Inspiring young people ‘take over’ the BRC

On 29 November 2019, the BRC Youth Award Winners hosted a takeover of the BRC as part of The Takeover Challenge, run by First News.

This annual event sees organisations across the UK give children and young people the opportunity to take over adult roles for the day.

Activities on the day were planned and executed by the winners of the BRC Youth Awards. The Takeover Day gave the young people the opportunity to put some of the skills they learned on their work experience into practice and allowed them to connect with a network of like-minded peers.

The day included an exhibition which featured images taken by the winners during their work experience as part of The HERON Network’s SELPh project, as well as materials from The HYPE Project which is supported by the BRC. The HERON Network aims to empower people in their neighbourhoods and reduce health inequalities.

Dr Rina Dutta, Senior Clinical Lecturer at King's College London, agreed to be interviewed by the young people for an episode of the Beyond the HYPE podcast. Rina provided the winners with an insight into her role and her research interests which include Suicide and Psychosis, and her thoughts on mental health in young people. The podcast is available on the HYPE website. Finally, the day ended with a health-related quiz centred around the mental health of young people.

Dr Cerisse Gunasinghe, lead of The HYPE Project and co-lead of The HERON Network and Ashley McCarthy, researcher on The HYPE project said: “The Youth Award programme has given us another opportunity to work with a fantastic group of young students. We were impressed with their willingness to engage in critical debates and share their ideas to help shape our research priorities as well as voice their experiences of health in their local community”. 

Inspiring young people

The BRC IoPPN Youth Awards aim to inspire young people from the local area to stay in education and develop a career in science. Earlier this year the winners were also involved in two-days of work experience with leading clinicians, scientists and researchers at our Denmark Hill campus. 

The 2020 IoPPN Youth Awards will open for applicants in 2020 with the following award categories; the BRC Youth Award in Chemistry, Biology and Psychological Health, the Heron-BRC Youth Award in Sociology, Psychology and Health and the BRC Youth Award in Maths, Computer Science and Health.


Tags: Events - Public engagement -

By NIHR Maudsley BRC at 16 Dec 2019, 10:00 AM


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