On the second day of Stuttgart…

We awoke to beautiful early morning views, before setting off, on what would be our first opportunity to explore Stuttgart in the light of day.

1

3The first leg of the journey meant our first experience of the interesting world of the Stuttgart tram service. We don’t have one here, but at first sight they are essentially massive trains which run using tracks in the road, and wires in the sky; much more energy efficient, faster, and greener than the transport services here in Cardiff- will we see this trend appear at home?


12180129_924659290915260_1520841698_n

As soon as we stepped off the tram and emerged from the tunnel onto the street, we were immediately struck by how clean everything is over there- not a sign of pigeon poop on a single statue where Stuttgart are concerned. The streets are wide, open and modern, the buildings beautiful and unique. It’s safe to say the majority of our group fell in love. Firstly, we wandered along Königstrasse, the main shopping street in Stuttgart’s city centre, appropriately named King Street, as if in parallel to our Queen Street. On the floor, a large circular mural decorated the floor, a commemoration to each of Stuttgart’s ten sister cities, including Cairo in Egypt, Mumbai in India, St.Louis in the US, and Samara in Russia. Obviously we needed a picture break to snap the best one… 
5.54
6

We eventually approached the grand steps of the Rathaus, which, despite what the name might suggest, has less to do with rodents and more to do with politicians! As with most of Stuttgart, the Rathaus was impressive due to its size, its modern appearance, and unique qualities.

Distraction number one came in the form of a lift, unlike any other we’d seen before. As opposed to stopping and taking you to your designated floor, it continues to move, forcing you to jump on and off of your own accord… and it isn’t easy! There’ll be videos on Facebook soon.

After an interesting tour with even more gorgeous views and interesting info…

12178025_1066813673351940_924053206_n
a beautiful fruit and veg market, held 3 days a week
12188605_842522312533273_1071145324_n
the extremely modern town hall
the pretzel thing is not a myth- they were everywhere! offered at the townhall in horse shapes to commemorate Stuttgart
the pretzel thing is not a myth- they were everywhere! offered at the townhall in horse shapes to commemorate Stuttgart

… we head over to an information centre, where we partook in a “City Challenge” run by “tipsntrips”. From being lifted up by a stranger, to finding out information and statistics about Stuttgart by asking its inhabitants, to taking embarrassing photos, this two hour challenge really was a challenge! Putting our German-speaking, teamwork, and walking power to the test!

12182026_924658967581959_621218856_n12180138_924659364248586_1966629474_n12181871_924658937581962_1008875990_n

After freshening up, we had an exciting evening of youth culture. Our two musicians, Niamh and Rhiannon performed amazing music on stage in Stuttgart with another young singer-songwriter from the city itself. The atmosphere was amazing, as we all enjoyed beautiful original content along with covers to sing-along to from our very own Cardiffians, who made fantastic contributions to our trip- thanks guys!

12194488_924659850915204_343589843_o
12188312_842522349199936_700942145_n

We also got to watch and partake in a “Paint Battle”. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a paintball style free for all, but rather something more organised, interesting, and a much better way to utilise the extremely talented artists who joined us on our trip. As opposed to throwing paint on each other, paint was thrown on canvass, as the artists fought to create better pictures than the other country’s team in three rounds. The topics for painting were called out by the audience, who also got the deciding vote on the winners. Go team Cardiff, the unanimous winners!  Thanks Cerys and Astrid for taking part in everything we did, and to Lydia, one of our new members for your contribution in the last round of the art battle!

12182110_836925343095356_215282114_n12179503_836925499762007_146913889_n

Make Your Mark

Hey all!

If you’ve been to any of our events lately, or seen us around the streets of Cardiff, you may already recognise these lovely little ballot papers- you may even have filled one in for us. 15244400178_8be1f1b8a1_bWhich can only mean one thing- it’s time to Make Your Mark! Yearly, these ballots are released to the local youth forums around Britain by the UK Youth Parliament, meaning young people have a say in what is discussed by members of the Parliament in their annual House of Commons debate. It also decides what issues will be campaigned on across the UK. Basically, this is pretty big stuff, and takes nothing more than a tick, or a click, to complete! 

The scheme is the largest youth consultation of its kind in the UK. Last year, 875,000 11-18 year olds voted, the highest number of young people ever consulted as part of the scheme. But we think we can do even better, this time, and their target is to reach out to, and collect votes from 1,000,000 young people.

