Speaking Up at the 36th Cambridge Beer Festival!

Speaking Up was extremely excited to have our Cambridge Next Steps project as the Official Charity Project of the 36th Cambridge Beer Festival! We had a fantastic week there - with a stall, tombola, face painting and a Human Buzzwire - a giant version of normal buzzwires, where the hoop you have to move down the wire is mounted to a helmet, instead of on a hand held pole! Click here to see the Buzzwire in action!

Pictured: Volunteer Paul with Gwok, a Next Steps service user, trying out the Buzzwire!

It was great fun, and we raised a total of £3,309 for Next Steps! Thank you so much to everybody who made it possible - the local businesses who kindly donated prizes for the tombola, the wonderful Beer Festival organisers and stewards who supported us for the whole week, and the many staff who volunteered their time and energy!

Pictured: Volunteer Vicky on the Next Steps stall!

Speaking Up at the Cabinet Office... and Number 10!

Neil Adams, who is a Speaking Up Youth Parliament MP and Promote the Vote Trainer, was recently lucky enough to spend a day at the Cabinet Office in London doing work experience shadowing Senior Press Officer Stephen Coomber.

By the end of a long day in London, Neil had helped to write a press release, gotten sign of for it from MP Liam Byrne, emailed the press release to a range of journalists and discussed it with them on the phone, and even managed to get a tour of Number 10 Downing Street, where he saw the Prime Minister hard at work!

Neil said "Everything about the day was fantastic - I enjoyed every single second of it. I would like to be a journalist one day" Click here to check out the press release that Neil and Stephen wrote on the day! More photos here on our Flickr page.

Speaking Up Speaks Out - a new blog!

Hello, and welcome to Speaking Up Speaks Out - our new blog! The blog is going to keep you up to date with all the goings on at Speaking Up across the country, and we hope that you'll comment and let us know what you think.