More children join mini-media club and get to work with Wigan Warriors

This year, the pop-up TV studio and newsroom worked with their biggest number of youngsters yet over the six-week summer holidays.

And out of 154 children quizzed about their experiences of the Media Cubs workshops, 93 per cent said they had learned something new, 88 per cent felt more confident after taking part, 84 per cent said they felt their views and opinions are important, 78 per cent said they were happy to speak in front of others and 59 per cent said they think they could work in a TV studio or newsroom.

Children who joined in with sessions with the Wigan Warriors Community Foundation also grabbed exclusive press conferences with the team’s rugby players, Iain Thornley, Jake Bibby, Harry Smith, Joe Shorrocks, Georgia Wilson and Kaitlin Hilton.

Kirsty Day, co-founder of Media Cubs and project lead, said: “First and foremost, we want all the children we work with during the holidays to have lots of fun, which is why they took on new challenges this year from stop motion to creating their own adverts and interviewing sports stars and authors.

“And as a result of a diverse set of activities we were able to support them to grow in confidence, which has taken a big knock during the pandemic, and increase their skill set and understand that their views and opinions matter.

“It is also important to us to work with young people to increase their aspirations and giving them an understanding that they can grow up to be anything they want to be by having a taste of what a newsroom and TV studio entails, where previously it may have felt out of their reach.

"We believe that children from all backgrounds have a place in the newsroom and should feel confident that their views matter and voices will be heard.

"We also have some exciting new projects coming up in Autumn.”

If you would like to learn more about Media Cubs please visit their website: https://www.mediacubs.co.uk/