Cardiff Youth Council wants to make sure that we share this enthusiasm. Last year, the votes of 2,152 people were collected, a 6.9% turn out for young people in Cardiff. We can do better than that, right!? Especially when it’s so ridiculously easy to get involved.

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to fill out a ballot yet, here’s how it works– it’s super simple!  The paper consists of a choice of 10 topics, which the UK Youth Parliament identified as key issues prioritised by young people. You vote for the one that you think is the most important, the one that needs the most focus (only one, one only, such a tricky choice!) When these votes are collated and counted, the top ones will be discussed by the Youth Parliament in the House of Commons, on November 13th as part of Parliament week. 

Last year, in Cardiff, the top two topics voted for were Mental health, and Curriculum for life. This was the foundation of the two successful campaigns we have been running in CYC over the last year, which we’d be happy to answer any questions about, and will talk about in further detail in future posts.

If you’d like to vote right now, click here. Forward this link to any people, groups or organisations in your network of the right age, and encourage anybody you know to take part… let’s hit that target, let’s get Cardiff’s voice heard.

Thank you to everyone who’s taking part- hopefully we’ll see you on the 23rd, where our next meeting at city hall will be held, 4:30pm, be there!

Any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch, email me at maegandaviesjohn@outlook.com, or get in touch on Twitter or Facebook! You can find out much more about Make Your Mark and the UK Youth Parliament here.

Thanks again!

Mae, Fiona and CYC 🙂 

An intro to CYC


Hello!

I guess a good way to start off this blog, which we’ll hope to update for you weekly, is with a quick introduction to Cardiff Youth Council, who we are and what we’re all about! I’m not sure if you’ve heard the tagline before- if you haven’t, here it is- we are the official network for young people advocating positive change, to make Cardiff a better place to live, work, and play. In a sentence, that’s what we are… which doesn’t tell you much, so I’m gonna elaborate slightly.

Basically, it’s a youth forum, where young people from the age of 11, up to the age of 25 can meet with other like-minded young people to work on campaigns and issues in all forms. So basically, if you fit into that age bracket, live in and around Cardiff, and care about… a broad range of stuff, then this is the place to go, to get your voice heard and your opinions counted!

How do you fit in to all of this? We meet on a monthly basis- and if these meetings, or even a few of these meetings and involvement on social media are all you can commit to,  that’s fine! Any involvement is great, as we function on having a big group representing the youth of Cardiff, working hard and making change happen! And we do make change happen, which is great, because what we do as young people is important, and deserves to be acknowledged, we deserve to see a response to the things we do!  Additionally, we’ll be hurling opportunities your way, of various nature and theme, including exciting and interesting trips and visits, residential outings, and so on! Anybody can get involved- as well as representatives sent from schools and organisations across Cardiff, we’re also made up of lots of individuals from all backgrounds. We want our Youth Council to be as diverse, interesting and varied as our city is.

It’s super easy to get involved- you literally just turn up to one of our meetings! There’s absolutely no commitment to stay if you decide it isn’t for you, and any feedback you have would be appreciated regardless!

The next few dates for our meetings are September 23rd, October 14th, November 18th, and December 16th. Always on Wednesdays, always at the City Hall in Cardiff, always 4.30pm and ending before 7pm! Pop those dates in your calendars or phones, and see how you feel when they pop up! We’d love to see you there, (plus there’ll be free tea and biscuits, always a bonus, right?) We know how expensive public transport can be in Cardiff, in fact, it’s one of the issues brought up regularly in youth council, and we try to offer alternatives. If you present any bus or train tickets used to reach our meetings, we’ll reimburse them, as we wouldn’t like to put you out of pocket!

You can follow us on social media too, @CardiffYC on Twitter and like our Facebook page- We’d really appreciate the support!

Thanks so much for reading this far, and I hope we’ll see you really soon! If you have any questions at all, or if you just want to have a little chat about what we’re about, my name’s Maegan , I’m the chair of Cardiff Youth Council, you can email me on maegandaviesjohn@outlook.com at any time, you can also drop me a message on Facebook or whatever. If you’d like my number to discuss anything over the phone, I can email that over to you too. We’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks again!

Mae and CYC 🙂