Innovation and Young people. The project titled Citispyce – will be seeking out innovative social practices (sometimes led by young people) across Europe and will also be looking at how such approaches can help to engage disadvantaged young people in cities across Europe. This is a three year project costing almost €2.5m. Aston University are working with Birmingham City Council and 11 other partners drawn from across Europe.  Never has a project been so timely with youth unemployment being high across Europe. This is a particularly vital study for Birmingham as youth unemployment in the city is higher than any other core city and high than in London as the table below shows. There are over 12,000 unemployed young people in the city. As Fairbrum has recognised in its White Paper on ‘Making Birmingham an Inclusive City’ this is a key issue for the City to tackle

Core Cities Youth Unemployment – drawn from the briefing on youth unemployment prepared by Birmingham City Council. Click on the image to download the report

The project will document approaches taken across the partners to engage with young people, looking at state and third sector approaches and will pilot new approaches to see how replicable and how effective they are across major European cities.

The project is being launched by Professor Dame Julia King, Vice Chancellor of Aston University, with a contribution as well from Cllr John Cotton from Birmingham City Council on Thursday 23rd May at 12.30. If you are interested in finding out more there may be a few places left at the launch event. Please contact the project on  0121 204 4693 or Email  b.jhheent@aston.ac.uk to book a place.