If you’re looking for a genuine human-interest story with a strong news element then keep reading! Below you’ll find a snapshot of just some of the stories from the Partnership Council, an organisation in Hyson Green, Nottingham, that was set up to tackle problems in some of the city’s most deprived areas. The things the Partnership Council does are often groundbreaking, always creative and sometimes surprising. These are the kind of stories that deserve to be told. They show Nottingham in a great light and are a real celebration of what this city is all about. They will inspire local people, shock those who pigeonhole the city as a place rife with crime and gang culture and above all, entertain and feed people’s appetite for honest, down to earth real life stories.

May I have this dance?

The Partnership Council set up the Skills Exchange so that local people could swap skills and help each other, free of charge. The scheme has really taken off with the best story being Christine and Peter. Quite independently of each other, Christine and Peter both contacted the Skills Exchange looking for a ballroom dancing partner! It just shows that volunteering your skills, or looking for help, extends a lot further than a spot of decorating or gardening. Christine and Peter’s story would make a brilliant photo opportunity or human-interest story…

There’s no need for guns, bullets don’t respect anyone

The words of 16-year-old Paul from Hyson Green are just some of the many amazing opinions you’ll find in ‘Rollin’ Forever’, a magazine created by a group of young people from the Youth Inclusion Project, made possible by the Partnership Council. Words that are particularly poignant given the recent, tragic shooting of Liverpool’s Rhys Jones. The kids involved are doing their best to steer clear of gang culture, drugs, underage drinking and gun crime and the magazine gave them the perfect platform to express themselves. They all have their own stories and they all deserve to be told. It’s not enough to just sit back and label young people as hoodies,
often, kids just need someone to believe in them.

Turning up the volume on Nottingham’s music scene

Nottingham is often typecast as a city with nothing much to offer but crime, violence or at the other end of the spectrum, Robin Hood. Fed up of bad press and negative headlines, the Partnership Council helped launch a record label, Areafour Recording Industries, with a debut CD launched in April. The CD, which is a compilation of original tracks from the best of the city’s guitar bands, has had rave reviews in many national music magazines and has been played on radio stations around the UK and Europe. Nottingham has so much talent and the rise of
Areafour has to be a great story, especially for TV or radio.

Kids should be heard - and seen

If you’re looking for a really positive story about young people, here it is! It happens week in week out at the Children’s Forum, set up by the Partnership Council so that kids aged 8-11 can have a say about the things that affect them - and more than that, actually change things for themselves. It works and in fact it works so well, the Children’s Forum won a national award recently, whilst one of its members, Faiza Quershi, has been chosen by the government to sit on its new national Children and Youth Board. Only 25 children were chosen so this is an amazing achievement by Faiza and the Children’s Forum. It would be good to tell the story of how children in Nottingham are changing things, perhaps by following one particular project.
Hopefully, this will give you a flavour of how one small organisation in Hyson Green is changing things for the better and how the work it does deserves national, as well as local recognition, either because it highlights issues we all face, or because it dares to fly in the face of convention and look at things in a unique way, or simply because it’s great TV, or radio or press.

If you’d like to find out more or discuss story ideas in more depth please contact Stephanie Robertson on 07939 144978 or email  stephanie@13souls.com